Pre-placement offers roll in steadily at IITs

Pre-placement offers (PPOs), including plum international postings, are rolling in steadily at the country’s premier technological institutes, indicating a good placement season in December. Among the companies who have lined up international offers are Google, which has offered salaries of $120,000 (Rs. 7.5 million) compared with Rs. 7.3 million last year to one student at its US headquarters to students at IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Guwahati. Facebook, too, has offered overseas jobs at IIT-Madras and IIT-Roorkee while Microsoft has made oofers at IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Roorkee. Both the companies are expected to revise last year’s offer upwards— Facebook’s Rs. 6.5 million and Microsoft’s Rs. 6 million.

Himanshu Srivastava (22) of IIT-Kharagpur, who has received the offer from Google, is looking forward to his stint with Google. “I have done two internships for the company and I know their work culture. They mix work and fun well and give ample scope to grow,” he says.

Several other top recruiters have made lucrative offers at IIT campuses, but are yet to disclose the details. Among these are Barclays, LinkedIn, Goldman Sachs Technology, Daikin, Qualcomm, Deutsche Bank, Shell, GE, Directi, Reliance and ITC. PPOs, which typically start coming in from August, are jobs offered to students who have done internships in these companies.

In terms of the number of hires too, the picture looks good so far. With 75 PPOs till date, IIT-Bombay is inching closer to last year’s number of 77. IIT-Kharagpur too looks set to close at last year’s level of 130, with 104 PPOs received till date. IIT-Madras, on the other hand, has crossed last year’s count of 33 PPOs with 54 PPOs till date this year.

IIT-Guwahati has received 40 PPOs almost touching last year’s total of 42. IIT-Kanpur, too expects to end the season with 20% more offers compared with last year, with 62 PPOs already in. Last year’s total count was 80. IIT-Roorkee has received 37 offers till date, topping last year’s 35. “The huge inflow of PPOs suggests a change in the recruitment pattern. Companies want to take the internship route to reach their decision on final placements,” says Avijit Chatterjee, Professor-In-charge, Placement, IIT-B. He says recruiters are now doing more to hire the right candidate, as during internships, they can get to know the student better.

The total number of internships at his institute went up by 40% this year to 900, compared with last year. Another reason for the steady inflow of PPOs could be that the process of placing interns has been formalised. At IIT-B, for instance, the placement office is taking care of internships along with placements.

“The pay package has seen an increase for almost all the companies as compared to last year,” says Natesan Srinivasan, Faculty-In-Charge, Placement, IIT-Guwahati.

Source: The Economic Times, October 8, 2013

Five Indian universities in top 400 world’s best universities – IIT-Kanpur disputes findings

Five Indian institutions found a place in the top 400 of the world’s best universities in 2013, improving their tally from the previous year, according to the UK-based Times Higher Education World University Rankings report published on Wednesday.

India added three institutions to the top 400 list, according to the report. Panjab University emerged as the top-ranked Indian institution and was placed between 226 and 250 in the global rankings. The report didn’t give a specific ranking. The other four Indian institutions in the list are the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi; IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Roorkee, ranked in the 351-400 bracket.

“These results should be encouraging for India: while no Indian institution makes the top 200, one player new to the rankings, Panjab University, is close in the 226-250 group. Moreover, India now has five representatives in the top 400—a sign of growing commitment to the global rankings,” said Phil Baty, Editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Last year two Indian institutions—IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Roorkee—were in the top 400 ranks.

IIT-Kanpur Director Indranil Manna disputed the findings, claiming that the technology institute had not participated in the rankings. “Where are these agencies getting data from. They did not come to our campus, we have not participated. So the ranking is based on unofficial and unverified data,” said Manna.

Traditionally, the IITs have never been part of any rankings, Manna said. “There are some dozen agencies doing rankings. They have their own business interest and I have no problem with that but you need official data. Who is giving them data to rank us?” The IITs have a national mandate and do not have varied disciplines like many foreign universities, Manna said.

Besides, funding to the IITs can’t be compared with institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the IITs don’t have enough foreign students and teachers, he said. “So these are not apple-to-apple comparisons.”

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has, however, set up a panel to suggest ways to improve the rankings of top Indian institutes. Manna is a member of the committee.

