The institute had last year announced the setting up of an offshore campus in Tanzania’s Zanzibar with Preeti Aghalyam being appointed the director-in-charge who also became the first woman IIT Director…reports Asian Lite News
The third offshore campus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is likely to be set up in Sri Lanka, according to sources.
The proposal for an IIT in Sri Lanka was announced last November in the 2024 Budget unveiled by Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also serves as the finance minister.
According to sources, the Sri Lankan government is in touch with IIT Madras for the ambitious project. “A high-level delegation had recently visited the Chennai campus to discuss the future roadmap. The talks are on and the campus is likely to come up in Kandy,” a source said.
“The delegation also visited the Research Park at the campus and interacted with officials about possible areas of engagement,” the source added.
The Indian government had announced that opportunities for admission to the IITs in India will be provided to meritorious Sri Lankan students from the 2017-18 academic sessions onwards. If the plan for the Sri Lanka campus comes through, it will be IIT Madras’ second international campus.
The institute had last year announced the setting up of an offshore campus in Tanzania’s Zanzibar with Preeti Aghalyam being appointed the director-in-charge who also became the first woman IIT Director.
An MoU, signed last July between India and Tanzania, was the final procedural step that paved the way for the opening of the campus. The institute began functioning in November last year from a temporary campus and is offering two full-time academic programmes — a four-year Bachelor of Science in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and a two-year Master of Technology in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.
IIT Delhi followed the league and signed a formal agreement with the UAE government to set up a campus in Abu Dhabi. The initial Master’s course at the IIT Delhi-Abu Dhabi campus will focus on energy transition and sustainability, reflecting a shared vision between India and the UAE to leverage knowledge for mutual prosperity and global well-being.
The UK is also keen on welcoming an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) to set up an offshore campus in the country and some UK universities are already in talks with IITs to explore the possibility. Several IITs have been receiving requests from the Middle East and South Asian countries to set up their campuses.
The central government had created a 17-member committee to facilitate the process of opening IIT campuses in foreign locations where students from different nations can study technical education.
The committee headed by IIT Council standing committee chairperson Dr K Radhakrishnan had submitted its recommendations in 2022.
Established in 1961, IIT-D was the fifth such institute after Kharagpur (1951), Bombay (1958), Madras (1959) and Kanpur (1959)…reports Asian Lite News
The IIT Delhi’s Electrical Engineering programme has been ranked 56th globally, as per the 12th edition of the QS World University Rankings.
The Institute has also been ranked among India’s top three domestically for Electrical and Electronic (1st), Statistics & Operations Research (1st), Computer Science & Information Systems (1st), Civil & Structural (1st), Mechanical (2nd), Mathematics (2nd), Social Sciences & Management (2nd), Material Science (3rd), Chemistry (3rd), Biological Sciences (3rd) and Sociology (3rd).
The IIT Delhi has featured among the top 100 educational institutes in the world for four of its its academic programmes under the Engineering and Technology category, which is the Institute’s strongest field, as per the QS World University Rankings.
The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022 was announced on Wednesday. The four academic programmes of IIT Delhi that are in the top 100 rank globally are Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science and Civil Engineering.
The Institute’s Electrical Engineering programme achieved 56th rank (overall score 77.5), Mechanical Engineering 64th (overall score 76.6), Computer Science 65th (overall score 71) and Civil Engineering was ranked in the 51-100 bracket (overall score 74).
Speaking of the QS Rankings by Subject 2022, Prof P.V. Rao, Dean, Planning & Head, Ranking Cell, IIT Delhi said: “IIT Delhi has been consistently performing very well in core Engineering Specialisations securing top 100 ranks globally. This year we have witnessed a substantial improvement in most of the specialisations like Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Chemical Engineering, etc. with improved scores of H-index and citations. IIT Delhi has also improved globally in other specialisations such as Mathematics, Social Sciences & Management, etc.”
IIT Delhi said that they always work to find solution that will be directly helpful to solve problems of the common citizens. Last week after three years of rigorous research a start-up incubated at IIT Delhi, has developed an affordable yet high-performance medical textile fabric which destroys 99.9 per cent of the bacteria and viruses within 30 minutes.
Now, for the first time, such material will be used for the face mask, PPE kit and other equipment. Already a few fabric are available in the market but these fabrics take more than 24 hours in this process.
