Director General
Dr B K Das, Distinguished Scientist has been appointed as Director General (Electronics & Communication System) on 29th April 2022. Prior to this, he was Director, ITR from 2015 to 2020 followed by Director, IRDE. In-between he was Director, DEAL as additional responsibility. He was an integral part of Indian Missile Program for 33 years and worked relentlessly towards Test and Evaluation of various state of the art Missiles and other air borne Weapon Systems. He was instrumental in flight evaluation of all missiles under IGMDP, Agni and its variants, BMD, BrahMos, LRSAM, MRSAM, air to air missiles and all other class of weapon systems. He has led the team towards planning and establishment of new test ranges beyond ITR. He has led the team and created the Range infrastructure which is able to capture all real time data from take off till touch down with adequate redundancy. He has spearheaded the Test Range, which is the Best and Busiest Range in the world today. He has transformed the Test Range Technology for the country to have entire capability of indigenous Test Systems with international capabilities. Indigenous development of Electro Optical Tracking System, Tracking Radar System, Long Range Telemetry System, Phased Array & drone based Telemetry system, Dual Band Telemetry to beat the plasma, Telecommand System and number of multitarget tracking Systems along with various processes and system software creating automated system for mission management has been achieved under his dynamic leadership. In IRDE, under his dynamic leadership a number of state of the art products could be realized like Electro-optic Mast, Light weight Electro Optic Payload for helicopters, Compact Optronic Payload for UAVs and Aircrafts, Advanced Gunner Main Sight and Indigenous Commander Panoramic Sight, Time Gated Raman Spectroscopy, LIDARs, Hyperspectral Systems and many more critical EO systems. During this period, he has created various infrastructure and state of the art Test Facilities for Electro Optical Systems which will reduce the development cycle of such systems. He has led various projects of national importance in both the Labs and defined the vision for both of these laboratories for next 20 years. He has also spearheaded critical communication programmes like Software Defined Radio, CTCS, Datalink etc. As Director General of Electronics and Communication System, he has led significant programmes of national importance like Active Electronically Scanned Array Radar (Uttam) and its variants for fighter aircrafts enabling its production and next gen technologies in fighter radars, land based and air borne Electronic Warfare Systems, Long Range Radars, first antidrone system leading to production in a record time of 24 months, Dornier Midlife upgrade system etc. He has taken some game changing initiatives to have a faster realisation of systems and building the defence ecosystem with Industries, Academia, Startups, MSME and Incubation Centres. He has brought defence challenges across these entities towards realising a techno rich organisation.
He is B.Tech. from Burla Engineering College, Odisha in Electronics and Communication Engg in 1987 and M.Tech in Computer Engineering from IIT, Kharagpur in 1990. He was holder of National Rank 2 in GATE with a score of 99.97 percentile. He did his Ph.D. from IIT, Kharagpur in Super Computers and Image Processing in 1996 completing in a record time of 4 years as an external candidate. Dr. Das is the holder of Best Graduate Gold Medal and Topper of IIT. His Ph.D. thesis was awarded the Best Thesis by USA. He has more than 200 publications in various national and international conferences and journals. He has 10 patents to his credit and could handover 30 ToTs to industries in various critical products of defence applications. He is Senior Member IEEE, Fellow IETE & Member of ISOI. He has received a number of National and International Awards.
Few of them are as under:
- Lakshmipat Singhania-IIM, Lucknow National Leadership Award as the Young Leader of the country in Science and Technology for 2008. (one award for the country)
- National Award by National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC) for the technological development in Image Processing and Electro Optics for 1997-98. (Only recipient among all the DRDO labs & ISRO Centres)
- Young Engineer National Award and Medallion by Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) for contribution in Electro Optics & Image Processing for 1999. (National Topper)
- He holds the honorary Doctorate in Science (D Sc) from BPUT.
- Biju Ratna Award for phenomenal contribution towards state of Odisha in Science and Technology for the year 2023
- Best Innovation Award from Ministry of Civil Aviation for development and deployment of Antidrone System for the year 2022
- ASTE and Dr A S Rao memorial Award for leveraging Defence R&D for Atmanirbhar Bharat for 2023
- Distinguished Alumni Award from VSSUT for phenomenal contribution in Defence Technology
- Four International Awards as the Best Presenter in USA (Twice), Australia and Singapore in international conferences
- Young Scientist Award by Orissa Vigyan Academy for outstanding contribution in Image Processing (Only one award for the State)
- Prestigious Silicon Trophy as the Best Science Laboratory for DRDO for 2016
- Agni Award of Excellence in Self Reliance from DRDO for 2017
- Scientist of The Year Award for the year 2003 for outstanding contribution in the field of Electro Optics
- Award for DRDO path breaking research for Air Defence Systems for the year 2006-07
- Award for DRDO Path breaking research for the year 2007-08
- Best Presentation Award in National Science Day 1996
- Lab Scientist of the Year Award for the outstanding contribution in Image Processing and Electro Optics for the year 2003.
- Technology Group Award as a leader of the team for the VLSI based developmental projects 2004
- Technology Group Award as a leader of the team for development of Electro Optical Tracking System for 2011
- National Technology Day Titanium Medal for best technology development in Test Range for 2004