Vishnu Padmanaban of Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, was selected to represent the national member society, SAE India, for the FISITA Travelling Fellowship Award.  He also presented a paper at the FISITA Student Congress 2014 held from 2-6 June 2014, in MECC Maastricht Conference Venue, the Netherlands. Vishnu Padmanabanis a final year Mechanical Engineering student of 2010-2014 batch.

FISITA (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Ingénieurs des Techniques de l’Automobile) is the umbrella organisation for national automotive societies around the world. Since its inception in 1947, one of its flagship events, the biennial conference: FISITA World Automotive Congress, has been a leading technology forum for industry experts, engineers and executives to exchange ideas and discuss the trends that drive the automotive industry forward.

FISITA offers two unique programs, namely Travelling Fellowship Award and FISITA Student Congress, to provide an opportunity for the budding automotive technologists to participate and  connect with top researchers around the globe. Twenty young engineers and students across the world, under the age of 35 are offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the FISITA Travelling Fellowship Program combining cultural and technical visits across Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, culminating in attending the FISITA World Automotive Congress in Maastricht. These 20 students are sponsored fully by their respective national member society and hence represent one country each. This group of 20 students from entirely different cultural and national backgrounds has the opportunity to visit the leading automotive organizations and their cutting edge research facilities.

The Travelling Fellowship Program for 2014 included a technical tour for the first time ever covering multiple countries Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, to the organizations such as Ford Research Center Aachen, Germany, Institut Kraftfahrzeuge Aachen (IKA), Germany, University of Leuven, Belgium, LMS, Leuven, Belgium, DAF-Trucks, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, TNO Automotive, Helmond, The Netherlands and Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. 

The top 50 abstracts, globally, are selected to be presented at the FISITA Student Congress which is integrated with the main congress, parallel to all sessions. 2014 mainly attracted a lot of students internationally and amongst the 50 abstracts, not more than 2 were at the undergraduate level. 

Vishnu received third prize in the Student Congress Best Paper Awards for his paper titled, “F2014-STU-01: Investigations on the Improvement of Cold Flow Performance and Oxidative Stability of Second Generation Bio-Lubricants.” He received the prestigious award from Dr. Li Jun, the 2012-2014 FISITA President, the Chief Engineer of FAW Corporation and the President of FAW Group Corporation R&D Center.