According to IIT Delhi, research & development, Fabiosys Innovations, a deep-tech healthcare startup incubated at IIT Delhi, has developed this fabric. It is extremely affordable high-performance medical textile Fabium, which destroys 99.9 per cent of the bacteria and viruses within 30 minutes, IIT Delhi added.
IIT-D’s power-packed alumnus
From Kiran Bedi, the first female IPS officer of India, to noted economist Raghuram Rajan to Sachin and Binny Bansal, the founders of Flipkart, the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D) has produced some famous personalities who have played a great role in the economic progress of the country.
Established in 1961, IIT-D was the fifth such institute after Kharagpur (1951), Bombay (1958), Madras (1959) and Kanpur (1959).
IIT-D is known for producing top entrepreneurs, scientists, economists, politicians and lawyers for years, and has always kept a distinct place among the top five IITs, out of the 23 in India.
It was established in collaboration with the British government, which agreed for a College of Engineering and Technology in Delhi. The foundation stone was laid by Prince Philip, then Duke of Edinburgh, during his visit to India at Hauz Khas on January 28, 1959.
It was formally inaugurated on August 17, 1961 and was affiliated to the University of Delhi.
In 2018, IIT-D was one of the first six institutes to be awarded the Institute of Eminence status, which granted almost-full autonomy in that they will be able to admit foreign students up to 30 per cent of the admitted students and recruit foreign faculty up to 25 per cent of the faculty strength with enhanced research funding.
IIT-D has a sprawling campus of 325 acres located in Hauz Khas. It also has two satellite campuses in Sonipat and Jhajjar.
Internationally, IIT-D was ranked 185 in the QS World University Rankings of 2021. The same rankings had ranked it 43 in Asia in 2020 and 18 among BRICS nations in 2019.
Around 1,243 students have bagged job offers in the placement drive that concluded on December 16…reports Asian Lite News.
A student of IIT (Roorkee) has bagged Rs 2.15 crore package per annum offer from a multinational firm in the placement drive.
Three students of the institute have bagged annual cost offer of Rs 1.30 crore to Rs 1.8 crore from domestic companies.
Around 1,243 students have bagged job offers in the placement drive that concluded on December 16.
Eleven students of IIT (Roorkee) have bagged job offer of Rs 1 crore per annum.
IIT Roorkee said that 281 companies had participated in campus placement drive which took place from December 1 to 16.
The companies included Accenture Japan Limited, Amazon, American Express, Arup India Private Limited, Bank of America, Cisco, Dream 11,
EXL Service, Flipkart, Goldman Sachs, Havells India Limited, Hindustan Uniliver Limited, ICICI Bank, intel, JP Morgan, Larsen and Toubro, and Microsoft.
These companies offered 1,243 jobs, of which 32 were multinational.
Talking about the placement drive, Professor In-Charge Placement and Internship IIT (Roorkee) Vinay Sharma said the corona pandemic has brought directional changes in the placement scenario.
“For that, we made a strategy under which we focused on companies which are doing fine in the areas of Artificial intelligence, Software network, Analytics, e-commerce, FMCG. We also ensured a lot of diversity in the profiles resulting in students being selected as per their interests,” he explained.
“Besides this, we did an in-depth analysis of the economic developments across the world and accordingly collaborated with firms which were doing well,” Prof Sharma added.
“With all the above strategies in place we performed very well and grabbed multinational as well as domestic offers,” he added.
Prior to placement season, sessions were organised to know areas of interest of the students, he said, adding that the institute approached the leading firms accordingly.
Professor Sharma said, “As our placement data for 2021-22 signify, the students of IIT Roorkee are consistently performing well in all the profiles and they are recognised as top class human resource.”
The Indian Olympiad School also has a mosque and it imparts religious education (ethical education) side-by-side mainstream education…reports Asian Lite News.
Ifrah Khan, a hijabi student from Nagpur, has secured 3rd All India Rank in IIT-JEE main entrance examination 2021. She is 2nd rank holder in the state of Maharashtra and the first topper of Vidarbha region. She credits her success to disciplined study, hard work, punctuality and focuses on the target. She is also grateful to her parents and elder brothers who constantly motivated and guided her. She says that her parents were in tears when they saw her result.
Ifrah has studied at Indian Olympiad School, Bhelgaon, Kamptee Road. Ifrah’s father Sohail Khan and mother Nagma Khan both are directors of the Indian Olympiad School.
Talking about her first infatuation with the IIT, Ifrah says that her elder brother used to study at IIT Kharagpur. Once, she went to meet him. The atmosphere at the prestigious institution cast a magic spell on her. She was so overwhelmed with the influence that she decided to study there one day.
