Rajat Moona appointed as the director of IIT Gandhinagar

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar welcomes their new director on 3 October 2022. Amit Prashant, the officiating director of the institute handed the responsibility over to Rajat Moona. The brief investiture ceremony was followed by an interactive session between Moona and the IIT Gandhinagar community.

Moona graduated from IIT Kanpur with a BTech in electrical engineering and a PhD in computer science from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. His research subjects range from embedded computing, computer security, VLSI design and operating systems.

Before becoming the director of IIT Gandhinagar, Moona was the director at IIT Bhilai and the director general of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). He is also a professor at the Computer Science and Engineering department at IIT Kanpur ever since 1991. Moon, with his students has been an author to several research papers, books and patents.

Accolades and Achievements

Rajat Moona has also been an important in defining some of the most important application in India. Application such as smart card driving license, vehicle registration, e-passport, electronic toll collection, mobility card among many others. He is also an active member of the technical committee of the Election Commission of Indian for the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). He has been instrumental in defining the EVMs and VVPAT along with the national voter service portal and national electoral search for voters.

With being such an instrumental part of such technologies and applications, Moon has been the recipient of various awards and recognitions Indo-US Science and Technology Fellowship National award of Election Commission of India 2016 for the best electoral practices, and a Special Award for IT Initiatives by the Election Commission of India in 2022 among others.

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Speaking to the Institute community upon joining IITGN, Rajat Moona said, “I am thankful to all of you for such a rousing welcome. Working on various projects so far, whether leading some of the key technological projects or driving academic/administrative activities, my philosophy has been not to shy away from making errors, because it is only natural for humans to make an error. But, I also strongly believe that learning is also a natural human quality and if you do not learn from your past experiences, it is an error. Don’t ever let the fear of making mistakes stop you. Our motivation should be to keep doing things that we can, and ultimately it will lead us to success. I have been fortunate to work with teams who have helped make various path- breaking projects a success, and I am sure that together we will grow and take IIT Gandhinagar to greater heights."