Dr. Krishna B. Misra
Ph. D. (Reliability Eng.), F.A.Sc., F.N.A.E., F.I.E., F.I.E.T.E., F.Sa.R. (U. K)
Principal Consultant
Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety Engineering
Founder and Ex-Head of Reliability Engineering Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
Ex-Director-Grade-Scientist, NEERI, Nagpur, and Ex-Director NERIST, Itanagar.
Professor Misra is a Fellow of the following Academies and professional bodies:
- Safety & Reliability Society (UK) – Elected in 1981
- Indian Academy of Sciences – Elected in 1983
- Indian National Academy of Engineering – Elected in 1995
- Institution of Electronics & Telecommunications (India) – Elected in 1985
- Institutions of Engineers (India) – Elected in 1979
- First Lal C. Verman Award in 1983 for his pioneering work in Reliability Engineering in the country.
- Plaque by IEEE Reliability Engineering Society in 1995 in recognition of his meritorious and outstanding contributions to Reliability Engineering and furthering of Reliability Engineering Education and Development in India.
- Several best paper awards including 1997 Award for Excellence for outstanding paper by Literari Club (U.K).
- The Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Reliability and Safety was conferred on him by the Society President at a function held in Bombay at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre on 22nd Feb 2024.
Prof. Misra is a life member of the following professional bodies:
Life Memberships
- System Society of India (Has also served as Vice President of the Society for a number of years)
- National Institute of Quality & Reliability (Also served as a member of Governing Council of Indian Association of Quality and Reliability).
Prof. Misra has been a member of the following professional bodies:
Memberships
- Operations Research Society of America
- American Society for Engineering Education
- National Geographic Society of America
Professor Misra has published over 250 technical papers in international journals such as:
- IEEE Transactions on Reliability
- IEEE Transactions on Communications
- IEEE Transactions on Power Apparatus and System
- Microelectronics and Reliability
- Reliability Engineering and System Safety
- Fuzzy Sets and Systems
- International Journal of Performability Engineering
- International Journal of Control
- International Journal of System Science
- International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management
- International Journal on Fuzzy Mathematics etc.
- His research papers have been widely cited in numerous international journals, including at least a dozen books published internationally. He has brought out special issues of some journals as Guest Editor.
- He has also made contribution, entitled “Role of Performance Engineering in Sustainability”, to the UNESCO sponsored Encyclopedia, ” Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems” brought out at the beginning of this Century.
- He has guided over 42 doctoral and over 200 master’s theses.
Due to Professor Misra’s efforts, a master’s degree program in Reliability Engineering (REC) was conceptualized and started for the first time in India at IIT, Kharagpur in 1982 which is still continuing and is quite popular with high risk industries, Army, Navy and Air Force besides DRDO and Defence establishments. It was mainly, as a result of his efforts, the Reliability Engineering Centre was established in 1983 as the Ministry of Human Resource Development Project, Government of India, New Delhi. Prof. Misra has been the founder Head and later on as Chairman of Reliability Engineering Centre (REC). The REC is the first of its kind, in any educational institution, in India, to promote training, research and consultancy in the area of Reliability Engineering. Several post graduate students trained at this centre are not only contributing to several prestigious projects of India, such as LCA, nuclear, missile and space programmes but also richly contributing internationally world over. It was natural that one book on Reliability Engineering authored by his former Ph.D. student E. Balagurusamy (Ex-Vice-Chancellor, Anna University, Tamilnadu and Member of Union Public Service Commission, New Delhi) was dedicated to him for his pioneering work in India in the area of Reliability Engineering. Also the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunications, IETE (India), awarded him the first Lal C. Verman Award in 1983 for his outstanding contributions and pioneering work in Reliability Engineering in the country. In fact, in 1995, a plaque in recognition of his meritorious and outstanding contributions to Reliability Engineering and furthering of Reliability Engineering Education and Development in India, was awarded by the IEEE Reliability Engineering Society, USA.
Realizing that it is not only quality, reliability, maintainability, and safety that should be of concern in 21st Century but also the environmental impact of products, systems and services that prof. Misra started emphasizing performability engineering subsequently. During his later part of work at IIT Kharagpur, he started popularizing sustainability concept along with dependability that lead to formulizing the notion of performability engineering. Prof. Misra after his retirement from IIT Kharagpur in 2005, started a new International Journal of Performability Engineering which was published from Jaipur, Rajasthan, India and served its Editor-in-Chief for 11 years ( up to December 2015) until the journal was bought by Totem Publishers Inc., a company in USA and is published by it from January 2016 onwards. The journal published a total of 57 issues (containing 479 full papers and 52 short papers and 112 reviews of latest books) was subscribed by several countries and had contributions from authors of 51 countries of the world. Major contributing authors happened to be from the following countries (in alphabetic order): Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, U.K., U.S.A., while the highest number of papers published were from U.S.A. and India. The journal was being abstracted by several scientific data bases, which include Elsevier’s SCOPUS, EI Village, Compendium, Google Scholar, ProQuest, INSPEC(UK), NSD (Norway), SCIMAGO etc. In 2008, Prof. Misra also edited a Handbook of Performability Engineering of 1316 pages and 76 chapters from 100 contributors which was published by Springer Verlag, London. This handbook established a record of its own since its publication with ever increasing number of chapter downloads of its e-version leading to a total of 237,534 downloads up to 2015 for its e-book on Springerlink.
Professor Misra has served on editorial board of of several international journals like:
- International Journal of Performability Engineering – Editor-in-Chief from July 2005 to December 2015
- IEEE Transactions on Reliability
- Microelectronics & Reliability (now with Elsevier) for more than 25 years and had been its Regional Editor as well.
