IIT Mandi celebrates a successful decade of achievements in Academics, R&D and Innovation
Mandi: Indian Institute of Technology Mandi completes 10 years in 2019 since its inception – a decade filled with achievements in R&D, academics, innovation, entrepreneurship and sports.
Speaking about the Institute’s major successes in its ten years, Prof Timothy A. Gonsalves, who has been the Director of IIT Mandi since its inception, said, “It is 10 years since IIT Mandi started in this serene Himalayan river valley. IIT Mandi has crafted a unique project-based approach to B.Tech. learning. It has an inter-disciplinary culture that supports our faculty in working to solve the problems of the Himalayan region and of India. Already IIT Mandi making its mark: the Infosys Prize 2019 in Humanities, lead among all IITs in B.Tech. gender ratio, 13 Gold/ Silver/Bronze medals in International Para-badminton, NIRF 1st ranked University in Himachal are some of our many laurels. In the coming decade, IIT Mandi will surely emerge as a global leader in some academic field.”
Since the first batch of 97 students enrolled in July 2009, IIT Mandi has grown to currently host 125 faculty and 1,630 students including 262 B. Tech., 102 M.Sc., 158 M.Tech., 12 M.A, 307 Ph.D., 57 M.S. and 19 I-Ph.D. The ranks of the alumni has grown to 1,135 who make the institute proud.
One of the most distinguished and first alumni of the Institute, Athar Aamir Khan, who ranked 2nd in the Civil Services Exams in 2015, and in his present posting as an IAS Officer in Jaipur, had this to say, “We had been imagining campuses like IIT Delhi or Mumbai or Madras ever since the results of IIT JEE were out. Questions like, Will there be WiFi? Will there be any projects? Would anyone get a placement later on? etc., were ringing all around. Looking back at it all today, I feel very fortunate that I was also part of this institute along with my other college mates.”
“Like my friends I have ‘grown up’ here. The institute shaped my world view. It allowed me to dream. It provided me with the first opportunities for leadership. What I and my college mates do today is lot grounded in the values that our Alma Mater instilled in us.”, he added.
IIT Mandi successfully achieved the target of female enrolment in undergraduate courses by admitting 20.22 per cent female students to B. Tech. programme for the Academic Year 2019-20. This compares favorably with the target of 17 per cent set by Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Apex Board Committee for 2019-20.
Women Students of IIT Mandi won the first prize in the 4th National Level Hackathon for Women in Computing by Association for Computing Machinery’s Council (ACM). The 2nd year B.Tech, Department of Computer Science Engineering, students are from the first batch of supernumerary seats.
Placements:
A total of 112 offers were made during Phase 1 of Campus Placements for 2019-20 Academic Year, compared to 108 during the preceding academic year of 2018-19. Of these, 34 students received Pre-Placement Offers (PPOs), which are the result of internships in companies/firms getting converted to job offers. This includes five international PPOs made this year (2019-20). A total number of 123 students registered for placements this year (2019-20). The Institute also witnessed some of the top MNCs coming for campus recruitment this year. This includes Microsoft, Amazon, CodeNation, Goldman Sachs, DEShaw, ServiceNow, Domino Data Lab, Razorpay, Oyo Rooms, Publicis Sapients, 1mg, BOSCH, Tonichi Insatsu, SMS DataTech, Works Application, Toppr, Samsung Delhi, Mathworks, Marvell Semiconductors, OLX People, and L&T, among others.
New courses:
From August 2019, IIT Mandi started 3 new and unique B. Tech. programs in Data Science and Engineering, Engineering Physics, and Dual Degree in Bioengineering.
1. B.Tech. course in Data Science and Engineering – It will train students in Computer Science, Applied Statistics, Applied Mathematics and Machine Learning, fields that are required in the context of Data Science and its applications. The programme is being jointly offered by the School of Basic Sciences (SBS) and the School of Computing and Electrical Engineering (SCEE) from the coming academic year (2019-2020).
2. B.Tech. programme in Engineering Physics – The programme is being offered jointly by School of Basic Sciences (SBS), School of Computing and Electrical Engineering (SCEE) and the School of Engineering (SE) at IIT Mandi. The curriculum of Engineering Physics will introduce students to a wide variety of fields in pure as well as applied Physics.