Overall, California Institute of Technology retained its number one position in the rankings for the third consecutive year, Harvard University rose to second place from fourth, sharing the position with the UK’s University of Oxford. Stanford University slipped from joint second to fourth. MIT was ranked fifth in the survey, Princeton University sixth, University of Cambridge seventh, University of California, Berkeley eighth, University of Chicago ninth and Imperial College, London tenth

The US led the comparison among 26 countries, with 77 of its institutes in the top 200 rankings. Europe fared badly this year, the ranking agency said in a statement. Germany’s University of Munich dropped out of the top 50. Institutions from Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and Austria also performed poorly, it said.

The UK remains Europe’s strongest representative, with 31 universities in the top 200. The Netherlands has 12 in the top 200 rankings, followed by Germany with 10, France with eight, Switzerland with seven and Belgium with five.

Europe’s difficulties contrast with progress for most leading East Asian universities, the study said. Japan’s University of Tokyo maintained its status as Asia’s number one institution, moving up four places to 23rd in the list.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) held on to the second position in the region with an overall 26th ranking, overtaking Australia’s University of Melbourne.

Source: Mint, October 3, 2013

New engineering test format: IIT-Kharagpur Director’s support irks IITs’ faculty

The ongoing row over the joint entrance examination (JEE) for undergraduate engineering courses intensified on Sunday with the All India IIT Faculty Federation virtually rejecting the common test and expressing “shock” over the IIT-Kharagpur Director’s statement in support of it.

“The Director has made public statements which are in contradiction of the resolutions passed by the Senate of the IIT-Kharagpur. The resolutions did not recommend inclusion of board exam marks and the conduct of a joint entrance exam by a third party. The Senate said categorically that till 2014, no change should be made and status quo maintained,” A.K. Mittal, secretary of the Faculty Federation said in a statement here.

On Saturday, two Directors — Damodar Acharya of the IIT-Kharagpur and Gautam Barua of the IIT-Guwahati — backed the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s decision and criticised the IIT-Kanpur’s Senate for its decision to hold a separate entrance test in 2013. IIT-Kanpur Director Sanjay Dhande had backed the government plan, but the Senate overruled his decision.

However, Mr. Damodar Acharya told The Hindu that at a special meeting held on May 2, the Senate agreed to open the JEE to all other institutions which would like to use it; but it came with a rider: the policy decisions, including paper setting, model answer preparation, printing, evaluation and the merit list preparation should be under the control of the IITs through a Joint Admission Board (JAB).

Core syllabus
The Senate wanted a common core syllabus in physics, chemistry and mathematics across the Boards, which was done through the COBSE (an apex body of all State Secondary Education Boards) and two years of lead time to examine the effect of the Board performance on the JEE ranking and the availability of Board exam results in time. It had already been agreed that for the final ranking, the inclusion of the Board’s normalised score could be considered only in 2015.

“It may be noted that the proposed examination in two papers, JEE-main and JEE-advanced, are not very different from the current one. The perception that it will adversely affect the quality of input to IITs is without any basis. In fact, students with better Board performance will now get a chance to get into IITs. These students shall perform better than students who have cracked the JEE with poorer school performance, Prof. Acharya said.

‘Continuous evolution’
The faculty of the IIT-Kharagpur also issued a statement, rejecting the Centre’s decision. “The trust that the IIT-JEE has earned over the last five decades is due to the continuous evolution of processes and unflinching devotion of the faculty and staff of the IITs. Any test leading to ranking in IIT admissions must be wholly owned by the IITs,” it said.

Source: The Hindu, June 11, 2012

Single engineering admission test formula hangs in balance over dissent

Differences have surfaced within the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, whose senate on Friday opposed a country-wide common entrance examination for technical colleges. If this dissent cascades — a section of the IIT-Kharagpur faculty is the latest group to express reservations — the plan for the common entrance test for all engineering and technology schools may come undone.

“One nation, one test, is a desirable objective. While IIT-Kanpur senate has passed a resolution, we have to look at its implications,” M. Anandakrishnan, Chairman of the Board of Governors (BoG) at IIT-Kanpur, said on Sunday. “One IIT cannot run the IIT exam. We have to think whether all the IITs will go along. IITs are a close group and decisions need to reflect the view of all.”

But for the exception of two states, India is poised to move to a single entrance test for admission to engineering colleges across the country, possibly as early as next year, Mint reported on 6 June. This was decided at the state education ministers’ conference convened by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in the capital on Tuesday. The country has around 4,000 engineering colleges and at least 1.5 million students enter them every year.

After the senate resolution on Friday, IIT-Kanpur’s Director has already formed an admissions committee, and the first task of this panel will be to coordinate with other willing IITs to conduct a separate admission test in 2013, a senate member said on condition of anonymity. A section of the IIT-Khargapur faculty on Sunday also expressed dissent over the proposed common entrance exam, said A.K. Mittal, secretary of the All India IIT Faculty Federation.

