| Indian Institute of Technology Madras | |
|---|---|
IIT Madras logo |
|
| Motto | Siddhirbhavati Karmaja |
| Motto in English | Effort Yields Success |
| Established | 1959 |
| Type | Education and Research Institution |
| Director | Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi |
| Academic staff | 460 |
| Undergraduates | 2,900 |
| Postgraduates | 2,500 |
| Location | Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India |
| Campus | Urban, 2.5 km² of wooded land |
| Mascot | Gajendra Circle (GC) |
| Website | www.iitm.ac.in |
The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान , मद्रास, IIT Madras) is an engineering and technology school in Chennai (formerly Madras) in southern India. It is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India.[1][2][3] Founded in 1959 with technical and financial assistance from the government of the former West Germany, it is third among the Indian Institutes of Technology established by the Government of India through an Act of Parliament, to provide education and research facilities in engineering and technology.[2][4]
IIT Madras is a residential institute that occupies a 2.5 km² (620 acres) campus that was formerly part of the adjoining Guindy National Park. The institute has nearly 360 faculty, 6,000 students and 1,250 administrative and supporting staff. Growing ever since it obtained its charter from the Indian Parliament in 1961, Much of the campus is a protected forest, carved out of the Guindy National Park, home to chital (spotted deer), black buck, and other wildlife. A natural lake, deepened in 1988 and 2003, drains most of its rainwater.
Contents |
In 1956, the German Government offered technical assistance for establishing an institute of higher education in engineering in India. The first Indo-German agreement was signed in Bonn, West Germany in 1959 for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras. IIT Madras was started with technical, academic and financial assistance from the Government of West Germany and was at the time the largest educational project sponsored by the West German Government outside their country. This has led to several collaborative research efforts with universities and institutions in Germany over the years.[5] Although official support from the German government has ended, several research efforts involving the DAAD program and Humboldt Fellowships exist.
The institute was inaugurated in 1959 by Prof. Humayun Kabir, the then Union Minister for Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs. In 1961, the IITs were declared to be Institutions of National Importance that include the seven Institutes of Technology located at Kharagpur (established 1951), Mumbai (established 1958), Chennai (established 1959), Kanpur (established 1959), Delhi (established 1961), Guwahati (established 1994) and Roorkee (established 1847, upgraded to an IIT in 2001). IIT Madras celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2009.
The main entrance of IIT Madras is on Chennai's Sardar Patel Road, flanked by the residential districts of Adyar and Velachery. The campus is close to the Raj Bhavan, the official seat of the Governor of Tamilnadu. Other entrances are located in Velachery (near Anna Garden MTC bus stop, Velachery Main Road), Gandhi Road (known as Krishna Hostel gate or Toll Gate) and Taramani gate(close to Ascendas Tech Park).
The campus is located 10 km from the Chennai Airport, 12 km from the Chennai Central Railway station, and is well connected by buses.
Two parallel roads, Bonn Avenue and Delhi Avenue, cut through the faculty residential area shrouded under a canopy of green, before they meet at the Gajendra Circle, near the Administrative Block. Buses and electric mini buses ply between the gate, Gajendra Circle, the academic zone, and the hostels.
| Kotturpuram | Kotturpuram | Kotturpuram | ||
| Guindy | Adyar | |||
| IIT Madras | ||||
| Guindy National Park | Guindy National Park | Taramani |
The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, is an autonomous statutory organization functioning within the Institute of Technology Act. The seven IITs are administered centrally by the IIT Council, an apex body established by the Government of India. The Minister of Human Resource and Development, Government of India, is the Chairman of the Council. Each institute has a Board of Governors responsible for its administration and control.
The Senate comprises all professors of the Institute and decides its academic policy. It controls and approves the curriculum, courses, examinations, and results. It appoints committees to examine specific academic matters. The Director of the institute serves as the Chairman of the Senate. The Director from 2001 to 2011 was M. S. Ananth,[6] who stepped down at the end of July 2011.[7]. As of September 2011, Bhaskar Ramamurthi has taken over as Director [8].
Three Senate Sub-Committees - The Board of Academic Research, The Board of Academic Courses and The Board of Students - help in academic administration and in the operations of the Institute. The Finance Committee advises on matters of financial policy, while the Building and Works Committee advises on buildings and infrastructure. The Board of Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research addresses industrial consultancy and the Library Advisory Committee oversees library matters.
