V C Kulandaiswamy is an Indian academic and author. He obtained his Master of Technology degree from IIT Kharagpur and obtained a Ph.D in hydrology and water resources from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (United States).

Career

Prof. Kulandaisamy is currently the Chairman of Tamil Virtual University[1]. He served as the Vice-Chancellor of Anna University (Chennai) from 1981 to 1990. From 1990 to 1994, he was Vice-Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), a national university with a current enrollment of 3.5 million students, which was founded to impart education by means of distance learning and open education.

Dr.Kulandaiswamy is widely acclaimed in hydrologic literature as the propounder of Kulandaiswamy model, a mathematical model for the rainfall-runoff relationship based on a general equation developed by him. Kulandaiswamy was a member of the UNESCO planning group (1978) for the preparation of the second six-year plan (1981–86) of the International Hydraulic Programme (IHP). He has authored more than 60 research reports and papers in the field of hydrology. He has authored six volumes of poems and seven of prose essays which earned him the prestigious Thiruvalluvar Award by Tamil Nadu government in 1999.

Awards

He has received the Padma Bhushan (2002) and Padma Shri (1992), awarded by the President of India to recognize service to the nation in the fields of education and engineering. He also received the Sahitya Akademi Award, a literary honor conferred by the Sahitya Akademy, India's National Academy of Letters, on outstanding writers in India's national languages. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for a Tamil literary work - Vazhum Valluvam. He has also received 7 honorary doctorates in recognition of his contributions to Tamil literature and the field of education.