In the worst-case scenario, there could be two different tests for the 15 IITs; those who support the common admission examination devised by the IIT Council can go for the single test and those with IIT-Kanpur can have their own admission process, the Kanpur senate member said. Anandakrishnan said the government, the BoG and the senate cannot behave like “different political parties”, and it is possible to have a “harmonious relationship”. The BoG of an IIT is its highest decision-making body.

Meanwhile, IIT Delhi is set to hold a senate meeting on 21 June after its director returns from a vacation. Some of its faculty said it is “possible to have a similar resolution like Kanpur”, but others said a clear picture will emerge only within a week. The teachers declined to be named. Both IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur have expressed their dissatisfaction over the IIT Council’s 28 May decision to hold a common entrance exam. The Council is headed by HRD minister Kapil Sibal and comprises of all the directors, the chairpersons of the board of governors of IITs, industry experts, a few ministry bureaucrats and officials from the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

The Council decided that applicants will be selected on the basis of three tests—the class XII board exam, the joint entrance examination (JEE) main test and the JEE advanced exam. All the centrally funded technical institutes except the IITs will give weightage to these three sets of examinations in the proportion of 40:30:30. The ministry says a uniform national test will reduce the demand for capitation fees that many engineering colleges demand, just as it will reduce stress on aspirants, who now write multiple entrance tests. It will also diminish the influence of coaching centres on entrance preparation and re-emphasize the importance of class XII board exams across India.

At least two officials of the MHRD said they were yet to receive any formal communication from IIT-Kanpur. “Despite all the noise, we expect to find a common ground. At the maximum, we will sit down for another round of dialogue with the IITs and things will move on from next academic year,” said one of the officials. “When he (Sibal) is back in action (on 18 June), we expect things to settle down and a clearer picture to emerge,” the second official said. Both officials requested anonymity.

Somnath Bharti, President of IIT Delhi Alumni Association and a Supreme Court advocate, said IIT-Kanpur can hold its own entrance examination. “The IIT council’s decision is not binding on individual IITs,” he said. “It (the common admission test) looks like a populist decision by the minister.” The IIT Delhi Alumni Association is set to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this week and is weighing legal options to “protect the autonomy of the IITs”, Bharti said.

Source: Mint, June 11, 2012

No followers for IIT-Kanpur’s plan to conduct own entrance exam

Despite Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kanpur’s decision to reject the MHRD’s ‘one-nation one-test’ proposal and conduct its own entrance exam from next year, the directors of IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kharagpur have said there are no plans to deviate from the earlier decision of taking in students through the common entrance test (CET) to be introduced from 2013.

RK Shevgaonkar, Director, IIT-Delhi, says, “We stand by our decision to go through the CET route from next year onwards and there is no deviation from the same.” Agrees Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT-Bombay. “There is no change in our plans regarding the conduct of the exams.” Damodar Acharya, Director, IIT-Kharagpur, says, “There is absolutely no change in our plans to go through the CET route next year. Even in our last senate meeting held on May 30, there was no objection raised against CET.”

IIT-Guwahati, for its part, says that the institute is not going the IIT-Kanpur way, but will stay with the IIT Council’s decision. Gautam Barua, Director, IIT Guwahati, says, “There are no problems as far as IIT-Guwahati is concerned and we stand by the IIT Council’s decision.” “But we don’t know what the current movement by the faculty associations will lead to. We hope things are sorted out early,” he adds.

While IIT-Kanpur senate’s announcement to hold a separate exam has created a storm, the final decision is yet to come through as the senate has to make an amendment allowing it to hold a separate exam. The current ordinance of IIT-K says IIT-K will take in students through a common entrance test held for all IITs like JEE. After the senate decides, the decision has to be put forward to the board of governors which can reject or ask for amendments in the decision.

If faculty associations are able to mobilize the opinion further and all boards come together in protest of the decision by the IIT Council, there may be a legal battle against the decision of the MHRD.

Source: The Economic Times, June 11, 2012

Sibal’s exam plan splits IITs, may stress out aspirants

The HRD ministry’s decision to hold an all-inclusive common engineering test appears to have split the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) vertically. Indications are that IIT-Delhi and Bombay could back IIT-Kanpur in holding their own entrance test while Madras, Roorkee, Kharagpur and Guwahati will stand by the Centre’s decision.

