Soon after earning the Institution of Eminence (IoE) status, the Indian Institution of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) said it will set up two new units — Centre for Electric Vehicles and Centre for Cyber Physical System — and an ‘innovation science park’ at its campus next year.
IIT-D director V Ramgopal Rao announced the move on Friday and said, “The two centres will be focus on solving contemporary issues of society. For instance, electric vehicles can play a crucial role in curbing pollution. But we do not use it due to their unavailability and inefficiency.. It will work on issues like bringing down their cost, reducing the charging time and improving the battery capacity.”
At the ‘Centre for Cyber Physical System’, IIT-D is planning to solve issues with the help of information technology (IT). “The centre will focus on connecting systems to internet that can provide data on which we can make accurate decisions to solve day-to-day problems. For example, to improve the productivity in agriculture, farmers should have the accurate information on how much water to put, exact soil moisture and what nutrient or fertilizer to use. And, to access that information we will need to deploy censors that can collect the data and help the farmers to take intelligent decisions,” Rao said, adding both the centres will be supported by public and private industries.
IIT-D is also setting up an ‘innovation science park’ that will majorly contribute for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). “The innovation park will be working on several verticals, but half of its researches will be done for the DRDO,” said IIT-D registrar Sandeep Chatterjee.
Besides, the institution aims to generate internal resources for several developmental purposes to meet standards in line with the IoE tag. However, it will get grants worth ₹200 crore per year from the government in the next five years. “IIT-D has come up with lots of innovative ideas to become self sufficient without raising the fee. We have recently come up with ‘student start-up action plan’ wherein the institute is funding their research in exchange of equity in their start-up. So if the company becomes successful in the future we will hold some equity in it. It can become a good source of revenue for the institute,” the director said.
Convocation Today
Meanwhile, IIT-D is set hold its 49th convocation ceremony on Saturday. The theme of this year’s convocation is “women empowerment”. “Four of the eight guests of honour are women. We have even invited businesswomen Anu Agha as the chief guest,” Rao said. This year, 2064 students will be awarded degrees, of which 1,635 are males and 429 are female students. This year, the university will cross the benchmark of 50,000 alumni.