Obituary

 Prof. Satish Chandra Koria

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

 

Professor Satish Chandra Koria was born on April 6, 1946 in Pratapgarh, Rajasthan. He graduated with B. Tech. and M. Tech. degrees in Metallurgical Engineering, in 1967 and 1969 respectively, from Banaras Hindu University. Subsequently, he joined as a faculty member in the Department of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Roorkee and served there from 1969 to 1974 before moving to Germany to pursue PhD in Metallurgical Engineering from Technical University, Aachen. After finishing PhD in 1981, Prof. Koria worked as a post-doctoral fellow in Technical University, Aachen from 1981-1984. Prof. Koria joined the then Department of Metallurgical Engineering, IIT Kanpur as a faculty member in 1984 and superannuated from IIT Kanpur in 2011. He continued to teach in IIT Indore until 2015.

Prof. Koria’s research expertise was in steelmaking, high-temperature furnaces, and energy and the environment. He did extensive work in heat, mass and momentum transfer in metallurgical process streams and completed many sponsored projects at IIT Kanpur. Prof. Koria received Wilhelm Borcher’s medal of Technical University, Aachen for outstanding PhD thesis (1981) and an award by Indian Society for Technical Education (2000) for the high-quality research work done by teachers of engineering colleges.

Prof. Koria also served the institute in many administrative roles. He was the Head of the Student Placement Committee (1999-2000), Head of the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering from 2000-2002, and was the Head of the Center for Development of Technical Education from 2003-2005. He was a member of the expert group for the assessment of induction furnace capacity, formed by the Ministry of Steel, Government of India. Prof. Koria was also a council member of the Indian Institute of Metals.

Prof. Koria had organized many short-term courses and conferences on steelmaking and refractories and furnaces. He was the convenor of the Annual Technical Meeting of the Indian Institute of Metals, held at IIT Kanpur in 1999. Prof. Koria developed several NPTEL courses, which include Fuels, Refractory and Furnaces, Materials and Energy Balance in Metallurgical Processes and Steel Making. These courses are highly popular among students not only across India but also in abroad.

Prof. Koria was an honest, easily approachable and kind-hearted human being and was always helpful to people, be it colleagues or staff, or anyone else.

Prof. Koria breathed his last on 9th May 2021 and he is survived by two daughters and a son, and all of them are well settled. We, his colleagues and friends, mourn his departure and pray for the ultimate peace of his departed soul. 

 

Om Shanti!