3. B.Tech. – M.Tech. Integrated dual degree programme in Bioengineering – The BTech – MTech Integrated Dual Degree Programme in Bioengineering is a first-of-its-kind in India and it will widen the horizon of Bachelor’s level students to choose from different areas for specialisation in Bioengineering, like Biomedical Engineering, Agro-Technology, Computational Bioengineering or Environmental Science and Engineering.
Academic Collaborations signed in 2019:
1. The Institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Indian Institute of Information Technology Una (IIIT Una) on academic and research activities. Under this MoU, IIT Mandi is collaborating with IIIT Una in developing courses based on the practicum components of IIT Mandi curriculum. To give IIIT Una faculty an insight to the courses, a five-day Faculty Development Programne was at IIT Mandi. In this programme, a team of 8 IIT Mandi faculty provided simulated hands-on training sessions to 25 faculty members of IIIT Una covering 6 courses from IIT Mandi’s practicum list.
2. The Institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Dr. B.R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology Jalandhar (NIT Jalandhar) to promote academic and research cooperation. Under this MoU, both the institutions will exchange scientific and technical information along with joint supervision of Postgraduate and Ph.D. students.
Research and Development:
At present, IIT Mandi’s faculty are involved in 276 R&D projects and a total number of 57 sponsored research. A notable mention is the Advanced Materials Research Centre (AMRC), established in 2013 with an investment of about Rs. 50 crore, housing advanced instruments for characterization of materials.
IIT Mandi faculty from the four schools (School of Engineering, School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, School of Basic Sciences, and School of Humanities and Social Sciences) published a total of 306 publications from 1st January till 23rd December 2019.
Infosys Prize awarded to IIT Mandi Faculty:
IIT Mandi faculty Dr. Manu V. Devadevan was selected for Infosys Prize 2019 awarded by Infosys Science Foundation for his substantial contribution to the field of revisionist history of pre-modern South India. The award will be presented to Dr. Devadevan on 7th January 2020. The prize comprises a pure gold medal, a citation and a prize purse of USD 100,000. A panel of accomplished jurors comprising renowned scholars and professors shortlisted the winners of Infosys Prize 2019 from 196 nominations.
Extra-curricular activities:
IIT Mandi also successfully hosted the athletes from 35 government and private technical institutions for the 6th edition of Rann-Neeti, an annual Inter-College sports fest organised by the Sports Society of IIT Mandi from 11th to 13th October 2019.
On 2nd October 2019, the NSS unit at IIT Mandi was felicitated for its tireless contribution to keep Mandi town clean by organizing regular cleanliness drives since the last two years. 65 student volunteers from IIT Mandi were present during the event.
In a message shared with the Institute on the occasion of Seventh Convocation held on 5th October 2019, the Honorable Vice-President of India Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu congratulated the graduating students and commended IIT Mandi for continuously developing new academic programs with increasing number of students graduating every year justifying its motto ‘Scaling the Heights.’
State-of-the-art Infrastructure:
The Institute has a state-of-the-art infrastructure with a built-up area of 1.15 lakh sq. mt comprising of cutting-edge laboratories, libraries, sports facilities, spaces for other extra and co-curricular activities. This includes a 750-seater auditorium which is one-of-its-kind in the region and has hosted events like 4th International and 19th National Conference on Machines and Mechanisms (iNaCoMM 2019), 17th Annual Conference of the Indian Association for Social Sciences and Health (IASSH), 7th International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation (ICCMS 2019) etc., attracting experts from all over the world. The unique design of the hostels with large common spaces and terraces is an added perk for the students. The Institute is on track towards completing 2.16 lakh sq. mt of construction by the year 2021 to provide for 2,580 students and 270 faculty and staff members.
IIT Mandi has established National Knowledge Network Facilities including Virtual classrooms of 100 plus capacity and Conference Halls in all academic blocks. The academic blocks have spacious classrooms with a capacity ranging from 30 to 300. The Institute houses a main library with a collection of 18,948 books and a fully automated and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) enabled Satellite Library with 20,000 online resources for students, faculty and staff.