NIT-C director lays stress on R&D

Updated on: Monday, July 13, 2009

Research and development has a been a prime area of focus for G.R.C. Reddy, director, National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NIT-C).

Talking to The Hindu-EducationPlus, Dr. Reddy, who has completed three years of service as NIT-C director, said that the name and fame of an institution depends on R&D, even though teaching is important.

The NIT-C bagged projects worth Rs.6 crore to Rs.7 crore as of now. Many new projects were in the offing. The location of NIT-C was not a problem. IIT Kanpur and Kharagpur were located remotely but were able to perform well in the R&D areas, he said.

He said that he also tried to attract faculty members from abroad. According to estimates, there were nearly 5,000 post-doctoral qualified Indians in the U.S. “We can certainly attract them. I had conducted some interviews through video-conferencing. Some of them had joined our institution,” he says.

He said he was focussing on emerging disciplines like bio-technology and nano-technology. In fact, all the departments got equal treatment. “The science departments which were earlier given not that much importance were also given freedom to perform,” he said.
New courses

The classes for the Master of Business Administration (MBA) course in the newly established NITC-School of Management Studies (NITC-SOMS) on the NIT-C campus started in June. A total of 30 candidates had been selected to this course. Their selection was based on scores obtained in the Indian Institutes of Management-Common Admission Test (CAT) or the Indian Institutes of Technology-Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET) and performance in bachelor’s degree examination, group discussion and interview.

Dr. Reddy said that Dr. Prabhakaran Paleri, former director-general of Indian Coast Guard, had already joined as head at the NITC-SOMS. NITC-SOMS would be a separate centre and would have a separate board of studies. Another programme that would be started this year was B.Tech. in engineering physics. Dr. Reddy claimed that no other NITs had this programme. The admissions would be held this year along with other B.Tech. programmes based on the ranks obtained in the All India Engineering Entrance Examinations (AIEEE). The total number of seats was 30.

He said that there were some 30 Faculty Development Programmes (FDPs) conducted in the campus till this month. These programmes would be attracting nearly 549 engineering teachers across the country.

These teachers, who would visit the campus, would be able to get a feel of the facilities here and some of them were also motivated to join for Ph.D. programmes here, he said

NIT-C director lays stress on R&D

More Education news