Dr. K.Muraleedharan

Dr. Kuttanellore Muraleedharan earned his B. Tech and Ph. D from Banaras Hindu University-Institute of Technology (BHU-IT), Varanasi. His Ph. D dissertation was on ‘Phase Equilibria and Phase Transformations in Ti3Al-Nb Alloys’ under the supervision of Dr. D. Banerjee (DMRL) and Professor S. Lele (BHU). He joined Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL), Hyderabad as a Scientist in the year 1984 after a short tenure as Graduate Engineer Trainee at the Mishra Dhatu Nigam (MIDHANI), Hyderabad. Dr. Muraleedharan worked as a Research Associate at the Carnage Melon University, Pittsburgh, USA during 1995-1997. He headed the Electron Microscopy Division at DMRL during 1989-2010 and was the project leader of the project ‘Science and Design of Materials at Atomic Scale’ during 1999-2004. It was under his able leadership that the electron microscopy facility at DMRL developed to international standards. Later, he became the leader of a project for the ‘Development of Specialty Steels for Naval Applications’. The team led by him developed various steel products for use in the Warship construction for Indian Navy. Thanks to their efforts, Indian Navy need not import any steel for Warship construction. The range of products indigenised are wide plates, bulb-bars, weld consumables, forgings castings etc. in the two Steels christened DMR-249A and DMR-249B having YS at 390MPa and 580MPa, respectively. The country’s first Aircraft Carrier, INS Vikrant II, commissioned recently was built by these steels.

Dr. Muraleedharan was also the HRD Coordinator of DMRL during 2005-06 and subsequently headed the Materials Management Division (2010). He has also been the member of DRDO Think tank during 2003-2005. He rose to the level of Director of Materials, DRDO, New Delhi in 2011 where he coordinated the NBC Defence and the Nano Science and Technology activities as well as the activities of Materials Cluster laboratories. He was the Director Technical (Materials), Technical Core Group at DRDO HQ (2013-15) and provided advice and insights into materials related activities of DRDO before joining CSIR-CGCRI as its 8th Director. He has received many awards and recognitions. Some of the recent ones are: Two DRDO Agni Award in 2005 for the ‘Development of Complete Ore-Product Cycle for Titanium’ and again in 2007 for the ‘Development of Specialty Nava Steels’; Eminent Engineering Personality by the Institution of Engineers in 2012; the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Dept of Metallurgical Engineering, BHU, Varanasi in 2013.

Research interests of Dr. Muraleedharan include the Science and Design of Advanced Materials, and Multi-scale Microstructural Characterization using techniques such as Transmission Electron Microscopy and 3D Atom Probe Field Ion Microscopy, as applied to the study of electronic materials and solid-state phase transformations. His research at DMRL and CMU concentrated on the Process-Structure-Property relationships in a variety of materials systems such as alloys based on Ti and its intermetallics Ti3Al and TiAl; specialty steels; Ni base superalloys; high energy rare-earth permanent magnets; and ceramic matrix composites. Dr. Muraleedharan is a member of many professional bodies and has been the Vice President (2011-2013) and President (2013-2015) of the Electron Microscopy Society of India.