International Virtual Conference on Frontiers in Manufacturing Technology (FMT-2020) was inaugurated on 13th October 2020 by Dr. B. B. Kale, Director General, C-MET, Pune in the presence of Mr. Rajendrakumar Sharma, Chairman & MD, Spel Technologies and Organizing Secretary, FMT-2020; Prof. P. Pattojoshi, Dean, SAS, KIIT-DU; Prof. T. Venugopal, Co-convenor, FMT-2020; and Dr. S. K. S. Parashar, Convener. The meet is being organized by the Department of Physics, School of Applied Sciences, KIIT Deemed to be University from 13th – 14th October 2020.
The first technical session was chaired by Prof. P. Pattojoshi. Plenary lectures were delivered by Dr. Sandip Chatterjee, Director, Electronic & Components Development Division, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Govt. of India; Dr. B. B. Kale; Mr. Rajendrakumar Sharma and Prof. Suddhasatwa Basu, Director, CSIR-IMMT. Mr. Sharma focused on the need and ways to make India self-reliant, while Prof. Basu discussed about various ways by which alumina, silica and rare earth oxides can be extracted from fly ash. The deliberations were preceded by a poster session.
Dr. Anil Chaubey of IMMT chaired the second session of the day. Prof. J. Eckert, Director, ESI, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria; Dr. P. K. Gokuldoss, Head of the Additive Manufacturing Lab, Dept. of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Tallinn, Estonia; and Dr. Subrat Kar, General Manager, R&D, NALCO delivered the talks.
Invited lectures were delivered by Dr. R. V. S. Prasad, R&D Associate (Metal Additive Manufacturing), IISc, Bengaluru; Mr. Sukamal Naskar, Regional Product Manager, ESAB, Singapore; and Dr. M. Srinivas, Naval Science & Technological Laboratory, Visakhapatnam in the third technical session, which was chaired by Dr. T. Venugopal, MD, Welding Alloys, Malaysia.
The fourth and last session of the day was chaired by Dr. Bhavya Bhushan, Dept. of Physics, KIIT-DU. Invited talks were delivered by Dr. K. Krishna, Senior Manager, Materials Engineering Department, Ashok Leyland; and Dr. T. Venugopal. The plenary talk was delivered by Dr. M. K. Datta, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, who talked about Li-ion and Li metal batteries.
All sessions were anchored by Dr. Bhavya Bhushan and coordinated by Bhavesh K. Dadhich, CSIR-SRF, KIIT-DU. Live streaming of the entire event was done on YouTube that was viewed by more than 1200 people. Over 600 researchers and students from different parts of the world registered for FMT 2020. The organizing team expressed their gratitude to Prof. Achyuta Samanta, Founder, KIIT & KISS; Prof. Hrushikesha Mohanty, VC, KIIT-DU; Prof. Sasmita Samanta, Pro VC, KIIT-DU; Prof. Jnyana Ranjan Mohanty, Registrar; and Prof. P. Pattojoshi, Dean, SAS for their guidance and encouragement.