One of the 23 IITs created to be centres of excellence in training, research and development in science, engineering and technology, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, since its inception in 1961, has seen over 48,000 graduates in disciplines ranging from engineering, physical sciences, management, humanities and social sciences. It’s the strong culture of entrepreneurship, starts-ups and incubators besides focus on research, development and innovation that makes the institute stand out.
Hence, featured among the top 200 world institutions in the QS World University Rankings 2023, IIT Delhi has an improved rank of 174 among the 1,422 globally ranked institutes. According to the QS World University Rankings 2023, IIT Delhi was among the top 12.2 per cent of the global institutes as compared to 25.8 per cent in 2014. There’s certainly something unique about IIT Delhi as it’s the most chased and aspired for institute for engineering aspirants. In fact, five of its academic programmes—electrical and electronic engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, chemical engineering and civil engineering—are in the top 100 rank globally.
There has been a lot of activity on campus in the past one year as the institute could finally get students back with the number of Covid-19 cases on the slide. Be it new courses and programmes, researches, start-ups, MoUs or placements, the institute has been buzzing with developments. Rangan Banerjee, the director of IIT Delhi, says, “About two to three new centres of excellence were set up in the past one year.”
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The Department of Energy Science and Engineering was set up to expand the scope of activities carried out by the 45-year-old Centre for Energy Studies (CES) whereas the focus of the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre (TRIP-C) is on addressing the road transport and traffic safety in India. The institute also started the new Optics and Photonics Centre. Several new academic programmes have also been initiated. “We have started a B.Tech. in Energy Engineering from the academic session 2021-2022 which will be offered by the Department of Energy Science and Engineering. And the bachelors in design will be starting from the academic session 2022-23 by the department of design,” says Banerjee.
While an M.Tech. in electric mobility and master of public policy and an interdisciplinary M.Tech. in cyber security was started from the academic session 2021-22, a few key programmes that will be offered from the academic session 2022-23 are an M.Tech. in Machine Intelligence & Data Science, an MS(R) in transportation safety and injury prevention and an M.Tech. in biomolecular and bioprocess engineering.
There has been a sentiment of positivity as the campus saw record placements during the season between December 2021 and May 2022. There were over 1,300 job offers received by the IIT Delhi students while unique job offer selections were over 1,100. Even the pre-placement offers received were around 230 and around 600 companies visited the campus for around 1,000-plus job profiles.
The institute has been quite busy with research work as well. A team of IIT Delhi analysed over 1.4 million full-length SARS-CoV-2 sequences from across the world and discovered the existence of temporal variations in selection pressures during SARS-CoV-2 evolution and adaptation to the human host. Another team of researchers developed low-cost, elastic buckling-restrained braces for protection against earthquakes during ongoing construction works.
At the same time, the I-Hub Foundation for Cobotics (IHFC), the technology innovation hub of the institute, signed an MoU with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) to design curriculum for schools in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science. ITC Limited, on the other hand, signed an MoU with IIT Delhi to support research in identified STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) areas.