Dr. K. L. Murty, Professor of Nuclear Engineering Department and jointly with Materials Science & Engineering is selected to receive Honorary Membership of the Indian Institute of Metals during their Annual Technical Meeting on Nov 14th, 2015 in Coimbatore, India. Honorary Membership recognizes distinguished services to the metallurgical profession and to the Indian Institute of Metals, and is the highest honor bestowed by IIM. Dr. Murty has been a Life Fellow of the institute since 1996 and has been serving as external examiner for doctoral degree students (about 1 to 2 per year since 2003) in Indian institutions such as IITs, University of Madras, Jadavpur University, Banaras Hindu University, Homi Bhabha National Institute, etc. During his sabbatical at the Mechanical Engineering department of the Andhra University, Vishakhapatnam in 1987, he was instrumental in getting funds from the University Grants Commission of India for a separate Metallurgical Engineering department along with a new building and a number of faculty members at the Andhra University. Starting in March 2001, Dr. Murty instituted two awards in the newly established Metallurgical Engineering Department: (1) Lingamurty Gold Medal for Best student in Metallurgy, and (2) Kalaprapoorna Subbaraju Memorial Scholarship for Best upcoming senior, Metallurgy, Andhra University. He visited India supported by ASM-IIM Lectureships in 1987, 1997 and 2006 during which time many technical talks were presented at various places and institutions in India. He was also a UNDP-TOKTEN consultant to the Defense Metallurgical Research Laboratory in 1990 and the Nuclear Fuel Complex in 1999 in Hyderabad, India. In addition, Prof. Murty had collaborative research projects with IIT Bombay, Andhra University and other institutions, and coauthored a number of technical publications with scientists from Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Bombay, Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam, DMRL in Hyderabad, Variable Energy Cyclotron Center in Calcutta and Central University in Hyderabad.
He received many honors and awards for academic achievements during high school (M.H. School, Anakapalle), college (1957-58 – A.M.A.Lingamurty College, Anakapalle) and university {1962 – B.Sc.(Hons) and 1963 – M.Sc., Andhra University, Visakhapatnam}: Lingamurthy Memorial Prize (1956, 1957, 1958), G.N.Murthy Memorial Medal (1958), Sripathi Medal (1962), S.B.P.V. Rao Memorial Prize (1962), Metcalfe Medal (1963) and Kothari Prize (1963).
Following his faculty appointment at NC State University in 1981, he received DAAD Fellowship (1987) in Germany, Alcoa Foundation Research Achievement Award (1988), Gledden Senior Visiting Fellowship (1992) in Australia and ANS Mishima Award (1993). He is a fellow of the American Society for Metals International (1996) and the American Nuclear Society (2002). His recent doctoral students received the ANS Mark Mills Award for outstanding research paper from doctoral thesis: Dr. Ahmad Alsabbagh in 2014 (PhD, Nuclear Engineering) and Dr. Boopathy Kombaiah in 2015 (PhD, Materials Science and Engineering). He and his wife, Ratnaveni instituted Murty scholarship in the College of Engineering at NCSU in 2012 given to outstanding freshman in Nuclear Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.