At the age of 77, retired engineer gets PhD from IIT-Delhi

The air filled with enthusiasm when 77-year-old Sushil Kumar Dhawan was awarded with his PhD degree. The occasion was the 50th annual convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi (IIT-D) on Saturday. Dhawan, a visiting professor at IIT-D’s department of civil engineering, is one of the eldest persons to get a PhD from the institute in the recent past. A former chief engineer at the central public works department (CPWD), Dhawan wrote his thesis on “Expected remaining life of existing reinforced concrete building structures”. “After retiring from CPWD in 2003, it took me 10 years to think what to do next. I did not want to sit at home. I wanted to enhance my knowledge. I then joined PhD at IIT-D in 2013. And, now finally I have earned the prefix ‘doctor’ for my name. It’s like a dream comes true,” he said. During his tenure at CPWD, he worked on several important construction projects, including Delhi Police Headquarters at ITO, Maulana Azad Medical College and Ministry of Environment building, he said. Dhawan was among the 2,042 students who were awarded degrees during the convocation on Saturday, where ISRO chairperson K Sivan was the chief guest. Born in 1942 in a small village of the Punjab province in Pakistan, Dhawan’s family migrated to India during Partition. “I had to take the job at very early age due to financial problems. After schooling, I could not join a good college and that’s why I did vocational diploma course from Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) Pusa in Delhi. In 1961, I started working as draughtsman with CPWD. But the dream of studying from a better college was still unfulfilled,” he said. Dhawan wanted to enhance his knowledge and did multiple graduate and postgraduate degrees during his journey to become a PhD scholar. “I did not give up. I wanted to learn more and that’s why started preparing for Associate Member of The Institution of Engineers (AMIE) exam along with my work. I cleared the exam and became graduate junior engineer in 1965. I cleared the Indian Engineering Services of Union Public Service Commission exam in 1971 to become Class 1 officer,” he said. He did Masters in Management of Urban Development from Birmingham University (United Kingdom) with the help of a Commonwealth scholarship in 1987-88. IIT-D signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with ISRO on Saturday for the creation of a Space Technology Centre at its campus. Speaking on the occasion, IIT-D Director V Ramgopal Rao said, “IIT Delhi and ISRO have signed an MoU for strengthening research collaborations between the two organisations. With this collaboration, IIT Delhi would like to be part of some of the key initiatives by the ISRO and together will only put our nation ahead of others in space technologies.” Source: Hindustan Times