Pune: Dr Dinesh Katre, Senior Director and Head of Human-Centred Design & Computing Group at the Centre for Development of Advance Computing (CDAC) has won the prestigious 2020 Emmett Leahy Award.

Dr Katre received this award from the hands of Dr Vijay P Bhatkar, founder Executive Director of C-DAC and Chancellor of Nalanda University. Due to the pandemic, the award presentation was organized in India at C-DAC, Pune along with the international members of the Emmett Leahy Award Committee who joined virtually through video conference mode.

The Emmett Leahy Award, which was constituted in 1967 in the USA, honours a pioneer in the field of information and records management and recognizes the outstanding contributions that have a major impact on this profession. As the recipient of this award, Dr Katre is now invited to join the Emmett Leahy Award Committee for the next ten years.

The Emmett Leahy Award Committee recognized the sustained leadership by Dr Dinesh Katre, Senior Director & HOD, C-DAC Pune, on issues of digital stewardship and preservation over several decades. In particular, through his efforts in creating India’s National Digital Preservation Program and its flagship project, the Center of Excellence for Digital Preservation, he has helped to advance the cause of providing robust and trustworthy platforms for the preservation of digital materials, including for electronic recordkeeping systems and tools for intelligent archiving. Among his many impressive achievements, he led the development of the DIGITĀLAYA (डिजिटालय), e-Library and Archiving System which played an important role in the ISO 16363 certification of world’s first trustworthy digital repository.

In his acceptance remarks, Dr Dinesh Katre thanked the Emmett Leahy Award Committee and said that the knowledge societies in the 21st century will increasingly depend on the intelligence and knowledge extracted from digital archives and therefore digital preservation should be supported through a national policy.