Appreciations to V-THINC’s “Meet the Mentors” programme pour in

Prof Thomas Kailath, Stanford University

To you and your team And especially the students who involved so closely in the presentations. I am sure they too were very happy with how everything turned out.
You certainly made a wonderful birthday celebration for Biswa and his family.
Best regards,
TK

Prof Rentsen Enkhbat, National University of Mangolia

Dear Sudha,

Thank you for organizing nice the celebratory meeting. I hope Prof. Biswa Datta must be happy about this event your organized. He is a really nice powerful professor.
I am glad that Dr.Barsbold congratulated Prof. Biswa Datta on behalf mongolian colleagues.

Here are some historical facts about Prof.Biswa Datta:

I know Prof. Biswa Datta since 2005. He was invited to the school of Mathematics and Computer of National University Mongolia for two weeks under Fulbright Senior Specialist Program. He was giving lectures to our teachers and graduate students on Optimal Control. He for the first time introduced us to control theory which we later used a lot in our research works. His lectures were very nice and remarkable. He always giving good applications of control theory after theory. Our colleagues, students and the school greatly benefited from his lectures. He is an expert teacher and professor in all terms. Also, he is indeed a nice person and professor. During his stay in Mongolia he and his wife also were introduced to Mongolian culture, history and food, and so on. With his beloved wife he took a tour to famous Mongolian Gobi desert and he enjoyed very much. After he returned to USA, he continued to collaborate with us. He invited Dr.B.Barsbold, former my Ph.D student, to his department for 3 months. He learned a lot from Prof.Biswa Datta on Control theory.

He was also offering me a visiting professor position at his department. Last year he sent me his survey paper on optimization applications in Machine Learning which was very challenging topic for me who do optimization. I really thank him for introducing me to optimization applications of Machine learning. He did a lot for his Mongolian colleagues and students.

We are grateful to him for accepting our invitation to be a plenary speaker of international conference on Optimization, Simulation and Control to bel held in Mongolia in June, 2022.
Finally, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, I would like to congratulate him on his great achievements in science, teaching career and thank him for his kind collaboration with his Mongolian colleagues and support.
I wish him a good health, happiness and further success in his research !

Dr.Rentsen Enkhbat,
Head of Department of Mathematics
Institute of Mathematics and Digital Technology of
Mongolian Academy of Sciences

Prof Raymond Chan, City University of Hong Kong

Dear Sudha,

Thanks for the nice message and your organization of such a nice event for Biswa. I found that there is a typo in my slide: ”… Prof. Chan has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, at The University of Hong Kong and then at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology before joining his Alma Mater City University of Hong Kong…. It should be: ”… Prof. Chan has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, at The University of Hong Kong and then at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology before joining his Alma Mater The Chinese University of Hong Kong…. It is really not very important. But just in case you will circulate it elsewhere, it will be better if you change that first.

Very best regards,
Raymond Hon-fu Chan, SIAM Fellow, AMS Fellow, Vice-President (Student Affairs)

Prof Rajeeb Dey, NIT Silchar

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Prof Sylvan Elhay, Uniersity of Adelaide

Dear Dean Balagopalan

Thank you again for organizing this event and the memorabilia.

Attached are some photos I have that include Biswa. They were taken in 2007 in Kolkata or at IIT Kharagpur. Two photos have Karabi two are with me and two with our mutual friend and colleague Gene Golub. The photo with four people has Biswa, Karabi, Jula my wife and me.

Kind Regards

Sylvan

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Prof Alex Pothen, Purdue Uniersity

Dear Sudha and esteemed colleagues at Vidya,

Thank you for organizing this tribute to Prof. Datta and for getting all of us together from the various corners of the globe. Events like this demonstrate that scientific research is an international endeavor that brings people together to solve interesting problems.

Thanks for all of your effort in organizing a meeting at this scale, and for involving the students in aspects of the meeting.

Best wishes to all of you at VAST in these challenging times as you keep the flame of scholarship brightly burning.

Alex

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Dr Saji C B, Principal

Dear Teacher,

It was indeed a great effort from you and Team SPICES & V THINC, in organising the summit. Hearty appreciation to all members of the team who made it possible..! Very well done..!!

With Regards,
Principal

Prof Biswa Nath Datta

First of all, I would like to apologize for not being able to write to you sooner. The reason for this delay is that my daughter and her family are now visiting me from California for a few days and my grandchildren have kept me very busy leaving no time to do any other work for me.

I take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks and heartfelt appreciation to Dr. Sudha Balagopalan, and her dedicated team of students and colleagues at Vidya for arranging this International event of such a great magnitude to celebrate this significant and Mile-Sone Day in my life. I had no prior knowledge at all that they would put up such a grandeur event for me. I was told that their work has not been ended yet. They are still actively working in publishing a booklet consisting of biography of each of the speakers and statements on their talks and relevant memorable photos., including a brief life story of my own, narrated so eloquently in his speech by Professor Thomas Kailath of Stanford University, a long-time friend , a well-wisher and a role model.

Of course, all these would have never been possible without the effective and repeatedly proven leadership of Dr. Balagopalan. As we all can imagine that bringing together so many people from so many different parts of the world with so many varied time zones is an incredible job and it was so well-done.
I am overwhelmed and honored. A special thanks to the students of Vidya for their tireless efforts and extreme hard work which made it happen.

I am equally grateful and indebted to all of you who participated in this event and spoke about me. I fully understand that each of you had to take some time off from your busy schedule to join us and some of you had to do so in extreme difficulty caused by timing difference between Indian Standard Time (IST) and your own; although the organizers tried their best to minimize such inconveniences.
In any case, it is my great pleasure to acknowledge that each of you have made some visible marks in my life and contributed to my professional and personal lives , either as a student or a colleague or a coauthor or a personal friend . I am honored and deeply grateful for your love, support and friendship over the years, and consider myself very fortunate.
I sincerely hope that I will be able to see each of you personally soon as soon as the pandemic will be over.

Best regards,

Biswa Nath Datta