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Latest News |
| 26th
July 2010 / Business Standard |
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IIT-Bhubaneswar seeks industry link
The Indian Institute of Technology-Bhubaneswar (IIT-BBS),
currently operating out of a makeshift campus in the city,
is banking on partnerships with industry houses to set
up four specialised schools which would act as centres
of excellence.
The schools proposed to be set up by the fledgling IIT
include the School of Metallurgical and Minerals Engineering;
School of Ocean and Environmental Sciences & Climate
Change; School of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
and the School of Design and Creative Arts. An academic
advisory committee has already been constituted and it
will soon submit a detailed project report to the Union
ministry of human resource development on the establishment
of such schools.
“These specialised schools, which will run with
corporate partnerships with our strong focus on climate
change research, are what we feel will differentiate IIT-Bhubaneswar
from the other IITs in the country,” says Madhusudhan
Chakraborty, director of IIT-BBS. He adds that the time-frame
for setting up these schools and the expenditure involved
would be known only after the submission of the detailed
project report.
IIT-BBS is in talks with some corporate houses with the
objective of running the proposed schools in sync with
industry requirements. It has already entered into a Memorandum
of Understanding (MoU) with the MGM Group for the establishment
of a Chair Professor of eminence at the School of Metallurgical
and Minerals Engineering. MGM Group is operating iron
ore mines in Sundergarh district and plans to come up
with an integrated steel plant in Dhenkanal district.
The group will sponsor Rs 1.5 crore for the Chair Professorship
and allied research activities over a duration of five
years.
Meanwhile, IIT-BBS has started PhD programmes from the
academic session 2009-10 with the focus areas for research
being climate change, alternative energy, manufacturing
and mineral development.
It is offering a seed funding of Rs 5 lakh to each of
the faculty members to boost research. “The seed
funding is expected to give a big boost to research at
IIT-Bhubaneswar. The institute has also started consultancy
in a small way”, says Chakraborty.
IIT-BBS, mentored by IIT-Kharagpur, has a student intake
of 138 in three undergraduate engineering disciplines
— mechanical, civil and electrical engineering.
It has 45 full-time faculty members besides visiting faculty.
The campus, which is being set up on 936 acres of land
at Jatni, is expected to be operational in the next three-four
years.
Chakraborty hopes to have a pool of 2,500 students and
250 faculty members. In the next 15 years, he expects
a student intake of 10,000 and faculty strength of 1,000.
IIT-BBS also expects to receive a funding of Rs 60 crore
from the Government in the current financial year.
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