She shares a success mantra: “We should study daily, even if it is for some time. It should develop as a habit.”
Ifrah says that she had started preparing for IIT when she was in Class 6 and by the time she was in Class 10, she had made her study more rigorous. “I have noticed that most students slow down in the last phase of Class 10. Actually, this is the time when they had to gather pace and move towards their goal of passing the entrance of their subject of choice. This time is the most pivotal period. It has to be utilised the most,” she says.
Besides studying, Ifrah emphasises the importance of learning sports and participating in other extra-curricular activities. Her favourite games are Basketball and Volleyball. She had also won the gold medal in the Volleyball competition in her school. Interestingly, Ifrah wears a hijab and even participates in games in such attire. She has no problem being tagged as “hijabi girl”. “Hijab is not a setback for Muslim girls or any other girl. Hijab or burqa are not symbols of backwardness. A hijabi girl can walk ahead in the modern world very comfortably,” she says. In this regard, her advice to the Muslim girls is: “Never feel disheartened just because you practice your culture in open. Only focus on your hard work, honesty and discipline. Success is waiting for you.”
Ifrah’s success especially breaks the myth about girls that they are made for subjects like Home Science and that they have to prepare themselves for family life. “My family was different. Though such discriminations do exist, yet girls are now marching past all types of stereotypes. They are in fact taking leading positions in different walks of life,” she says.
Ifrah’s success has delighted her parents the most. Both her parents have been teachers. Her father Sohail Khan says that he has been teaching for 25 years. “I have toured cities like Delhi, Kota and Hyderabad to observe the working of quality schools there. After studying the pattern of their administration, I opened the Indian Olympiad School in Nagpur. It is laced with all modern facilities. Students in our schools are encouraged to choose their subject of choice and accordingly, they are groomed for competitive examinations,” says Khan. His wife, Mrs Nagma Khan, helps him run the schools and also teaches Science subjects.
Before Ifrah, Sohail’s two elder sons also studied at IIT. One son, Uzair Khan, studied at IIT Kharagpur and Umer Khan was at IIT Roorkee. Uzair Khan was selected by an American Multinational Company, but he preferred to stay with his parents and teach in their school. His brother Umer followed his suit and quit his job to teach in his parents’ school. Both the brothers have tried to introduce new educational techniques at their schools to make education more student-friendly.
The Indian Olympiad School also has a mosque and it imparts religious education (ethical education) side-by-side mainstream education.
Sohail Khan believes that Ifrah’s success will be a trendsetter and help eradicate segregation of male and female children when it comes to education. “Girls make home heaven. We have to understand that,” says Khan.
Ifrah too says that she has read the Quran and its first message ‘Iqra’ which means to read or study. “Thus, Islam puts special emphasis on education,” she says.
Sharing delight of her daughter’s success, Sohail Khan says that Ifrah means bringing “joy and delight”. “Today, she has not only brought joy and delight to our family, but she has also brought laurels to Vidarbha and Maharashtra. I hope she will one day delight the whole of India,” says Khan.
In May 1950, Ghosh opened the first IIT in a building at Esplanade East in Kolkata; by September 1950, however, the scene had shifted to the Hijli Detention Camp…reports Sourish Bhattacharyya.
Even as the Second World War was coming to an end, a motley group of people laid the foundation of the enduring edifice of India’s scientific and technological soft power — the IIT system.
It included three men who successively served as members of the Viceroy’s Executive Council — Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, an acolyte of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das and 1933 FICCI President; ICS officer-turned-Tata Steel executive Ardeshir Dalal, who’s better known for his staunch opposition to the Partition of India; and Sir Jogendra Singh, an editor, author and former prime minister of Patiala who introduced mechanised farming in Punjab.
IIT Kharagpur (Wikipedia)
An author of the Bombay Plan, the 1944-45 vision document for India’s economic development drafted by industrialists J.R.D. Tata, G.D. Birla and Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas, Sir Ardeshir, as Member for Planning and Development of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, persuaded the U.S. government to offer doctoral fellowship to Indian scientists so that they come back qualified enough to lead the newly established Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
Sir Ardeshir, however, soon realised that this arrangement with the U.S. government could only be a short-term solution and that the emerging new India needed institutions that would become nurseries for qualified scientific and technical manpower.
