Dr. NKS Rajan

Adjunct Faculty, IARSc, Bangalore

Rajan N K S is a doctorate in Combustion and Propulsion at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore. He holds his basic Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Mysore. He is currently a faculty at the Dept. of Aerospace Engg, IISc, as Chief Research Scientist.

In his research and academic activities for the past three decades, Dr. Rajan has guided many PhD students and has led teams in carrying out many Government and Industry sponsored projects. His areas of research interest include Combustion; Heat Transfer; Fluid Dynamics (Experimental and Computational); Biomass Gasification; Renewable Energy; Advanced CFD Simulations, Instrumentation; Numerical Modelling (Analysis and Simulation); Analysis of Remote Sensed Data; GIS Application Development; Application Software Development. He has guided twenty students for their PhD degree and at present, four PhD students are working with him for their PhD degree. He has guided several ME and BE students for their dissertation projects.

Some of the contributing projects he has handled related to aerospace activities include Advanced Simulation of Nozzle Test Facility, for VSSC; Ramjet Intake Optimization for Missile Applications, for DRDL; Development of Liquid Fired Pulse Detonation Engine for DRDL; Simulation of Laser Weapon System with Aerodynamically Stabilized Driven Cavity, for LASTEC; Flow Simulation of Complete Aircraft for Civil Aviation, for Bombardier; Aerodynamic Performance Evaluation of an Air-to-Air Missile, for DRDL, Design of High Velocity Burners for Heat Treatment of Horton Spheres as Pressurized Storage Vessels for Industrial Application and few other of the kind.

Contributions he has made in the areas of Renewable Energy and Waste-To-Wealth include development of new technologies for Biomass Gasification for Power Generation; Scrubbing of H2S from Biogases from Industrial Liquid Wastes; Generation of High-Quality Silica from Rice Husk Ash. These contributions are well accepted industrial applications. He has about 20 National and International Patents covering these technologies and these patents have been licensed for entrepreneurs to commercialize them for public utilization. He has led a project on digitization and generation of an electronic Biomass Resource Atlas of India that embedded processing of remote sensing data derived from satellite imagery, ground truth correlations, modelling and dynamic query-based data interpretations. He has received four National Awards – FICCI (2004), CII (2007), Nina Saxena-IITKG (2011), MNRE (2016), in recognition of the excellence in technological break-throughs of national relevance. He has published about 80 research papers in National and International Journals and have attended technical papers in 40 National and International Conferences. He has given invited talks and chaired sessions in many conferences.

He has worked in many committees of high-profile activities of the Institute (IISc), that include Computerization of Administration, Establishing of Purchase Rate Contracts for Computers and Peripherals, Staff Evaluations, Selection Committees, Project Reviews and many of the kind. He has been expert member on Board of Studies of four Autonomous Engineering Collages. He is serving as management trustee in four charitable organizations working towards enhancements in education, social causes and human values.