Progress Energy Distinguished Professor Dr. K. Linga (KL) Murty and his wife, Ratnaveni, established a $25,000 endowed scholarship this past January. The scholarship will be awarded to an undergraduate student in pursuit of a nuclear engineering degree. The Kalaprapurna Dr. K. Subbaraju and Mrs. K. Subhadramma Memorial Scholarship is in memory of his parents; ‘Kalaprapurna’, meaning ‘Arts Full’ or ‘Arts Complete’.
His parents were known for their philanthropic activities in their hometown of Anakapalle, India. They founded such organizations as the Cultural Association at Anakapalle, Sarada Public Library, the Anakapalle Merchants Association Lingamurty College, the Gandhi TB Clinic, and the Prema Samajam Orphanage. His father was bestowed his honorary title by Andhra University in Visakhapatnam, India for this work.
This scholarship joins another established in 2012 by Dr. and Mrs. Murty. The 2012 scholarship is awarded to a student of nuclear engineering or materials science and engineering.
Dr. Murty joined NC State in 1981 as an associate professor of nuclear engineering, holding a joint appointment with materials science & engineering. He became a professor in 1985, and served as graduate administrator from 1984 to 1987. On his six month sabbatical in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Andhra University, during the latter part of 1987, he taught two courses in metallurgy and played an important role in getting the University Grants Commission of India to establish a new Department of Metallurgical Engineering along with the construction of a new building and hiring of faculty. In 2000, Murty and his wife established two awards in the newly established department, the Lingamurty Gold Medal for best outgoing student and a scholarship in his father’s memory, Kalaprapurna Dr. K. Subbaraju Memorial Scholarship.
Murty fondly recalls the atmosphere his parents created at home along with encouragement that resulted in his achieving the best in class during high school, college and university education. He received many honors and awards including the Lingamurty Memorial Prize (1955, 1956), the GN Murty Memorial Medal (1957), the Sripathi Medal (1962) and the Metcalfe Medal (1963). They also encouraged him to participate in extracurricular activities as such Murty became a member of the high school and university badminton team. While at university, he served as the Joint Secretary of the Student Union of the AMAL College (1956-57) and as the Secretary of the Andhra University Physics Department (1960-61); receiving awards for elocution competitions.
Dr. Murty received his doctoral degree from Cornell University in 1970, completed postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley and became an Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE) Fellow at the University of Newcastle in Australia. He completed industrial research at the Lynchburg Research Center of Babcock & Wilcox Company and at the Westinghouse Research Center in Pittsburgh before joining NC State.
His work at NC State has earned Dr. Murty numerous awards and honors, including the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Mishima Award and NC State’s Alcoa Foundation Research Achievement Award. He is a fellow of ASM International (1996) and ANS (2002), Life Fellow (1996) and Honorary Member (2015) of the Indian Institute of Metals. A mini-symposium on ‘Creep, Deformation, Texture, Nano and Nuclear Materials’ was held in his honor during the Plasticity 2016 Conference in Big Island, Hawaii. In addition, a symposium in his honor on ‘Creep and Deformation of Advanced Materials,’ took place during the TMS Annual Meeting in spring 2017. It was held in San Diego CA and a book was released with contributed papers thereafter. Mention should be made of his students’ ANS Mark Mills Awards in 2014 and 2015 for outstanding dissertations.
Dr. Murty and his wife live in Cary, and their son and daughter are NC State alumni. Currently their son, Venkat, is Director of Innovation and Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the Universidad Del DeBartolo in Chile where he lives with his wife, Ana, and daughter Rania. Their daughter, Sunita, is a Pediatric Occupational Therapist and lives in Raleigh with her husband, Bijal and sons, Nevin and Shay.