Sir Jogendra, who succeeded Sarkar as the Member for Health, Lands and Education (an odd mix, but that was how it was!) after the Bengali politician quit in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi’s imprisonment in 1942, took the next big step in 1946. He constituted a 22-member committee, headed by Sarkar, to prepare the blueprint for the establishment of ‘Higher Technical Institutions’ to drive post-war industrial development in India.
Two years before the committee started its deliberations, the 1922 Nobel Prize-winning English physiologist and biophysicist, Professor A.V. Hill, who was then the Secretary of the Royal Society, travelled across India from November 1943 to March 1944, on the invitation of the Secretary of State for India, to study the progress of scientific and industrial research. The immediate need for the exercise was to give a direction to the CSIR.
In his pithy report titled ‘Scientific Research in India’, Prof. Hill, among other things, mentioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, as an example of excellence in teaching and research work, and stressed the need for “one or two technical institutes of the highest possible standing” to supply “first-class technical brains, trained in an atmosphere both of original research and of practical experience”.
Unsurprisingly, the Sarkar Committee recommended that institutes of higher technical education, modelled after the MIT, be set up around the country. Coincidentally, the three key people responsible for ensuring that the first IIT was launched in West Bengal were all Bengalis — Sarkar, after whom the main road of the IIT-Kharagpur campus is named; Education Secretary Humayun Kabir; and Sir J.C. Ghosh, the then director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, who eventually became the first director of the first IIT.
Ghosh prepared the blueprint for the IIT with the help of two bureaucrats posted at the Education Ministry — L.S. Chandrakant and Biman Sen. The argument they gave for the first IIT to be set up in West Bengal was that the state then had the highest concentration of engineering students.
Kabir convinced Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, West Bengal’s first Chief Minister, to find an appropriate location for the first IIT in his state. Roy settled for the Hijli Detention Camp at Kharagpur in the then Midnapore district, where a number of Bengali freedom fighters had been imprisoned during the struggle for independence.
It became the site for the first IIT, whose alumni, befittingly, include such diverse people as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Rono Bose, CEO, IndiGo Airlines, and Kiran Seth, founder of Spic-Macay, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of Indian classical music and dance among students.
For Dr Roy and Sarkar (who, incidentally, was one of the five pillars of the Congress in West Bengal), setting up the first IIT at the Hijli Detention Camp was the best possible tribute to the freedom fighters who were incarcerated there.
It also had the locational advantage of being close to the Kharagpur railway workshop, the Fuel Research Institute in Dhanbad and the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works — all potential training grounds for IIT students.
In May 1950, Ghosh opened the first IIT in a building at Esplanade East in Kolkata; by September 1950, however, the scene had shifted to the Hijli Detention Camp.
The IIT was formally inaugurated on August 18, 1951, by the country’s first Education Minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who, incidentally, spent his formative years in Kolkata. It was he who coined the name Indian Institute of Technology, inspired of course by MIT.
On September 15, 1956, Parliament adopted the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act, declaring it to be an ‘Institute of National Importance. And it is said that Ghosh was responsible for its liberal provision, which, till date, have ensured that the IITs remain insulated from any attempt to politicise them or impede their autonomy.
Waves of excitement swept Mumbai, particularly IIT-B, soon after Twitter Inc. announced Dr Parag Agrawal as its new CEO, a hardcore ‘Amchi Mumbaikar’ replacing Jack Dorsey, reports Quaid Najmi
Waves of excitement swept Mumbai, particularly IIT-B, soon after giant microblogging service provider, Twitter Inc. announced Dr Parag Agrawal as its new CEO, a hardcore ‘Amchi Mumbaikar’ replacing the founder-CEO Jack Dorsey.
The proclamation was greeted with pride at his alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B), at Powai, where he studied between 2001-2005 and graduated in B. Tech from the department of Computer Science & Engineering.
IIT-B Director Prof. Subhasis Chaudhari said that the significance of any university is often judged by the collective achievements of its alumni and the glory they bring to their alma mater, and Agrawal “is one such alumnus that IIT is proud of”.
“The education and ambience that IIT-B provided to Agrawal, not too long ago, helped in bringing out the best in him. Building on top of it with hard work and dedication, he has reached the top. Our congratulations to him and we hope that IITB can continue to produce such achievers,” Prof Chaudhari said in a warm tribute.
A beaming Prof Supratim Biswas, his teacher at IIT-B’s Computer Science & Engineering Department, who taught him a couple of subjects, recalls Agrawal being the topper of the course in 2005 and bagging a coveted Silver Medal.
