![Nalanda University Gets New Vice-Chancellor](https://media.collegedekho.com/media/img/news/Nalanda_varsity_compressd_1.jpg?height=310&width=615)
Pranab Mukherjee, President of India, has appointed Vijay Panduranga Bhatkar as the Vice-Chancellor of the prestigious Nalanda University. Mr. Bhaktar is regarded as the father of supercomputer, and he is a great technocrat. He replaced Gopal Sabharwal who resigned on November 24, 2016, followed by George Yeo who resigned after the dissolution of the Mentor Group. Mentor Group is regarded as the governing body of the Nalanda University. Mr. Bhatkar will hold the position as Vice-Chancellor for three years as per Nalanda University Act Section 11(3).
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Mr. Bhatkar was born on October 11, 1946, in Pune. He completed his higher studies at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, MS University, Vadodara and Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur . He played a significant role in developing two supercomputers, i.e., Param 8,000 in 1991 and Param 10,000 in 1998. Therefore, he is regarded as the architect of supercomputing which is an initiative of India.
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He also served as a member of the governing body of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research as well as a member of Scientific Advisory Committee of the Cabinet at Centre. For his services and contributions, he has been honoured the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri.
Nalanda University was established in November 2010 as a Central University. The varsity has 443-acres of campus area, and it started offering academic programmes from 2014. Establishment of Nalanda University is a dream project of Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar. The varsity is located at Rajgir in Bihar.