Architect of PARAM series of Supercomputers Dr. Vijay Bhatkar to be awarded ‘Suryadatta Shantanurao Kirloskar Atmanirbhar Rashtriya Puraskar-2021’ by Suryadatta Group of Institutes, Pune. This award will be given in the memory of Late Shantanurao Kirloskar, an Indian businessman who was instrumental in the rapid growth of the Kirloskar Group and it announced on the ocassion of his 27th death anniversary. The award will be presented to Dr. Vijay Bhatkar on Monday, 26th April 2021 at 12 pm at Dr. Bhatkar’s office in Bavdhan Pune.
This information has been given by Prof. Dr. Sanjay Chordia, Founder President of Suryadatta Group of Institutes Pune. He said that, Shantanurao Kirloskar was a global thinker and an enterprising person who had the courage and the confidence in the potential of his own country even in the pre-independence era. After the World War II, the Kirloskar Group grew rapidly under the leadership of S. L. Kirloskar. To remember his contribution, Suryadatta Group would like start to ‘Suryadatta Shantanurao Kirloskar Atmanirbhar Rashtriya Puraskar’. We are grateful to honor Dr Vijay Bhatkar as the first awardee.”
Dr Bhatkar is best known as the architect of India’s national initiative in supercomputing where he led the development of Param supercomputers. He developed the first Indian supercomputer, the PARAM 8000, in 1991 and later the PARAM 10000 in 1998. Based on the PARAM series of supercomputers, he built the National Param Supercomputing Facility (NPSF) which is now made available as a grid computing facility through the Garuda grid on the National Knowledge Network (NKN) providing nationwide access to High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure. Bhatkar has played significant role in forming several national institutions and research centers including Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the Electronics Research and Development Centre (ER&DC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K), the ETH Research Laboratory and International Institute of Information Technology (I2IT) in Pune, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation (MKCL) and the India International Multiversity and many more.”
