Understanding these requirements and responding to them has been the hallmark of Prof.V. Prithiviraj's long career in engineering education.

Inspired by the legendary Arthur C. Clarke, and taught and mentored by academic and industry greats such as G.S. Sanyal, B.N.Das, Rama Pisharoty, and Pramod Kale, Prof. Prithiviraj's work in ECE has always been in tune with the research and laboratory methodology of the E&ECE Dept of IIT-Kharagpur.

Groomed at leading institutions like the College of Engineering, Guindy; IIT-Madras, SAC/PRL under Gujarat University and IIT-Kharagpur, his career from being a student engineering enthusiast to an academic head, has followed a distinctive trend: from satellite communications to RF and microwave, broadband and wireless communication . His allied research and industrial interests include SDR & Cognitive radio, Telemedicine,chaotic cryptography VLSI in wireless commn and e-Governance,OFDM, Diversity Analysis in MIMO and Internet of Thing.

He has guided 4Ph.D Scholars, 44 M.Tech Post Graduates and around 125 B.E/B.Tech Students in the area of Electronics and Communication Engineering(ECE).

He has about 106research papers published both nationally (46) and internationally (60), and has travelled to several conferences in India and abroad. His 30 years of academic experience, and 15 years of R&D trainingat the IITs enabled him to ensure that students received not only strong academic and practical training, but also excellent industrial exposure and quality placements.

In his various capacities as Professor, Dean and Principal, Prof.V.Prithiviraj ensured that the institutes he worked for - Pondicherry Engineering College, Pondicherry University, IIT-Madras, IIT-Kharagpur, Manipal Institute of Technology, and the Directorate of Information Technology - received prestigious projects and grants, industry-institute interactions, and training and internships and the conduct of quality panel discussions in the discipline of Commn Engg to benefit the students to the maximum.

Placements & Grants:

He has always ensured an average of 65-75 percent placements at PEC & PU; and on some occasions even ensured 85-95 percent placements, with several students landing dream jobs and domain-rich positions. Placements were ensured across a cross-section of companies, from generic placements at companies like TCS to core engineering & domain-rich companies like Broadcom, CTS, SAP, Oracle & Sapient, to GoI undertakings like ONGC, VSNL, BEL, BHEL, EIL & NIC.

Being a natural facilitator, Prof. Prithviraj has ensured several industry partnerships: he brought in a project worth Rs.10 crores under TEQUIP from the Ministry of HRD for infrastructure development, and Rs.16.75 lakhs worth projects from the DIT, both for Faculty and students of PEC.

MoUs and industry networks:

In addition, he has helped create several national and international MoUs. Some of them are (i) with the international IEEE, headquartered at Piscataway, U.S., thanks to which branch library cell was created at PEC, ensuring world standards in publishing, and transactions and magazine collaborations at 1/10th the original cost. (ii) an MoU with BSNL for video conferences and NMEICT for networking schemes and lease-line offerings at 1/3rd the cost.

Significant academic MoUs include: with Ambedkar Institute of Technology, Port Blair; support for the National Institute of Technology, Karaikal at Puducherry. He was singularly responsible in creating the exchange programme for B.Tech PEC students from 4 Engg disciplines in the field of Systems Engineering with University of Arkansas, Little Rock U.S.A.

Management:

A manager to the core - Prithiviraj has always headed and worked to create labs, cells, and collaborations to forward engineering education. He has ensured that PEC is a domain member of CII; enabled several endowment lectures with private and nationalized banks; co-ordinated DIT/MCIT project for Information Security Education; and successfully completed his tenure as convenor of CENTAC, and also convened centralized admissions for both UG and PG professional courses across multiple centres in the UT of Puducherry.

A natural multi-tasker, a manager who believes in decentralization, and having a shrewd eye for spotting and mentoring talent has enabled him create such multifarious opportunities for students and researchers across institutions.

He has received several awards, academic and industrial; chaired prestigious academic positions, delivered keynote lectures and owns a patent as well. As a person with both academic and management experience, he is a natural builder of institutions. His next focuswould be in creating a programin management education at the masters leveland push the existing boundaries of knowledge. He has filed two patents one in the area of cognitive radio. He has about 106research papers published both nationally (46) and internationally (60), and has travelled to several conferences in India and abroad. His 30 years of academic experience, and 15 years of R&D trainingat the IITs enabled him to ensure that students received not only strong academic and practical training, but also excellent industrial exposure and quality placements.