26.Prof. Preeti Shankar ( 1947 -2011)

 


 Preeti Shankar was an accomplished teacher, researcher and educational expert with a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1972 from Maryland, USA. She received a special scholarship from the Association of American Universities. She was awarded the Distinguished Visiting Speaker of the IEEE  and the Jaya-Jayant Award for Best Teacher from the Indian Institute of Science. Preeti Shankar had special expertise in the design of compilers and program coding which is an essential component of computers.

 

Preeti was born in September 1947 in Pune. Born in Goa, her  father Inocencio Monteiro was a Brigadier in the Indian Army. Mother was a teacher of French, Mathematics and Science. In 1958, Preeti's parents shifted from Pune to Jammu for work. Monteiro was posted at Surangode in India-Pakistan border. Preeti missed school for six months and was taught by her mother at home. A few years later, Preeti returned to Pune. There she attended Ferguson College. After that she joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and in 1968 became the first woman to pass out B.Tech from IIT Delhi as an electrical engineer. After that, she applied for higher education at the University of Maryland (College Park) in the United States. There she joined for Ph.D. In 1972, she graduated from there. A year after graduation, she returned to India. Was appointed as Assistant Professor at Centre for Automation, Indian Institute of Science. In 1979, Preeti took the lead in developing the BCH code at Computer. This code was useful for explaining abstract fields and circles. In 2002, Preeti was appointed by Editor of CRC Press She was also appointed to the board of the Indian technological Magazine Resonance.

 

Preeti's brother Vivek Monteiro was an expert in Physics. Sister Anjali was a filmmaker and professor of media studies and another sister Nandita D'Souza was a paediatrician. In 1974, Preeti married PN Shankar, a scientist at the National Aeronautical Laboratory, Bangalore, and the couple had a son named Nachiket in 1976 and a daughter named Mrudala in 1983.

 

In 2007, Preeti Shankar won the Jaya-Jayanth Award for Best Teacher. Between 2006 and 2009, she was selected as a Distinguished Visiting Speaker of the world's largest professional society, the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE). She passed away in October 2011.

The Mathematical Science Library named after Preeti operates in the UMED building of the Indian Institute of Science.

 

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