Dr. Sudarshan Kumar Kenetinkara, who was a postdoctoral researcher with the Center for Research in Mathematical Engineering, CI²MA, of Universidad de Concepción, between June 2014 and January 2017, recently accepted a job offer by the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, located in Guwahati, the largest city of the state of Assam in northeastern India. He is now an Assistant Professor at Department of Mathematics of this prestigious institution. “It is a major challenge in getting in to one of the institutions of national importance e.g. IIT of India. A good academic record throughout the carrier together with research experience from renowned institutes abroad or India are the minimal requirements for acquiring a job in IIT. In this regard, I have been blessed with the opportunity to work in CI²MA, especially with Professor Raimund Bürger”, Sudarshan emphasizes and adds “I have met him in 2010 in a workshop held at Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Professor Bürger is extremely dedicated to research and well known in the Mathematical community for his outstanding contributions. I was quite lucky that I have met him and got an opportunity to work with him during three year. These research achievements certainly contributed tremendously towards my career as a researcher. I must mention one of my collaborators Professor Ricardo Ruiz-Baier from Oxford University whom I have been introduced through CI²MA. His collaboration has played a major role in building up my career as a researcher. Moreover I am grateful to Professor Gabriel N. Gatica for all his priceless help throughout my stay at CI²MA”, Sudarshan sustains.

As for the academic obligations of his new position at IITG, Sudarshan explains that “the major challenge in here is to keep a high performance record in the teaching assignments and keep outstanding research record throughout the career. However the facilities and infrastructure provided by the institute make it easy to go along with the institute strategies”. Sudarshan acquired his Ph. D from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research-Centre for Applicable Mathematics Bangalore in April 2014. The core topic of his research is partial differential equations, more precisely theory, numerical analysis and computational methods for hyperbolic conservation laws, and his areas of current research include systems of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws, multicomponent polymer transport in the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process, two-phase flow problems in heterogeneous porous media, conservation laws with discontinuous flux, high-resolution numerical methods for conservation laws, and discontinuous Galerkin methods for time-dependent problems.

During his research stay at CI²MA –which was funded by CONICYT first through project Anillo ACT1118 (ANANUM), then by Fondecyt project 3150313, and lastly by CMM Basal PFB03- Sudarshan participated in several scientific renowned events such as XXIV Congreso de Matemáticas Capricornio (August 2015), Eighth Meeting on Numerical Analysis of Partial Differential Equations, La Serena Numérica II (January 2015), and XXIII Congreso de Matemáticas Capricornio (August 2014), among many others, and he also achieved and a research visit at Aix-Marseille Université (France) with Professor Kai Schneider (September 2016).

The Department of Mathematics of IITG started its PhD program in 1996 (IITG was established only two years before that), and since then several distinguished professors have worked in it, in many diverse areas of Mathematics. IITG also proudly hosts visits by a good number of renowned mathematicians every year. Many of the graduated students leave IITG for graduate studies in reputed universities abroad and within India. Regarding campus placement, some of the recruiters of former IITG students are Adobe, Amazon, Bank of America, Deloitte, Ericsson, Facebook, Infosys, Xerox Research, Microsoft, Oracle, Samsung, PWC, among other international prestigious companies.