Kirti Chandra Sahu
Hyderabad: When a company told IIT Hyderabad professor Kirti Chandra Sahu that the Raindrops Research Facility he had spent years designing was impossible to build, he was devastated. For nearly a week, his PhD students watched their usually interactive mentor retreat into his office and return home quietly. Then they walked in and asked what was wrong.
Sahu began working on the project in 2013 to study raindrop size distribution under atmospheric conditions, an important input for weather radar and rainfall estimation. The facility was eventually established in 2023, after a decade of work.
I thought we needed a facility to estimate the damage so we could improve and prepare our disaster management systems,” he told TOI. That philosophy came alive when the proposed Raindrops Research Facility seemed impossible to build. After a company spent nearly a year working on the design before declaring it impossible to build, his students stepped in. The research could help improve rainfall prediction and has applications in water management, disaster mitigation and the study of extreme weather events such as cloudbursts. Sahu’s own journey began in a village in Odisha, where education initially meant getting a job and supporting his family. After completing mechanical engineering, he turned down campus jobs and chose to pursue research, completing his master’s at JNCASR in Bengaluru before going on to do his PhD and postdoctoral work. His interest in raindrops grew after floods and extreme weather events in Odisha and elsewhere made him wonder whether his background in fluid mechanics could help. “With encouragement from my mentor, Prof R Narasimha, I took up the challenge. You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Hyderabad | Silver Rate in Hyderabad | Bank Holidays in Hyderabad | Public Holidays in Hyderabad | Hyderabad AQI | Weather in Hyderabad | Petrol Price in Hyderabad | Diesel Price in Hyderabad | CNG Price in Hyderabad | LPG Price in Hyderabad