Twin Honour For Director Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR)

Dr. Baldev Raj, Distinguished Scientist and Director of Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam has been awarded the prestigious "Jaeger Lecture Award" by the International Institute of Welding (IIW) and International Standards Organization (ISO). IIW is a premier body consisting of experts from over 30 countries. It formulates welding directions and policies for advancement of welding science and technology.

Dr. Baldev Raj is the first Indian to receive this coveted Award in recognition of his research and significant contributions to the S&T of welding and 'hard facing'. He developed and implemented successfully the 'in-situ' repair welding of cracked shrouds and blades of steam turbines, and also the procedure for hard facing nuclear components using Nickel-based hard facing alloys at nuclear power plants which led to substantial reduction in cost and plant down-time. He is responsible for the development of indigenous electrodes for the 500 MW (e) Fast Breeder Reactor, which led to the availability of high quality welding electrodes in the Indian Market.

The generalized Bayesian Neural Network model developed by him, for estimating the delta-ferrite content in stainless steel welds from their chemical composition, has an accuracy of prediction better than that by all other internationally available estimation methods at present. He has also successfully developed online monitoring techniques through NDE sensors with provision for process control through fuzzy logic/neural network based feedback approaches which are employed for quality assessment of welds in nuclear fuel sub-assemblies.

Dr. Baldev Raj has also been honoured with the "Lifetime Achievement Award for the year 2004" by the Indian Welding Society for his contributions to the field of Welding S&T.

He has to his credit more 652 publications in leading national and international journals, referred books, manuscripts of status articles, honour, plenary, key note and invited lectures, 27 books (co-author of 5 books, 4 monographs and co-editor or 18 books and special journal volumes). He has five Indian Standards and 16 patents to his credit. He has contributed 9 articles in Encyclopedia and a large number of reviews. He has been invited to more than 30 countries for plenary and keynote talks in leading conferences and forums. He has been invited to be a Subject Editor in the area of Materials Testing: Mechanical and Non destructive Encyclopedia of Materials Science & Technology, published by Elsevier Science Publications, Oxford, UK. He is on the editorial boards of national and international journals and reviewer of proposals and publications from prestigious bodies in India and abroad. Earlier he received the Life Time Achievement Award of Indian Society for Nondestructive Society from Dr. G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO.

Source : Ministry of Science & Technology
Date : April 12, 2005