Professor T. K. Roy

When Professor T.K. Roy joined the mechanical engineering department at UMass Dartmouth, it was with the goal of “improving and reinforcing the senior design project, the capstone of the mechanical engineering program.”

In the design project class, seniors work in small groups to “demonstrate that they can apply the principles they’ve learned to create something that functions.”

Over the years, we’ve had the design project involved with local industries, asking them to give us real projects to work on, and to judge the final projects, too.

We’ve had many professionally presented projects, and the final presentations are like a festival, with students bringing their parents, boyfriends and girlfriends to the event. We’ve had a lot of local press coverage over the years, too: TV, newspapers, and radio.

One of the most memorable was the cranberry counter built by one of the senior teams, which we gave to the UMass Cranberry Research Station in [nearby] Wareham. The station’s engineer told us that the equipment really improved the efficiency of his operation.

Then we were contacted by Ocean Spray [the cranberry cooperative headquartered in southeastern Massachusetts] to develop an improved cranberry counter design, which the university eventually had patented. We’ve also worked on cranberry picking equipment designed to improve the harvesting.

It’s such a positive influence for the university and for the students to have these practical connections to industries.

Prof. Roy received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Bihar University in India and subsequently won a competitive East/West Scholarship to continue his education at the University of Hawaii, from which he earned his M.S. He received his Ph.D. from Texas Tech. His research interests include the modeling and analysis of dynamical systems, vibrations, robotics and artificial intelligence, and he has extensive consulting experience in the areas of engineering design, automation, optimization, environmental concerns, product liability, materials testing, structural mechanisms and robotics.

Predictably, he’s a champion for the mechanical engineering discipline:

This particular branch of engineering is very versatile. Students need to understand materials and how they behave, and electrical systems and how they work. They also need to understand structures not only as stationary objects but also as working objects. An airplane is a structure, like a house, but it also has to fly. How does it get up in the air? How does it respond to forces such as heat, cold and vibration? You’re getting a background in civil, electrical, and computer engineering, and you’re getting hands-on training, too.

UMass Dartmouth is a particularly good place for undergraduate engineering students. They gain valuable exposure to engineering faculty who are very dedicated and knowledgeable. Our student/faculty ratio is low. Students get to see their professors; it’s not the Ph.D. candidates teaching the courses, as happens at some larger universities. Here they can just walk in and talk to the professor. I try to help my students, listen to their stories, build a relationship with them, and let them know that my object is to help them learn. I also spend time every semester advising students, because it’s important to keep them on the right track in their studies.

In fall 2001, Prof. Roy taught and participated in research at Kathmandu University in Nepal, as a recipient of a Rotary International University Professor’s Scholarship Grant. While there, he also recruited students for the engineering graduate programs at UMass Dartmouth. Prof. Roy has been named a benefactor of the Permanent Fund of the Rotary Foundation for commitment to and support of Rotary programs.

Prof. Roy was a founder of UMass Dartmouth’s Center for Indic Studies and now serves on its faculty. Started in 2001, the Center’s mission is to highlight India’s values in the promotion of world progress, peace and harmony and to cultivate a scholarly understanding of those values.

With civil engineering professor Prof. Madhusudan Jhaveri, Prof. Roy started the Indian Student Association on campus at a time when there were a handful of Indian graduate students and several families of Indian heritage in the area.

We started with a cultural program to celebrate Diwali, the fall festival of lights, both for the students to meet people and to share the celebration with the larger community. And, of course, we had to have food, with enough left over for the students to take home to enjoy later!

Now we have grown to a very large community, with about a hundred students here on campus. The students have a talent pool to get everything done, and the association runs like a well-oiled machine. Last year there were 200 people at the Diwali celebration.  

Prof. Roy stressed the importance of being well-rounded. As a contributor to magazines published for Bengali and Hindi readers both in the U.S. and India, Prof. Roy writes poems, articles and editorials.

Everyone should develop some other kind of aspect to one’s life, besides a career, whether it’s artistic, playing a musical instrument, and so on. Engineering is my livelihood but it is not my whole life. I want to be a whole human being.

 Last Updated On: 11/7/05