News

4 Indian colour technologists get rare honour from UK's SDC

Four Indian Colour Technologists including an IIT mumbai alumni have been bestowed with the most prestigious 'Charted Colourist’ honour by Society of Dyers and Colourist, UK.

Virtual IITs: Top degrees a click away

MUMBAI: After half-a-century of being an exclusive club, the Indian Institutes of Technology will finally open their gates wider. Assigned the task of reaching out to more Indian students, IIT directors are drawing up plans to set up a virtual university. IIT-Madras director M S Ananth said, "Wee basically want to make quality education accessible to many more students using modern tools instead of setting up brick-and-mortar campuses."

Alumni in the news - May 14

The man who oversaw the introduction of the petrol version of the Mercedes Benz C-class with state-of-the-art CGI technology is Bharat Balasubramanian, an IIT Mumbai alumnus who is #2 in hierarchy at Mercedes Benz's global R&D set-up. | Mnemonicdictionary.com, a website started by IITB alumnus Amit Aggarwal helps people learn and remember words and their meaning easily by providing memory aids for each word. | The beleaguered environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, represents a new breed of politicians as the "human face" of the party ... factors that could save him from the fallout of his current "China" faux pas." | Manohar Parrikar, convener of the BJP’s newly formed governance cell, said that a code of conduct would be shortly evolved by the cell after discussions with other senior party leaders and chief ministers of party-ruled States. "The fulcrum of the code of conduct are these three principles, namely development of social, personal and financial character," said Mr. Parrikar.

IIT Bombay #1 in India and #36 in Asia

IIT Bombay was ranked #1 in India in the QS Asian University Rankings but fell six places to 36 in Asia. IIT Kanpur, too, slipped three notches to be ranked at 37 against 34 last year, while IIT Delhi fell from 36 to 39 this year. "The rankings are OK. We are not obsessed with it. Our endeavour is to continue our efforts to excel in teaching and research and we are constantly trying to improve,” countered Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay.

IITs roped in to set 4G standards

IEEE’s working group is expected to finalise a global wireless standard for 4G technology — IEEE 802.16m — to follow 3G cellular standards, this week while the members meet in Bangalore. It will later be ratified by a higher committee from IEEE.For the first time, Indian institutes such as IIT-Bombay, IIT-Madras and IIIT-Bangalore have taken part in research for global standards and contributed to this initiative.

INDIA: Severe academic shortage hits elite institutes

India's élite institutes of technology, or IITs, and institutes of management, IIMs, which train some of the country's top engineers and managers are battling a severe shortage of academics that threatens the quality of education at the sought-after institutions.The technology institute at Kharagpur has 299 academic vacancies, followed by 222 at IIT Bombay, 194 at IIT Roorkee, 138 at IIT Madras, 78 at IIT Delhi, 69 at IIT Kanpur and 65 at IIT Guwahati, Purandeswari, Junior Education Minister said.

IITians churn out a new original: Humour

Sitting in a lecture on condensed matter, Vaibhav Devanathan (21) thinks of a quip: Sachin Tendulkar — reducing the number of atheists in India since 1989. He quickly notes it down to update it on his website www.lol-land.in. Last year, three students of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) got together to make a venture out of their love for humour. They set up a website of Indian humour and generated their own content.

HBS appoints Prof. Nitin Nohria ('84) as Dean

Harvard Business School has selected Nitin Nohria ('84) to serve as Dean ... Nohria is the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration at HBS and becomes the school’s 10th dean effective July 1. Harvard’s announcement notes that Nohria received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1984 from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, and a Ph.D. in management in 1988 from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Nohria joined the HBS faculty in 1988 and became a business administration professor 11 years ago.

Applied Materials and IITB partner in solar energy

IITB and Applied Materials, Inc. will broaden the scope of their ongoing research collaboration to develop new energy-related initiatives. Applied Materials will donate three process chambers to IIT Bombay, a leader in education and research, for depositing thin films on solar cells using physical vapor deposition (PVD) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technologies. As a symbolic representation of its commitment to clean technology and a sustainable future, Applied Materials will also donate a solar panel system to IIT Bombay. The panels will be connected to energy-efficient LEDs that will light the University's main avenue of IIT campus at Powai.

Alumni in the news - April 15

Ashank Desai's ('74) story is about his ability to rise from a childhood of hardship to visionary leadership in the Indian software sector | Ashish Rangnekar ('02) develops apps for iPad | Dhiraj Kacker ('93) and Peeyush Rai ('93) make moolah out of people’s emotive memories at Canvera | V.P. Baligar ('78) leads a Karnataka team in Mumbai to woo investors | Dr Rama Iyer in ‘Backwaters to Boardroom’ , while talking about his experience in IIT Bombay in the early 1960s

IIT Bombay Celebrates World IP Day On April 26

Mumbai: This year too, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay celebrates the World IP Day on Monday i.e. April 26, 2010, by arranging two events on the afternoon. Every year, April 26 is being celebrated as the World IP Day at IIT Bombay.

Back to India: US universities lose sheen

When Bidya Binay Karak decided to get a Ph D. in solar astrophysics, she didn’t consider going to America, the land that — lest we forget — put man on the moon. This, despite the fact that the US is widely upheld as the bastion of astrophysics research. The reason? “Institutes like the IISc [Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore] offer world-class master’s and doctoral programmes,” she says, as a matter of fact.

Shahrukh, Aamir To Feature In Cameron’s New Flick

Aamir plays the film’s antagonist, a rogue ISI agent cum CIA informant posing as a college student in IIT Mumbai. (Ed. note: This news report came suspiciously close to April 1, and we have no means of verifying its authenticity!).

Talks call before IIT reforms

The panel of IIT directors that has recommended relying more on board examination scores than entrance test performances in picking students to engineering schools has also cautioned the government against rushing ahead with the reforms without adequate consultations.

Alumni in the news - April 12

Road transport exchange started by three IITB graduates looks to reduce bottlenecks, lead time| Father of mass market GPS is an Indian|Starwood Hotels & Resorts Names Vasant Prabhu Vice Chairman| New kind of green revolution - A T-shirt to help you walk the green mile | Nitin Donde appointed as EVP of Engineering for Aster Data

US mentors for Indian faculty - an initiative by the Pan IIT Alumni Association

Engineering PhD candidates can now look forward to mentoring from faculty members of some top US engineering institutions. Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) — an initiative by the Pan IIT Alumni Association — has taken up a US co-guide PhD initiative wherein faculty members of Indian engineering institutes would be able to obtain PhDs in a four-year period, with the mentoring of distinguished US faculty.

Reliance World launches Robotics camp for school children in Bangalore

Reliance World launches Robotics camp ROBOCAMPTM for school students in association with IIT-incubated Company ThinkLABS robo.in in Bangalore. ROBOCAMPTM to help young minds develop invaluable skills such as problem-solving, logical reasoning, critical thinking and creativity

Indian Scientist Bags NSF Award

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is pleased to announce the selection of New York University's Subhash Khot, an associate professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, to receive its 2010 Alan T. Waterman Award. Khot earned a bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1999, and a doctorate in computer science from Princeton University in 2003.

Student exchanges between Japan and 12 Indian institutes

Japanese educational institutions will start student exchange programme with at least 12 educational institutes including Indian Institutes of Technology and other universities

Kakodkar panel on IITs looking at fee hike

A high-profile committee headed by Dr Anil Kakodkar, chairman of Atomic Energy Commission and IIT Bombay Board of Governors, will meet next week for the first time to examine ways and means to allow IITs to expand their horizons, make academics attractive and boost research.