Director, Educational Multimedia Research Centre.

Prof. Dr. S. Gowri
Director
Educational Multimedia Research Centre
Anna University
Chennai – 600 025

Dr. S. Gowri @ Gowri Vallabha Raja Duraisingam is the Director of EMMRC, Anna University Chennai. He is the recipient of the National award for Outstanding Academic 2011 honoured by the Indian Society for Technical Education, New Delhi.

He has previously been the First Registrar of Anna University of Technology Chennai and Chairman, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of Anna University of Technology Chennai.

Hailing from Maravarmagalam in Sivagangai District of Tamilnadu, he is the First Generation Graduate and his education in Tamil Medium continued upto SSLC (XI Std). He received B.E. (Mechanical Engineering) from Thiyagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai and he earned M.Tech. (Production Engineering) and Ph.D (Precision Machining) in IIT Madras. His project work done in M.Tech. was awarded as the best Project  in IIT Madras.

After two years of Industrial experience in Enfield India Limited, he worked as Lecturer and Asst. Professor in Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Surathkal, Karnataka. He joined as Professor in Anna University Chennai in 2000 and was sharing responsibilities, in addition to teaching and research, as Project Head in Anna University – Federal Republic of Germany (AU-FRG) Institute for CAD / CAM. During his tenure at AU-FRG ICC, the new PG course on Product Design and Development was introduced. He chaired as the First Head of the Department of Manufacturing Engineering (DOME)in 2002 and was efficiently performing in the post for two terms until 2008.

Later he took position as Chairman, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of Anna University, Chennai. He was instrumental in syllabus revision, academic research works and deciding equivalence of degrees of foreign universities on par with that of Anna University in the fields of Mechanical, Manufacturing, Production, Industrial, Aeronautical, Automobile, Printing, Mining, Space Vehicle Launching and Marine Engineering for the Constituent, Affiliated and University Colleges.

He has been awarded with fellowships for research work done in Surface Engineering by NSF, USA in 1992 and by NSTB, Singapore in 1997 – 1999. He, during the period, took up applied and academic research works as Visiting Research Fellow in Gintic Institute of Manufacturing Technology, an autonomous research centre in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was a Visiting Professor, under DAAD fellowship, in the Technical University, Weingarten, Stuttgart, Germany and taught ‘Nanotechnology’ to the M.Engg. students from 21 different countries in 2002. In addition, he got International Travel fellowships from UGC, AICTE, CSIR and DST. He presented research papers and participated in International Conferences held in Germany, UK, USA, The Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Malaysia, Brunei and Australia from 1991 to 2009. He has guided 10 Ph.D Scholars, 3 MS Scholars and more than 35 M.Tech students and many B.E. students for their Project Works. He is currently guiding 5 Ph.D scholars in the field of Precision and Micro Machining, Medical imagining etc. Towards social welfare, he has organized about 24 short-term training programmes for ITI and diploma holders. With the support of TEQUIP grants, he organized training programme in terms of Basic Computer skill development, YOGA and Personality Development for selected groups of employees of Anna University and SC / ST students of DOME.

His major research work includes biomedical instrumentations, development for dental and orthopedic applications. He has offered Technical consultations to MNCs such as SONY of Japan, Pratt and Whitney of USA, GE of Singapore, I-Gel of Australia, and also to Lucas-TVS, Carborundum Universal Ltd., TI Cycles, Railways Coach factory and Sarang Auto Company in and around Chennai.

He has chaired the team of experts for AICTE, UGC and TNSCST. In addition, he has been Chairman, Co-Chairman and advisor for Conferences and Seminar held in India and abroad. He was a member of the technical expert committee selected by DST to participate in the Indo-UK Manufacturing Engineering Colloquium held in Jan.2012. He has successfully completed projects worth of Rs.6.67 cores from DAAD of Germany, European Union, AICTE, DST, UGC and Flextronics, USA to DOME, Anna University, Chennai. He headed the international joint project on “Virtual laboratories on Mechatronics” – a real time web based project with partners from Julius Maxmillan University, Wurzburg, Germany and University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain in 2005. He is holding an international patent for the work done in Micro Machining, during his tenure in Singapore. 

His areas of interest are Technical Education System Development, Precision Machining, Rapid prototyping, FEA, Biomedical Engineering, Medical Image analysis and Shape Memory Alloys.

Being Tamil as his mother tongue, he is proficient in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam languages. His hobbies are writing poems, review articles and delivering motivational talks to students. He is the life member of ISTE, AMM and SME of USA. His ambition is to make EMMRC of  Anna University Chennai to excel to greater heights.

He has been blessed with a son.