Director's Page

Dr.M.A.Atmanand, currently the Director of National Institute of Ocean Technology has done pioneering work in the area of deep sea technologies in India. He led a team of Engineers for the design and development of underwater crawler for deep sea operation. He and his team developed the in-situ soil tester which was tested at a depth of 5200 m in the Central Indian Ocean Basin. Dr. Atmanand has taken this
challenge further  to design and implement a work class Remotely Operable Vehicle (ROV) that can be used for  assisting the  mining  operations, gas  hydrates  site  for  validation of  presence of  methane, pipeline inspection etc. This was later tested at a depth of 5289 m water depth. It was under his supervision that India’s first Polar under water mooring observatory and Polar Remotely Operable Vehicle (PROV) was developed and tested. The mooring was established at Kongsfjorden in Arctic region. The Polar ROV was tested  successfully at  the  Priyadarshini lake  at  Antarctica.  He  has  also  guided  various  indigenization programmes for Ocean observation and under water systems. His areas of interest include

·   Development of underwater vehicles with specific reference to their control

·   Development of newer Ocean Observation systems

·   Development of components for deep sea applications

·   Development of test protocols for testing of deep sea devices

·   Blue Economy

·   Project Management

Dr.M.A.Atmanand has published more than 110 papers including International Journals, International conferences, Book chapter, National Conference and others (https://bit.ly/2rUS0GL). He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering. He received IEEE Oceanic Engineering presidential Award in
2016, National Geoscience award 2010 from Ministry of Mines and the International Society for Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE) Ocean Mining  Symposium award in the  year 2009.  He is currently Chair of Intergovernmental  Oceanographic  Commission  Regional  Committee  for   the   Central  Indian   Ocean (IOCINDIO) of UNESCO. He is member of the Executive Planning Group for preparation of UN Decade of Ocean Science for sustainable development (2012-2030) of Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO. He is Chair of IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society Technology committee on Cables and Connectors. He is the founder Chair of IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society in India. He has also served IEEE Madras Section in various capacities. He has widely travelled in capacities like technology transfer, as part of delegations etc. to countries like France, Russia, USA, UK, Germany, Portugal, Korea, Japan, Mauritius, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. He received United Nations fellowship in 1985 – 86