If the current wave of resentment among faculty, which gathered momentum on Saturday, a day after IIT-Kanpur’s decision, is backed by their respective senates, it would add to the raft of entrance tests students take after their boards. IIT-Kanpur’s senate called the HRD ministry’s decision on admissions “academically and methodically unsound”. Faculty members in Delhi and Bombay also expressed resentment that the concerns raised by them, including the 2014 roll-out, were not addressed by the HRD ministry.

All India IIT Faculty Federation secretary Prof. A K Mittal said, “The IIT-Kanpur’s decision should not be seen in isolation. We are talking to all IITs and there is resentment among them on the fact that the IITs will not conduct their own exam and that the introduction has been scheduled for 2013 despite our reservations on the preparedness.”

But IIT-Guwahati Director Gautam Barua criticised IIT-Kanpur senate’s decision. “I am sad that they have to take this extreme step for such a small matter. Right now, we are not talking about one common entrance test. We are basically talking about… having a common exam for NITs, IITs and IIITs. Whether this leads to a common exam for everybody, only time will tell,” he said. His IIT-Kharagpur counterpart Damodar Acharya said the institution did not have any objection to the Centre’s move.

Source: The Times of India, June 10, 2012

Common test: IIT-Kanpur to go it alone, IIT-Delhi likely to follow suit

After Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kanpur rejected the Centre’s ‘one-nation one-test’ proposal and decided to conduct its own entrance exam from next year, IIT-Delhi Alumni Association is pushing IIT-Delhi to follow the suit. A decision is expected to be taken next week when the Senate of IIT-Delhi meet here next week.

“In all likelihood, IIT-Delhi Senate seems to be geared up to follow the suit of IIT-Kanpur Senate,” IIT Delhi alumni president Somnath Bharti told PTI. In its yesterday’s meeting, the Senate of IIT-Kanpur had said the IIT Council’s recent proposal on admissions is “academically and methodically unsound”.

The Senate, while deciding to go it alone, had also said the Centre’s ‘one-nation one-test’ proposal was in “violation of the Institutes of Technology Act (1961) and IIT Kanpur Ordinances (Ordinance 3.2 (Admissions)”.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on May 28 had announced that from 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs and IIITs will have to sit under a new format of common entrance test, which will also take plus two board results into consideration.

Sibal had claimed it was approved without dissent at the IIT Council meeting and had the backing of the senates of four of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). “The council consists of the IITs, the IIITs and the NITs. There was not a single dissent. It was unanimously adopted. Therefore, I went forward,” the minister had said.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 9, 2012

Researchers at IIT-Kanpur give a new insight into micromechanics

When you bend a rod, say made of aluminium, and then straighten it back, why doesn’t it get back to its perfect shape, unlike a metal spring that retains its original frame even after being tampered with? Also, why is it easy to bend a thin rod? The answers to these questions have been around since the 1930s, when researchers in the field of micromechanics of materials first suggested the concept of dislocations, which are defects in the crystals or grains within the material. These dislocations not only weaken crystals, but also cause deformation by moving and leaving the crystal, the effect being permanent, in contrast to the spring which is elastic or reversible in nature.

Now, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, (IIT-K), have come up with a new concept about these subtle goings-on inside the crystals of the materials that challenge some of the ideas that have been around over the past six decades. In this, the researchers also attempt to take forward the work on micromechanics of legends from the 1950s, like John Douglas Eshelby.

A dislocation introduces energy, and this energy is released when it reaches the surface, thus making plastic deformation irreversible. The IIT-K researchers have suggested that the slip of these dislocations might be reversible. “We discovered something which is a double oxymoron — reversible plastic deformation due to elasticity. In the process, we discovered a new class,” says Anandh Subramaniam, assistant professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, IIT-K. Two papers that Anandh co-wrote with fellow researchers Prasenjit Khanikar and Arun Kumar were published last year by The Philosophical Magazine, one of the oldest scientific journals in the world.

Research into the micromechanical behaviour of materials, which includes areas such as dislocation dynamics, is crucial to their usage in industrial applications such as fashioning a car door out of metal. “The motion of dislocations is what allows change of shape, and impeding the motion of dislocations is what gives strength to the material. So, these are two opposite sides of the coin,” explains Dipankar Banerjee, former chief controller, R&D, at the Defence Research and Development Organisation, and currently professor with the Department of Materials Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

While dislocations cause deformation by moving, and finally leave the crystal, it doesn’t always require an external force for them to do that. That’s because they are automatically attracted to free surfaces, a phenomenon explained by a concept known as ‘image force’. It is called so because a hypothetical negative dislocation is assumed to exist on the other side of the free surface, causing an attraction towards it. This ‘image construction’ is usually used for the calculation of the force and ‘image forces’ can lead to crystals becoming spontaneously dislocation-free.

