A new frontier of technology

Dipender Manta

The Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, is giving new dimensions to the career of several students. It offers many courses on its campus at Kamand in Mandi district, Himachal Pradesh.

  The IIT Mandi Cell was set up at IIT, Roorkee on March 18, 2009, to steer its activities. The first batch of students joined IIT Mandi in August 2010.

It offers many graduate and post graduate engineering courses. Students are encouraged to take practical lessons (called practicums) before theory courses, which help them develop interest and hands-on skill in these courses.

Timothy A Gonsalves, Director of IIT Mandi, says, “The institute provides vast opportunities to students. The placement drive (2017-18) of IIT Mandi started in October 2017 and since then as many as 58 companies have taken part in acquisition of talent."

Collaborate to innovate 

To keep pace with technology, the IIT has tied up with several national and international education institutions.

The institute has signed international MOUs with The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Trieste, Italy; Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany; Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden; Finnish higher education institutions (in particular Aalto University); TU9 Germany; Hepia, Switzerland; IT University of Copenhagen Denmark; McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), MA.

Similarly national MoUs are signed with the IIT, Madras; Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh;  Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur; National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur;  Dr. B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar; National Knowledge Network, CSIR- Institute of Human Bioresource Technology, Palampur Himachal Pradesh; and IIT, Madras.

Get set goal 

Gonsalves says, “Our faculty and students have proved that it is possible to excel at a new IIT in a remote location.  They have been trying to solve society's issues through academic excellence.”

He adds that the IIT has set up goals for this year — to increase student strength by 30 per cent, start two new PG programmes, admit 20 per cent female students in BTech 2018, assist 25 per cent PhD scholars to visit abroad during their first two years, and 80 per cent to visit abroad during their first four years. 

Also, the IIT authority has decided to initiate Rs 30 crore  sponsored projects, at least Rs 5 crore industry-related, and six new projects with international partners, and one major project for Himachal Pradesh. Efforts are on to distribute machine intelligence crop advisories for small and medium farmers to increase farm produce.

Institute facts 

• This year, the strength of students in the institute is 1,024. 
• Jammu and Kashmir's Athar Aamir ul Shafi Khan, a student of IIT Mandi was ranked second in the Civil Services Exam, 2015. 
• IIT, Mandi, has been playing a pivotal role in researching on various local issues. It developed a technology to predict landslide alerts. It is also working on the possibility of setting up of micro hydro-power project to reduce environmental damage and develop farmer-friendly equipments for better cultivation.

Placement radar 

Some major companies and organisations that have visited the campus for placement and internship are Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Directi, D E Shaw, Oyorooms, TCS Research, Siemens, Capgemini, Internet Academy, Vehant, Finisar, L&T, L&T ECC, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, Leptonmaps, Timetooth, Accenture, Reliance Jio, and KisanHub.  Also, some PSUs like ISRO and HPCL visited the  campus to recruit students.