Surendar Varadharajan

Surendar Varadharajan is an accomplished Safety Engineer, dedicated to solving global safety and security engineering challenges. His expertise spans high-energy materials, risk engineering, occupational safety, and fire safety, and fire safety. With 8 years of experience in academia, research, and development, he is committed to developing innovative methods for academic operations.

Before joining UPES, Surendar served at esteemed institutions such as Centre for Safety Engineering, IIT Gandhi Nagar, as a Junior Research Fellow. There, he conducted rigorous fire research, lab development activities, and professional trainings. He also held the position of Assistant Professor-Safety Engineering at Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Sathyamangalam, Erode, where he taught safety engineering courses and actively engaged in academic pursuits.

Surendar's research interests focus on high energetic materials specific to Pyrotechnics and Propellants, studying explosion potentials, and conducting accident investigations of industrial explosions. He also delves into safety and security risk analysis of industrial plants using various probabilistic methods. Additionally, he explores the reasons behind occupational-related accidents and studies the dynamics and extinguishment of fires.

Mr. Surendar's teaching philosophy revolves around value-based education and experienced-based teaching and learning processes. He incorporates advanced Bloom's taxonomy into his classes, carefully planning the teaching process to develop objectives for each lecture topic. He employs mind-triggering questions to encourage students to engage in prominent levels of thinking. His expertise lies in implementing experiential learning methods, such as learning through interviews, where students interact with experienced individuals to learn from their experiences. He uses quiz material as the foundation for in-class assignments, providing students with real-world data and situations.

Surendar teaches safety in the Engineering Industry, covering concepts of safeguarding people from hazardous machines. He instructs Industrial operations and material handling, focusing on safe planning of plant layouts and the safe operation of equipment and lifting tackles. In occupational hygiene, he emphasizes protecting individuals from hazardous chemicals and other toxic exposures. He also teaches courses on Behavior-based safety, handling employees, creating a safety work culture, ergonomics, and other accident prevention philosophies and related concepts.

Surendar received the Organisation of Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) fellowship for a short-term course on Loss prevention and process safety at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. He was also awarded the SEED grant to conduct research on pyrotechnics safety.

Surendar collaborates with leading national institutes and initiates international collaborations to find better solutions to real-time problems. He delivers lectures on interesting safety topics in prominent global forums. Additionally, he offers courses to industrial professionals on safety in the engineering industry through the Centre for Continuing Education, attended by many industrial professionals. As a faculty coordinator of the ASSP students' chapter, he promotes safety education to global communities and mentors students pursuing higher education in safety engineering, some of whom are now in world-leading universities researching safety engineering.

v.surendar@ddn.upes.ac.in