Crediting the efforts of the faculty, students and staff of the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) for being ranked first in the overall category in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings, director of IIT-M V. Kamakoti, on Tuesday, said that interdisciplinary courses, research, innovation, and global knowledge sharing would be among the focus areas for the institute, going forward.
In the rankings, the institute has bagged the first place in the ‘overall’ category for the fifth year in a row and has also been placed first in the engineering category for the eighth year in a row.
“IIT-M recently launched 15 centres of excellence, where faculty members from different departments are coming together. This will not just contribute to employability for students who take up interdisciplinary courses being offered, [to] but will further high impact research as well,” Prof Kamakoti told reporters here.
Speaking about IIT-M’s new four-year offline Bachelor of Science programme in medical sciences and engineering, the director said that they had received thousands of applications for this programme.
Campus in Tanzania soon
“Knowledge sharing is what runs the world and as a part of this, we will soon be opening a campus in Tanzania. Our focus on entrepreneurship and innovation too, has been unwavering, and this year we expect at least 20 start-ups at the Centre for Innovation,” he said.
While he said that the rankings gave them confidence that the institution was going in the right direction, Prof Kamakoti said that what would make them truly happy was when the country’s Gross Enrollment Ratio increased. “With a large population between the ages of 15 to 25 years, we need a special focus on education and [need to] dedicate ourselves to this cause. IIT-M is taking several steps for this,” he said.
Mental well-being of students
An important next step for the institution, Prof Kamakoti said, is addressing the mental well-being of the students and faculty.
“We have held stress and mental wellness workshops, as well as undertaken a wellness survey. The feedback so far from students has been promising, and in the coming year, we want to comprehensively address stress faced by students,” he said.
Among their initiatives for students, IIT-M has set up rural interaction centres that focus on after-school classes for students and has also launched a B.Sc degree in Electronics as well as a degree in Data Sciences. “We will continue to take steps towards making IIT-M, a locally relevant and globally recognised institute,” Prof Kamakoti said.
