Department of Civil Engineering

National Institute of Technology (Formerly Regional Engineering College) Tiruchirappalli 620015, Tamil Nadu, India Phone: +91-944-317-6759 Fax: +91 Email: sams@nitt.edu

_______________________________________________________________________________________________ DR. SAMSON MATHEW ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION I take great pleasure in writing this letter in support of Mr. Akshay Manjapura Krishnan, whom I have known closely as a student of the Department of Civil Engineering at the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli (NITTrichy), from his 6th semester. I have taught Transportation Engineering I and an elective, Transportation Planning, in his 6th and 7th semesters respectively. As an Associate Professor of the department, I have had sufficient opportunities to assess Akshays potential and capabilities. He has shown strong interest in my class and has consistently excelled in his academics. He is a sincere, talented and motivated individual. To cite an example of his keenness towards transportation engineering, he and only two other students attended a workshop to learn Bentleys MX Road, a software used to design and develop roads and highways in three dimensions. I was impressed by his initiative to learn MX Road; the knowledge of which has aided in his quick understanding of the taught material in class and allowed him to progress to more advanced concepts. Akshays has always taken an initiative to strengthen his grasp over a variety of concepts, focusing his efforts on Transportation Planning. Over the duration of the course, his visits to the city of Bangalore enabled him comprehend traffic patterns and travel behaviour. He also took it upon himself to independently develop C++ programmes to analyse trip generation and trip distribution, using concepts taught to him. I found his work to be efficient and sanctioned its use for an ongoing project, Travel Demand Forecasting, under my supervision. I believe, his interest to comprehend travel behaviour and ability to account for socio-economic factors in our discussions will lead him to become a sound transportation planner. Being a member of the Civil Engineering Association at NIT-Trichy, I appointed Akshay as the manager for Plan-It (a Town Planning event as part of the national level symposium MOMENTS 12) this year. He showed strong commitment towards the successful completion of the event. He assimilated concepts of land use planning and coupled it with his existing knowledge of transportation planning to develop a suitable problem statement with regard to planning a Special Economic Zone in India. His skills as a team leader were exemplary and evident in the professionalism that he displayed. His passion for fine arts has led Akshay to shoulder managerial positions in the coveted Fine Arts Society of NIT-Trichy. As part of his final year Traffic Engineering and Control project, Akshay is working in a team of three to develop a Speed Detection and Speed Management system for six highly congested roads in the city of Tiruchirappalli (Tamil Nadu, India). This project is a part of the Intelligent Transportation Systems group of projects collaborated with the Indian Institute of Technology Chennai (IIT, Chennai). He has shown eagerness to learn concepts, from other branches of engineering, such as Image Processing that are relevant to this project in order to obtain tangible results. Akshay has always possessed the drive to learn and deliver results in time. He is a humble yet a lively individual who sincerely aspires to become a Transportation planner. His innate ability to assimilate new ideas and critically assess different viewpoints within the field of urbanism, is what I believe will make him a strong asset to the Career Discovery program at Harvard University. This program will enable him to develop a greater clarity in the field of Urban Planning and will aid him to follow his dreams to progress in the same. (SAMSON MATHEW) 29th March, 2012