Rajpal Singh Sirohi

Rajpal Singh Sirohi
Born 7 April 1943 (1943-04-07) (age 73)
Residence Bangalore, India
Citizenship India
Nationality Indian
Fields Applied Optics, Optical Metrology
Institutions

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Tezpur University, Tezpur
Alma mater Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Known for Optical Metrology
Notable awards

Galileo Galilei Award 1995 Alexander von Humboldt award 1995

Padma Shri 2004

Gabor Award 2009
Spouse Vijayalaxmi Sirohi

Rajpal Singh Sirohi is an Optics physicist, academic administrator, educator and researcher in Optical Metrology.

Education

Rajpal Singh Sirohi had his early education in a village school followed by the schooling in Bhawan Bahadur Nagar school. He did his 10th and 12th standard from SB Inter College Bhawan Bahadur Nagar securing first class in high school as well as in intermediate with a rank in high school from UP Higher Secondary Board, the only student in the school to secure such a distinction.

He did his Bachelor's in Science from Nanak Chand Sanskrit College, Meerut securing very high percentage of marks in B.Sc. and Masters in Physics from Meerut College, Meerut under Agra University and was a topper in class and a rank holder in the University. He received scholarship throughout his formal education.

After completing M.Sc. in Physics he joined IIT Delhi for doing Post M.Sc. in Applied Optics. During the period of study he had opportunity to interact with the Professors from Imperial College, London that brought out a drastic change in his outlook towards life and success. IITD provided him an excellent education and gave him opportunities to explore the world. After this exploration, Sirohi joined for Ph.D. as Senior Research Fellow at IIT Delhi under Prof. M. S. Sodha in August 1968 and submitted the thesis in less than two years and was granted Ph.D. in June 1970.

Profession

After completing Post M.Sc. at IIT Delhi in 1965, Sirohi got a job at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore where he worked as Scientific Officer until December 1966. Thereafter, he took up Junior Research Associate position in Electrochemistry Laboratory at The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A. and wrote his first paper in the Journal of Electrochemistry, which appeared in 1969. Some personal reasons compelled him to return to India and he joined as Senior Research Fellow at IIT Delhi for doing Ph.D. After completion of Ph.D. degree, he worked as Adhoc Lecturer at IIT Delhi. In March 1971 Sirohi moved over to Indian Institute of Technology Madras as Assistant Professor and became a full Professor in the Department of Physics of the same Institute in September 1979. Sirohi moved over to Indian Institute of Technology Delhi as its Director in December 2000 and continued in that capacity till retirement. After retirement, he took over as Vice-Chancellor, Barkatullah University, Bhopal and later served as Vice-Chancellor to several private universities. Currently, He is Chair Professor in the Department of Physics, Tezpur University, Assam.

Foreign assignments

Sirohi has been Visiting Professor at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland and at National University of Singapore. He was both Humboldt Fellow and Humboldt Awardee and worked in Germany at PTB, Braunschweig and University of Oldenburg. He was Distinguished Scholar at The Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute USA. He also worked at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA.

He has been to Japan on JSPS invitation and to the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and the University of Nambia, Windhoek as ICTP Scholar on several occasions.

Administrative positions

Sirohi was Director, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi during 2000–2005. During his stint as the Director he brought IITD to first position in the India Today rankings of Engineering Colleges of India in May 2005.

Later he became the Vice-Chancellor of Barkatullah University, Bhopal. He also held Vice-Chancellor positions of several private and private Deemed Universities like Amity University, Jaipur; Shobhit University, Meerut; Invertis University Bareilly. He was also the Visitor to Teerthankar Mahaveer University, Moradabad. He held position of the Chairman of Board of Governors of Netaji Subash Institute of Technology, Delhi, National Council of Science Museums and Winrock International (India).

Awards and honours

He is the recipient of the following awards and honours:

National awards and honours

International awards

Academic distinctions: Fellowships and memberships of professional bodies

Scientific contributions

Sirohi has carried out research work in several areas of Optics. Initially, he did experimental work in ellipsometry and studied the mechanism of passivation of metals. He studied the growth of film on chromium and gold under electrolytic conditions and measured the optical constants of the films and substrates. He showed, for the first time, that the optical constants of materials depend on surface roughness, which has relevance to IC technology.

