September 2020 OES Beacon

Awards for OES members

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Dr. M. A. Atmanand received the National Award of excellence in Ocean Technology of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India

In recognition to the outstanding contributions in the field of Ocean Technology, Dr. M.A. Atmanand, OES AdCom. member, received the National Award of excellence in Ocean Technology of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) Government of India for the year 2020.  Congratulations!

Details are:  https://www.moes.gov.in/awards.

Dr.M.A.Atmanand, is the Director of the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai. He has done pioneering work in the area of deep sea technologies in India. He led a team of Engineers for the design and development of an underwater crawler for deep sea operation. He and his team developed the in-situ soil tester, which was tested at a depth of 5,200 m in the Central Indian Ocean Basin for the first time in the country. Dr. Atmanand has taken this challenge further to design and implement a work class Remotely Operable Vehicle (ROV) that can be used for assisting in mining operations, gas hydrates site for validation of presence of methane, pipeline inspection, etc. This was later tested at a depth of 5,289 m. It was under his supervision that India’s first Polar underwater mooring observatory and the Polar Remotely Operable Vehicle (PROV) was developed and tested. The mooring was established at Kongsfjorden in the Arctic region. The Polar ROV was tested successfully at the Priyadarshini lake at Antarctica and used for observing the corals in Andamans.

Many societal projects were taken up under his guidance, like shore protection at Kadalur Periakuppam in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, setting up of desalination plants at the Lakshadweep islands, ocean energy, cage culturing, etc., at various locations. He spearheaded the technology transfer of various systems developed at NIOT to public and private sector industries successfully. He has steered various indigenization programmes for Ocean observation and underwater systems.

He has contributed in the area of Ocean technology internationally. He is elected as the Chair of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Regional Committee for the Central Indian Ocean (IOCINDIO) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), UNESCO. He is also a member of the Executive Planning Group for the preparation of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for sustainable development (2012-2030) of the IOC, UNESCO. He is the founder chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Oceanic Engineering Society (OES) in India and is the Co-chair of the MTS/IEEE OCEANS conference to be held in February 2022 at Chennai, India. His contributions has earned him awards like the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) National Societal Innovation Award – 2018, for “Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle for Polar and Shallow Water Research”; Presidential Award in 2016 of the IEEE OES; the National Geoscience Award 2010 from the Ministry of Mines for the work on Remotely Operable Vehicle under the category of Oil and Natural Gas Exploration, etc., to name a few.

Dr.M.A.Atmanand has published more than 144 papers in International Journals, International conferences, Book chapter, National Conference and others. He has 7 patents to his credit. He has delivered more than 300 invited lectures in conferences.