"Apart from sustaining excellence and building upon the excellence, the challenge for IITs, with their ability to research, is to undertake activities to address the problems facing our country today," Dr Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India chairman, board of governors, IITB said at the 50th Foundation Day function of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) on Thursday.

"Like in the US, reports by reputed institutes like the MIT, Stanford, Harvard etc. are circulated to provide and implement solutions to problems like reuse of nuclear waste among others, in India, institutes like the IITs can be referred to for germinating ideas and initiate necessary work for our problems," Kakodkar said. He also gave inputs for the Sudhakar Committee report that was initiated to make IITB one of the top educational institutes of the world.

The committee has already prepared a draft which will be circulated among all the stake holders of the institute, professor Devang Khakhar, director, IITB said.

Distinguished Alumni award recipients Ajit Ranade, chief economist, The Aditya Birla Group, Dr Dhirendranath Buragohain, chief technical officer, Civil Engineering Network System, Pune, Dr Chentan Chitnis, senior research scientist, Malaria Group at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Delhi, and Girish Gaitonde, founder and CEO, Xoriant Corporation, USA recollected fond memories of the times they spent as students in the institute. Ajit Ranade said, "The two most important values that the institute gave us apart from meritocracy, are integrity and freedom of expression. It also gave us the freedom to pursue whatever we liked, which has helped us achieve what we have today."

Professor Chandra Venkatraman and Professor S Kotha of the chemical engineering department were awarded the distinguished faculty awards on Thursday. Punctuations, a book on a 'photographic journey through the IITB campus' was also released. Professor Chetan Solanki, who worked on the book, said it was an "anthology of photographs and images to capture the flow of life within the institute."