Professor G. M. Nabar Endowment Oration

Professor G. M. Nabar (Director of UDCT 1957-69)

The Late Professor G. M. Nabar, Felicitation Committee and the Department of Fibres and Textile Processing Technology, ICT, organised an oration by Dr. Wolfgang Schumann– Managing Director of RUDLF GmbH, Germany on Sustainability in Textiles – Utilising Natural Resources on Wednesday 22nd Sept, 2021. The Online aired program received an overwhelming response from the students, academicians, and industry representatives from across the world.

Professor Ravindra Adivarekar welcomed the audience and briefed it about the significance of the endowment, and the academic research accolades and visionary administrative achievements of Late Professor Nabar in consolidating and expanding the institutional standard at the global level.

The family members of the late Professor Nabar – son Vikram Nabar and daughters Veena Nabar and Vrinda Nabar – graced this occasion and shared their gratitude.

Professor Aniruddha Pandit, Vice Chancellor welcomed everybody to the memorial lecture and paid homage to late Professor Nabar for paving the path and raising the bar of academic and research excellence of this institute. He thanked Dr. Schumann, the 4th generation entrepreneurial family entering 100th year of sustainable establishment, for selecting an apt topic for this oration.

Dr. GVG Rao, a distinguished alumnus of the institute and the President of Atul Colors, introduced the speaker, highlighting the unique academic credentials of Dr. Schumann from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland to the Harvard Business School, USA. Gaining in-depth knowledge of the Textile Chemicals industry by hands-on and on-site learning helped him grow the business many folds and extend the reach across many continents and countries including a strong foothold in India. Following the mantra of ‘Think Global, Act Local”, Dr. Schumann is transforming his organisation in terms of innovative product development keeping sustainability at the core.

Dr. Wolfgang Schumann Managing Director, RUDOLF Germany

Dr. Schumann delivered a highly informative and knowledge sharing lecture. Given below are excerpts. After giving brief information about the organisation and its historical milestones, Dr. Schumann shared his perspective about the global market potential and dynamics within the textiles and auxiliary chemicals domain and the relevance as well as significance of innovative product development at RUDOLF.

He explained the approach behind Logical chemistry to achieve Magical performance effect, the critical importance of focussed, concept-based research keeping environment, safety and product stewardship aspects in mind, while meeting the stringent international norms. He shared relevant details of various innovative products based on natural and sustainable resource utilisation, and the aspects of traceability, trackability and circularity along with the significance of intellectual property rights so as to safeguard the interests of the innovator in terms of the efforts and resource spent in innovative product development.

He highlighted the importance of sustainability, and the research directed towards recycling and upcycling of various components into reusable products. Dr. Schumann elaborated on the envisaged future trends and the direction of research and technology to meet the forthcoming challenges, and the collaborative association and participation of academic institutes with industrial organisations to shape up the sustainable growth.

During the post oration question answer session, Dr. Schumann ably responded to various questions pertaining to the innovative research activities, ideas, concepts, materials and methods.

Proposing the Vote of Thanks, Professor R. R. Deshmukh, Registrar, ICT, appreciated the audience for attentively participating in the Professor Nabar endowment lecture and expressed gratitude to Dr. Schumann for delivering the excellent talk explaining the importance of ‘Sustainability in Textiles – Utilising Natural Resources’.