Dear Alumnus/ Alumna,
Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Technip in India recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a partnership in various areas, including research collaborations with the ocean, civil and metallurgical and materials engineering departments.
The partnership also aims to create of a postgraduate programme with a focus on generic engineering, where lectures will be delivered by faculty and industry practitioners. The programme would also facilitate continuing PG education for technical professionals, placement and internships for IIT Madras students and various sponsorship opportunities for conducting research and taking up corporate social responsibility initiatives. I signed on behalf of IIT Madras and Samik Mukherjee, country head and MD, on behalf of Technip in India, in the presence of Philippe Barril, president and COO, Technip.Both parties expressed confidence that this partnership would further consolidate the existing relationships between Technip and IITM.
This is an example of the type of partnerships that our Development Office is trying to build through our outreach to industry. While the Center for Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research remains our primary interface for industry wanting to sponsor research or engage faculty in consultancy assignments, our Office has a different mission—to identify opportunities collaboratively with industry (and Corporates, Foundations, alumni, well-wishers) to further the cause of IIT Madras as a top-tier engineering & technology institution in the world. A key ingredient there is to promote a world-class research ecosystem on campus. We are inviting our partners to assist us through various means which result in win-win scenarios—sponsorship & top-ups for M.S. & Ph.D. scholars, Chair professorships (visiting, internal), postdoctoral fellowships, rewards for excellent thesis work, awards and scholarships, naming opportunities where the contributed amount can be taken into the institute corpus, corporate social opportunity (CSR) initiatives, etc. Please pitch in, and/ or get your company to do so.
I’m sure you pay attention to rankings, to see how IITM stacks up. Before you draw any conclusions, please see the Director, Prof. Bhaskar’s, article in the “Indian Express”, where he has tried to give a balanced view of what rankings assess, what they don’t, why the agencies do it,and why the universities care for it. It’s an eye-opener:
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/left-out-of-the-rankings/
Our alumnus, Prof. Suresh Garimella, is in the news. With the goal of broadening sources of research funding and strengthening institutional support for the research enterprise, Purdue University has announced that it will merge its offices of research and global partnerships into one organization. Suresh, who currently heads their global partnerships organization, will assume leadership of the newly combined entity.