With an urge to perform better, students march into larger arena of life

S Vishnu Sharmaa, INN/Chennai, @Svs037

The atmosphere wore a colourful look when the mood turned celebratory on IIT-Mandi premises recently. Indian Institute of Technology-Mandi (IIT-Mandi) conducted its seventh convocation where 276 students including 22 Ph.D scholars graduated.

As the students adorned the auditorium with confidence words of wisdom poured out from Babasaheb Neelkanth Kalyani, chairman and managing director of Bharat Forge Limited.

‘Solving for India means solving 40% or more of the world and IIT Mandi students will play a major role in developing these scalable solutions,’ he said.

IIT Mandi’s Technology Business Incubator (TBI) Catalyst, has been successful in attracting entrepreneurs from several parts of the country and has close to 15 commercial and social start-ups in its portfolio from various sectors, he said.
 
‘I’ve also come to know that IIT Mandi runs a project called Enabling the Women of Kamand (EWOK) which is working towards building a network to bring information on employment and providing training opportunities to local women, sharing their qualifications and availability with potential employer.’

Director of IIT-Mandi Professor Timothy A. Gonsalves said the faculty at IIT are working on 225 projects worth more than Rs.110 crores in the academic year 2018-2019, the Institute has received 45 projects of value more than Rs. 15.5 crores.

The Institute has indigenised 11 out of 34 chemicals used in SCL Mohali’s lab. Publication of research is the most important work for knowledge creation and dissemination. Our faculty during the past 10 years have published over 1400 research publication including several books published by internationally recognised publishers, he said.

Subodh Bhargava, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT-Mandi said it is happy to note that women joining the B.Tech. programme in the institute has risen to 20.23 percent, which exceeded the institute’s target of 20 percent for the year 2019.

‘Let me also add that IIT Mandi is the first among all IITs in respect of the number of women faculty.’ Preethi M Kannappan received Rani Gonsalves Memorial Medal and Institute Silver Medal for Mechanical Engineering branch on the occasion.