Date of Birth June 22, 1953

(d) Contributions in building a Telecom Community

Dr.Jhunjhunwala has taken a number of initiatives in tying together the Communications and Networking community to enhance education and engineering practice. He works closely with IETE and played a key role in organising its annual Technical convention at Madras in 1989. He was on the editorial board of Journal of IETE and has also edited special issues of Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research (January 1995) and Journal of IETE (upcoming issue on wireless communications). He played a key role in organising a conference on Telecommunications Technology Alternatives and Policy on behalf of Indian National Academy of Engineering in 1996 in Delhi and National Conference on Communications in 1997 at IIT Madras. In March 2000 he envisaged and organised at Chennai an International Conference “Commsphere 2000 : Affordable Telecom and IT Solutions for Developing Countries” sponsored by International Radio Science Union (URSI). This conference brought together a number of scientists and practising engineers from all over the world.

Dr. Jhunjhunwala is a fellow of INAE, INSA. Indian National Academy of Science, and Governor of International Council for Computer Communications.

The most successful initiative in networking that Dr.Jhunjhunwala has contributed to, is the formation of Joint Telematics Group (JTG) of the five IITs and IISc. This group consists of all telecommunications faculty at the five IITs and IISc and has spearheaded spread of education in telecommunications and promotion of industry-academic interaction in the country. Besides organising a short-term course for engineering college teachers and industry personnel every six months on rotation basis at different IITs and IIsc, the group also organises National Conference on Communications (NCC) at different IITs and IISc every year. This is a unique occasion bringing together the best of academia and industry in India. The group also interacts with various government bodies and gives its inputs with regards to telecom policies in the country.

Another significant aspect of the community building effort led by Dr.Jhunjhunwala is the emergence of a group called TeNeT (Telecommunications and Computer Networking Group) at IIT Madras. The group consists of twelve faculty members at IIT Madras belonging to both the Electrical Engineering as well as Computer Science and Engineering department. The faculty in the group works without a hierarchy and is committed to development of education and telecommunications sector in the country. It is rare that such a large group works together in academic institutes today.