R.iyengar
Prof. Rangachar Narayana Iyengar

Prof. Rangachar Narayana Iyengar, a renowned civil engineer and currently Editor of Sadana, an official journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, and Director, Centre for Disaster Mitigation at Jain University, both in Bengaluru, obtained his M.Sc. (Engineering) in 1966 and Ph.D. in 1970 from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

Prof. R.N. Iyengar joined IISc as a faculty member in 1969 and became a professor in 1986. Until his retirement, he was also with the Karnataka State Industrial Investment and Development Corporation Ltd. He was with IISc for about four decades. From 1994 to 2000, Prof. Iyengar took charge as director of Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, Uttarakhand.

After his retirement from IISc, Prof. Iyengar has been associated with the Jain University and is instrumental in setting up Underwriters Laboratories-Jain Fire Laboratory, India (UL-JFL), which he heads now. The UL-JFL is a state-of-the-art engineering laboratory devoted to fire safety education and research that will promote industry academia interaction, contributing to mitigation of fire hazard in the Indian habitat.

His fields of expertise have encompassed the areas of structural dynamics, random vibrations, earthquake engineering, disaster mitigation, railway track dynamics and rainfall modelling.

Besides his valued contributions as a structural engineer, Prof. Iyengar has also contributed to the field of History of Science, especially to pre-Siddantic Indian astronomy. He is a fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences, India. He was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (Senior 1978-80, 1992 & 1997).

Prof. Iyengar is the recipient of the Sir M. Visvesvaraya award (Government of Karnataka, 1996) for senior scientists for lifetime contributions to science and technology. He has held visiting positions at Purdue University, Brooklyn Polytechnic, New York, and Distinguished Schimdt Visiting Chair, Florida, Atlantic University (1995). He has also led field investigations after the Khilari (1993), Chamoli (1999) and Kutch (2001) earthquakes. He has been a consultant to various industries and research and development organisations including DRDO, RDSO, BHEL and Government of Kerala.


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