“Over the past 60 years, people have known this concept called image force and have developed theories, etc,” says Anandh. “So, the first of the two things we showed is that the image force construction theory actually breaks down when we actually want it to work.” The reason, he explains, is because when the dislocation is less than about 100 atomic spacings from the surface it causes small deformations to the surface, partly relaxing the energy and hence altering the image force. In a nanocrystal, the entire domain can deform. For example, a thin plate would bend in the presence of a dislocation. In such cases, the standard formula cannot be used, he says.

The more interesting thing their computer simulation models showed was that the image force can also be zero in some cases. This means that a dislocation moving inside a crystal can be in neutral equilibrium just like a ball rolling on a plane or an Anglepoise lamp where mechanism of spring and lever allows it to be moved to various configurations without putting in any effort. “Over a range of positions, irrespective of where the dislocation sits, its energy does not change. So, this is the new concept we have found out,” says Anandh.

“We can describe things between a material and a structure, which we call a structure ecause it has some geometry and a material because the defect has a crystallographic origin. So, we found out that actually we have to define a new term called material-structure, and that there can be neutral equilibrium or zero-stiffness material-structures,” says Anandh. He says further research also indicated that an edge dislocation is stable in a finite crystal, a question that’s some 60 years old. However, the research is at a very fundamental level and potential applications are still to be thought on, says Anandh.

Computer simulation and modelling has been a key development over the past decade from the industrial standpoint of metallurgy, which earlier used an entirely experimental approach, says Dipankar Banerjee. “So, you substantially reduce your experimental costs and time in introducing new shapes and materials into service,” he says. While the materials used for structural applications are fairly mature, the key focus is to reduce the costs of applying such materials and also the timescale of engineering them, he says.

Source: The Financial Express, February 14, 2012

Haryana may have to wait longer for its IIT

The Haryana government, which is keen to get Delhi’s Indian Institute of Technology’s (IIT) second campus in the state, may have to wait for some time before the Centre gives its nod to the project. The idea of the country’s premier IIT having a satellite campus has been floated for some time and Haryana has been zeroed in because of its proximity to Delhi.

“IIT Delhi’s satellite campus is to be set up in Haryana and we hope to bring it at Rohtak,” Deepender Hooda, MP from Rohtak told FE. A senior official from the premier institute said though a satellite campus is being considered, but Rohtak might be a little far. “Our’s is a small campus and our activities are growing. The blueprint is on paper and no allocation has been made as yet. This is work in progress,” the official said.

The IIT has requested the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) for its consent and has received “positive response”. However, the ministry is not so enthusiastic about the expansion of IIT Delhi. According to a senior MHRD official, there is no formal proposal about the project and land is also not being offered free of cost.

“The state government is not welcoming the IIT with open arms. Moreover, if a financial element is involved, then we will have to take up the matter with the finance ministry also,” the official added. Incidentally, the IIT at Delhi is not the only one to spread its wings. In addition to its main campus, IIT Kharagpur has two extension campuses — one in Kolkata and another in Bhubaneswar. The extension campuses provide venue for continuing education programmes and distance learning courses.

IIT Roorkee inaugurated its Greater Noida Campus in April this year and it also has another extension center in Saharanpur. In fact, IIT Kanpur is all set to join the big brigade of top educational institutions at Noida which will provide students with short-term management courses and refresher courses meant for distance learning.

Source: The Financial Express, September 5, 2011

IIT-Kanpur starts facility for enhanced power research

Envisioned to bolster enhanced research in power, a Real Time Digital Simulation Facility at the Electrical Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K) has started functioning. The facility inaugurated yesterday is expected to give students the opportunity for hi-tech research into practical power and control systems, project coordinator Prof. S.C. Shrivastava said.

Solar and wind power plants in remote areas are connected to a power grid with the help of a controller and an experiment on how much energy it receives cannot be conducted there, he said, adding that the simulator would help testing its performance in laboratory conditions which would then be applied in real-time.

The simulator, which been bought from a Canada-based technology firm, would also facilitate new planning initiatives with power utilities, he said. A five year long project, an amount of Rs. 7.6 crores (Rs. 76 million) has been provided by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India for it, he added.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), July 23, 2011