- Reliability Engineering & System Safety and its predecessor Reliability Engineering right from its start by Dr. Farmer.
- Quality & Reliability Management and still continuing for more than 20 years
- International Journal on Quality, Reliability and Safety, continuing for more than a decade.
- International Journal of Fuzzy Mathematics
- Combinatorics Information & System Sciences
- Electrical Power Research Journal and also
- The Indian Journal of Environment Health
Prof. Misra also served as referee or reviewer to:
- IEEE Transactions on Reliability, for over four decades.
- Fuzzy Sets & Systems
- European Journal on Operations Research
- International Journal on General Systems etc.
Born in Kota, (Rajasthan), India, Misra received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from M.S.University of Baroda, India in 1963 and Master’s degree in Power System Engineering and Ph.D. (Reliability Eng.) degrees in 1966 and 1970, both from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (India). Since 1963, he has taught and researched mainly at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, and IIT-Kharagpur. He has held the position of a full professor since 1976 at IIT Roorkee. In 1980 he shifted to IIT Kharagpur where In 1983, he was appointed as Coordinator for INR.10.2 million project on Reliability Engineering by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India,New Delhi, which led to the establishment of Reliability Engineering Centre at IIT Kharagpur in 1983, of which he was the founder Head. In 1991, he also served as Dean, Institute Planning and Development at IIT, Kharagpur. He had been with Reliability Engineering Centre till his retirement in July 2005. In 1992, he was appointed Director-Grade-Scientist by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) at the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur. Also, he was also appointed Director of North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology (NERIST) by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India in 1995 and served this Institute from 1995-1998.
In 1976, Prof. Misra was invited by the Department of Science & Technology, New Delhi to serve as the Convener of the NCST working group on Reliability Engineering in India set up by the Government of India. This group submitted two reports (part I & part II) in 1978 on the Reliability Implementation Program for India. He was also made a member of Task Force Committee on Reliability Engineering of the Department of Science & Technology, in 1979.
The following standards were brought during his tenure:
| Year | INDIAN STANDARDS |
|---|---|
| 1979 | IS: 9185 (Part I), IS:9185(Part II), IS:9186, IS:1885(Part XXXIX) |
| 1980 | IS:9692 (Part I ), IS:9692 (Part II ), |
| 1981 | IS: 8161 (Part V), IS: 9692 (Part III) |
| 1983 | IS: 7354 (Part VI), IS:8161 (Part XI), IS: 9692 (Part 6) |
| 1984 | IS: 7354 (Part 2), IS: (9692 (Part 7 ), IS: 11137 (Part 2) |
| 1985 | IS; 8161 (Part 4), IS: (9682 (Part 5) |
| 1986 | IS: 8161 (Part 2), IS:8161 (Part 3/Sec 1), IS:8161 (Part 3/Sec 2), IS: 11743 |
| 1987 | IS: 9692 (Part 4) |
| 2002 | IS 15037 |
Professor Misra was invited to join Indian Indian Bureau of Standards Committee LTD3 on Reliability of Electrical & Electronic components and Equipment as a member in his personal capacity under the Chairmanship of Prof. S. Sampath. This committee comprised Govt organizations, DRDOs Test Houses, Space, BARC, Public and Private Sector industries etc. Later on he was appointed as the Chairman of Bureau of Standards Committee LTD3 on Reliability of Electrical & Electronic components and Equipment. He also led the Indian delegation of member industries to the International Electrotechnical Commission meetings held at Ashoka Hotel New Delhi from Oct. 10 -18, 1997. Several standards were discussed.
Books by Professor Krishna B Misra
Book Series Edited by Professor Krishna B Misra
He was the Founder Vice President of System Society of India and a member of IAQR National Council. For several years, he served as a member of Environmental Appraisal Committee (for nuclear power plants in India), Ministry of Environment & Forests, Govt. of India, New Delhi. He has served as member on Project Assessment Committee for National Radar Council, Department of Electronics, CSIR, UGC, etc. He also served as the Visitor’s nominee for Aligarh Muslim University for a term of three years.
Dr. Misra also worked in Federal Republic of Germany at four different reputed institutions with well-known professors. Under German Exchange programme, he worked at Technical University-Munich (Professor Dr. R. Baumann’s institute: 1972-73). During this period he published 10 papers in a year in reputed international journals and based on his work, he was invited to join, Laboratorium fur Reaktoregelungen und Anlagensicherungen (GRS-Garching, near Munich)-an institute of 100 scientists and engineers, led by well-known Professor Dr. A. Birkhofer )on a Senior Humboldt Fellowship during 1973-74. Here he was engaged in reliability design and risk assessment of nuclear power plants. While working at GRS-Garching, he visualised the usefulness of Fuzzy Sets Theory in risk assessment of nuclear energy plants where the statistical risk was often not fully accepted as meaningful assurance to the public at large, in whose perception, perceived risk is always considered higher than statistical risk. To pursue this concept, Dr. Misra joined Professor H.-.J. Zimmermann’s institute (Professor Zimmermann is a world-renowned professor and researcher in Fuzzy Set Theory) during 1978-79 again on Senior Humboldt Fellowship to work in the area of application of fuzzy sets to risk and reliability problems. Eventually, Dr. Misra was invited to work at Kernforschungszentrum (Reactor Research Centre), Karlsruhe, Germany during 1987-88, as Guest Professor. While working at Karlsruhe, he developed methodology to carry out Level-I Risk assessment studies of nuclear power plants using Fuzzy Sets Theory and developed successfully a code thereof.
On invitation, Prof. Misra chaired sessions at several international conferences. He also visited several European countries on invited lecture tour, which included England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Poland, Sweden, etc. Prof. Misra is listed in Indo-American who’s who.