“He was extremely well-organised, very bright, well-behaved and focussed in life. He was the typical topper-type material and had all the qualities of an achiever,” he recalled.
He pointed out how IIT-B gets toppers from all over India and to excel them requires “special calibre”, which Agrawal displayed. “No wonder he has got this huge honour at such a young age.”
Born in Mumbai to a Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) officer and a schoolteacher, Agrawal studied at the Atomic Energy Central School No. 4, at Anushakti Nagar in north-east Mumbai, where his schoolmate was famed playback singer Shreya Ghoshal.
After cracking the IIT-JEE in 2000, he graduated from the IIT-B, and later proceeded to the US where he obtained his doctorate in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2011.
In between, in 2001, he bagged the gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad in Turkey, one of the many feathers in his cap.
After collaborative stints with Microsoft Research, Yahoo! Research, AT & T Labs for research in large-scale data management, in Oct. 2011 Agrawal joined Twitter Inc. as a distinguished software engineer and exactly six years later was appointed as the Chief Technology Officer in October 2017.
At Twitter Inc., Agrawal is responsible for its technical strategy, overseeing machine learning and AI across the consumer, revenue and science teams in the company.
Since 2011, he has led efforts on scaling Twitter Ads systems, and re-accelerating user growth by improving home timeline relevance.
Significantly, just 24 months ago in December 2019, ex-CEO Dorsey had deployed Agrawal as in-charge of Project Bluesky – “an independent team of open source architects, engineers and designers to develop an open and decentralised standard for social media that would help better control abusive and misleading information on its platform.”
November 29 marked a milestone for Agrawal as Dorsey announced his quitting from Twitter and passed him the powerful ‘handle’.
On his special memories associated with IITB, Agrawal says: “Working with friends to build shared storage and streaming services over the Hostel intranet and spending time near Vihar Lake behind Hostel 4 with close friends”.
And his unique Mantra for Success: “The whole can be much greater than the sum of parts.”
Agrawal is married to Vineeta, a general partner with a California-based VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and they have a son.
Musk praises Agrawal
Soon after Parag Agrawal, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, became Chief Technology Officer (CEO) of Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took to the micro blogging site to praise Indian talent in the US.
Google, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, and now Twitter run by CEOs who grew up in India. Wonderful to watch the amazing success of Indians in the technology world and a good reminder of the opportunity America offers to immigrants. 🇮🇳🇺🇸 (Congrats, @paraga!)
“Google, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Palo Alto Networks and now Twitter run by CEOs who grew up in India. Wonderful to watch the amazing success of Indians in the technology world and a good reminder of the opportunity America offers to immigrants. (Congrats, Parag Agrawal),” Collison wrote. Musk then tweeted, “USA benefits greatly from Indian talent!”
Netizens slam new Parag
Parag Agrawal, the new Indian-origin CEO of Twitter replacing Jack Dorsey, was trolled on Tuesday on his own platform for an 11-year-old tweet that carried racist remarks.
In 2010, when he was not even an employee of Twitter, Agrawal quoted a comedian mocking racism and Islamophobia in America.
“If they are not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists,” Agrawal said in the tweet posted on October 26, 2010.
Questioning this, Republican Ken Buck, who represents Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District, asked how users could trust Twitter’s new CEO to treat everyone equally.
Question: Why is this sentence (from the new @twitter CEO) in quotes?
Answer: Because he is quoting a comedian that had just aired on the Daily Show.
However, Agrawal was quick to clarify his comments to a user. “I was quoting Asif Mandvi from The Daily Show. The article you are reading seems too deep for my current mental state,” he posted.
Agrawal also posted about Facebook and noted that the social media giant is simply a waste of time. “Facebook is like a jail. You sit around, waste time, have a profile picture, write on walls and get poked by guys you don’t know (via gizmodo),” he wrote.
Agrawal had earlier tweeted: “Facebook is seriously messed up. The https settings revert back to http when you use any app that doesn’t do https.”
Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday tweeted: “Wishing you the very best ahead @jack, and congrats @paraga and @btaylor – excited for Twitter’s future!”
“Wishing you the very best ahead @jack, and congrats @paraga and @btaylor – excited for Twitter’s future,” Pichai said in a tweet.
Agrawal will take over from Dorsey as the CEO in 2022. Agrawal joins a select group of CEOs of Indian origin heading technology companies in the US.