He established the Applied Optics laboratory at IIT Madras and began working on variety of topics like Fourier transformation in partially coherent light, wave propagation in atmosphere and fibers, holography, speckle phenomenon etc. He proposed several methods to increase dynamic range and efficiency of holograms, the use of computer-generated hologram (CGH) for testing the aspherical surfaces. Sirohi proposed an algorithm for fast writing of the CGH. He applied holography for non-destructive testing and presented techniques for fringe control in real-time. Optical components like multi-function lenses were fabricated using holography, which were used in interferometers for measurements. He also started to work on speckle phenomenon and speckle interferometry using photographic recording. During this period he invented several techniques for the measurement of angles, parallelism, displacement, slope and curvature of plates and beams subjected to loads, contouring and multiplexing. For the first time in India, he started the experimental activity in speckle metrology using electronic recording. A new method of spatial phase shifting was investigated and introduced in electronic speckle pattern interferometry. Speckle shear interferometry is applied for the NDT of tubes, pressure vessels and other components and systems. He is internationally known for the work on Optical Metrology.

Almost all measurement and testing techniques require collimated beams. He has proposed and demonstrated large number of collimation testing techniques based on interferometry, shear interferometry, Talbot interferometry and phase-conjugation. These techniques are self-referencing and provide double the sensitivity.

During his sabbatical at Case Western Reserve University, USA he was given a task of measuring extremely slow flows likely to be encountered in space for crystal growth etc. Grating heterodyne technique was the outcome of his research; the technique could also be used to measure viscosity and surface tension of liquids. This technique was used to monitor the growth of crystals on space shuttle.

His other interest lies in array generation, where in the incident beam is patterned into large number of beams of equal intensity with almost 100% efficiency. The array generators are required in optical computers, optical communication and multiplexing. Several techniques for array generation have been proposed. Current interest lies in using low coherence interferometry for surface profiling. For this to be effective he investigated several phase-shifting techniques including polarization phase-shifting suitable for white light illumination. One of the techniques has been used by Wyko Corporation, USA for their pixelated phase-shifter making their interferometers vibration-insensitive and useful for the study of time-varying as well as transient phenomena.

Sirohi has written over 461 papers of which 311 papers are published in archival journals and proceedings and over 150 are presented in conferences. He has also delivered over 50 invited talks. His research work is widely cited. He has authored/co-authored/edited 14 books; some of them are used as textbooks. He has also written chapters for several books.

Sirohi has developed several optical instruments as a part of collaborative work with other R&D organizations. He provided consultancy to several optics related industries.

He was principal coordinator for 23 and co-coordinator for 3 R&D projects (total 26 projects) and has been instrumental in the development of several instruments, of these two are commercialized, and three were delivered to R&D organizations.

Sirohi has also been an outstanding educator and a mentor, and has supervised/ co-supervised twenty five doctoral, seven MS and large number of master's / bachelor's student's theses.

He was the President of the Optical Society of India and has contributed significantly for the development of optics activities in India. He was also the Chair of SPIE INDIA Chapter, which he established to promote international co-operation in Optics. He served Instrument Society of India as President for three terms.

References

  1. ↑ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Retrieved July 21, 2015.

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

  1. ↑ http://worldranking.blogspot.in/2009/04/indian-top-10-engineering-college-by.html
  2. ↑ http://www.nrdcindia.com/english/index.php/awards/awarded-inventions-awarded-inventions/30-year-2003
  3. ↑ http://isu.iisc.ernet.in/~isoi/Awards.html
  4. ↑ https://alumni.iitd.ac.in/distinguished/alumni/awards
  5. ↑ http://e-ico.org/activities/awards
  6. ↑ http://www.spie.org/x48.xml
  7. ↑ http://www.spie.org/x25064.xml
  8. ↑ http://www.irost.org/kia/.../khwarizmi-international-award-13th-session-2000
  9. ↑ http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=DZ1k7C8AAAAJ&hl=en
  10. ↑ http://www.tezu.ernet.in/dphy/staff/CV_pdf/sirohi.pdf
  11. ↑ http://spie.org/profile/Rajpal.Sirohi-5033
  12. ↑ for-optics/ac1-awards/
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