Awards Received


  • Received the Life time achievement award from IEEE Madras for 2021

  • Received the Dr. D. Srinivasan Endowment Award for the year 2021, instituted by the Ocean Society of India (OSI), for outstanding contributions in the areas of Ocean Engineering and Technology

  • Received the International Society for Ocean and Polar Engineers award in 2020.

  • Received the prestigious MoES National Award of Excellence in Ocean Technology, in view of pioneering work done in the area of deep-sea technologies in 2020.

  • Received the team National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) National Societal Innovation Award in 2018, for “Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle for Polar and Shallow Water Research” in 2019

  • Received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Oceanic Engineering Society, Presidential Award in 2016

  • Received the team National Geoscience Award in 2010 from the Ministry of Mines for the work on Remotely Operable Vehicle under the category of Oil and Natural Gas Exploration.

  • Received the International Society for Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE) Ocean Mining Symposium award in 2009.


Major Achievements


  • Setting up of an impulse turbine based wave energy converter as part of wave energy project at Vizhinjam, Kerala. Data collection and analysis of the performance of flipping and fixed guide vane impulse turbine used for energy conversion.

  • Involved with the 1 MW floating Ocean Thermal Energy conversion project. Data analysis of various intermediate tests like open cycle ammonia test etc.

  • Initiated activities related to deep sea mining by participating in the design and development of a crawler for pumping of sand slurry from a depth of 500m after equipping the ORV SagarKanya with a Dynamic Positioning (DP) and Launching and Retrieval system (LARS).

  • Technology transfer to Industry was done for Remotely Operable Vehicles, wave powered data buoy, Autonomous underwater profiling drifter, Robo coastal observer, Drifter based on INSAT communication, Expandable CTD profiler etc

  • The mining machine was augmented with Collector and Crusher and tested at 500 m depth by laying artificial nodules on the ocean floor. A Remotely Operated Subsea Artificial Nodule Laying System was developed for creating a small mine site similar to that of the one in Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB). Artificial nodules were prepared with properties (density, hardness and aggregate impact test value) close to that of manganese nodules.

  • To meet the grand challenges of designing the underwater mining system at a depth of 6000m, it was required to develop an underwater in-situ soil property measuring system andDesign, implement and test the system in the deep sea. The above was successfully designed, fabricated and tested in the Central Indian Ocean basin at a depth of 5462m.

  • India’s first Polar Remotely Operable Vehicle (PROV) was developed and tested. The Polar ROV was tested successfully at the Priyadarshinilake at Antarctica. Underwater videos were taken for the first time in the country with this vehicle.

  • Played a major role in design and implementation of a work class Remotely Operable Vehicle (ROV) – again first for the country – that can be used for assisting the mining operations, gas hydrates site for validation of presence of methane, pipeline inspection etc.

  • Setting up of low temperature thermal desalination plants in the islands of Agatti, Minicoy and Kalpeni in the Lakshadweep group of islands in Arabian Sea successfully.

  • Brought to rail the Ocean observation buoy system with 12 buoys always available in the Indian seas to collect atmospheric and sub surface data, which gets disseminated to Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), thereby to Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). One of the reasons for improvement in Cyclone prediction in the country is due to this data being available to IMD.

  • Arctic mooring program was initiated and continued for establishing link between Arctic and Indian monsoon. Later ambient noise measurement also was added to the mooring which detects ice cracking noise which is a useful data for climate change studies.

  • Assessed the sea cage farming potential of the country and carried out a geospatial analysis of Indian seas to identify the prospective areas for marine finfish farming. The analysis revealed the availability of vast technically suitable areas between 5 and 100 m depth zone which is regarded as cost effective mariculture zone.

  • Biodiesel was produced by base-catalysed transesterification reaction from the oil extracted form Chlorella vulgaris. Test run of biodiesel (B-10) powered vehicle from Nellore to Chennai was successfully completed.

  • Received United Nations fellowship in 1985-86