chennai bhaskar ramamurthi the new director of the indian instituteof technologym adras is an alumnus of the institute and currently dean planning hebelongstotheelectricalengineering department professor ramamurthi informedof theselection by chairman of the board of governors m m sharma on thursday morning will assumechargeon friday he will be the 10th director his predecessor m s ananth had resignedfrom his postin july beforehistermended professor ramamurthis focus would be on research in sectors like education and agriculture the institute will continue to focus on fundamental and translational research and find solutions to pressing problems facing society he said a committee under the ministry of human resource developmenttook nearly four months to come up with the right candidate first an advertisement was put out and several people applied thebackground and research done by the candidate wereconsidered saiddeputy director v g idichandy professor idichandy who has been directorincharge since professor ananth left will retire on september 30 he will continue as emeritus professor in the department of ocean engineering after his retirement professor ramamurthi completed his btech in electrical engineering from iitm in 1980 he did his ms in 1982 and his phd three years later at the university of california in santa barbara us his doctorate was on image coding using vector quantization he joined att bell laboratories in the us where he worked on problemsin indoor wirelesscommunication in 1986 he joined the electrical engineering department atiitm his research areas include modulation and coding for mobile communications wireless communication networks and design and implementation of wirelesslocalloop systems professor ramamurthi is a founding member of thetelecommunications and computer networking group established adecade ago attheinstitute the group works for affordable worldclasstechnology