IIT Madras has 11 engineering departments:
Five other departments offer studies in:
IIT Madras offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees across 15 disciplines in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. About 360 faculty belonging to science and engineering departments and centres of the Institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.
The institute has 15 academic departments and advanced research centres across disciplines of engineering and pure sciences, with nearly 100 laboratories. The academic calendar is organized around the semester. Each semester provides a minimum of seventy days of instruction in English. Students are evaluated on a continuous basis throughout the semester. Evaluation is done by the faculty, a consequence of the autonomous status granted to the Institute. Research work is evaluated on the basis of the review thesis by peer examiners both from within the country and abroad. Ordinances that govern the academic program of study are prepared by the Senate, the highest academic body within the institute.
For the undergraduate curriculum, admission to the B.Tech programme is done through the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE). Admission to the five year integrated Master of Arts (MA) programme is through the Humanities and Social Sciences Entrance Examination (HSEE), an IIT Madras specific exam.[9]
For the postgraduate curriculum, admission to the M.Tech programme is through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). The Joint Admission Test to M.Sc. (JAM) is the entrance exam for the two year M.Sc. programme, and other post B.Sc. programmes. MBA candidates are accepted through the Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET).[9]
| University and college rankings | |
|---|---|
| International | |
| QS (World)[10] | 281 |
| QS (Asian)[11] | 43 |
| Engineering – India | |
| India Today[12] | 4 |
| Outlook India[13] | 5 |
| Dataquest[14] | 2 |
| Government colleges: | |
| Mint[15] | 5 |
Internationally, IIT Madras was ranked 281 in the QS World University Rankings[10] and 43 in the QS Asian University Rankings.[11] In India, among engineering colleges, it ranked 4 by India Today,[12] 5 by Outlook India,[13] and 2 by Dataquest.[14] In the Mint Government Colleges survey of 2009 it ranked 5.[15]
The institute has departments and advanced research centres across the disciplines of engineering and the pure sciences, and nearly 100 laboratories.
Research programs concern work undertaken by faculty members or specific research groups within departments that award an MS or PhD degree. Research is carried out by scholars admitted into these departmental programmes, under the guidance of their faculty. Each department makes known its areas of interest to the academic community through handbooks, brochures and bulletins. Topics of interest may be theoretical or experimental. IIT Madras has initiated 16 inter-disciplinary research projects against identified focus areas.
The rigors of academic study at each level are balanced with co-curricular activities. Lectures on topics of academic relevance are held under the Extramural Lecture Series. Conferences, symposiums and workshops are organized by the faculty, attracting scholarly participation from around the world.
The institute maintains academic friendship with educational institutes around the world through faculty exchange programs. The institute has signed Memoranda Of Understanding (MOUs) with foreign universities, resulting in cooperative projects and assignments.
Through industrial consultancy, faculty and staff undertake assignments for industry that may include project design, testing and evaluation, or training in new areas of industrial development. Industries and organisations request the IIT faculty to undertake assignments channeled through the Center For Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research (ICSR).
National organisations sponsor programs of research by funding projects undertaken by the faculty. Such research is time bound and allows project participants to register for a degree. Project proposals are usually prepared by the IIT faculty and forwarded to interested organisations, based on the nature of their research and their interest to fund such projects.
Sponsored projects are often vehicles for new resources within departments, and often permit their project staff to register for academic degrees in the institute. All sponsored research activities at the institute are coordinated by ICSR.
The IIT Madras Research Park [16] is modeled along the lines of research parks at Stanford and MIT. It focuses not just on incubation efforts but also on propelling innovation in established R&D focused companies. IIT Madras Research Park facilitates a collaborative relationship between tenants/clients and IIT Madras.
The research park is adjacent to IIT Madras (within cycling distance) on an 11 acre campus. The facilities include 1,600,000 sq ft (150,000 m2) of office space with attendant services in three towers of 400,000 sq ft (37,000 m2) each. Each floor plate of the 12 storey towers is about 36,000 sq ft (3,300 m2) with the smallest office space module being around 3,000 sq ft (280 m2). Other facilities include incubation modules, shops, cyber cafes, restaurants, food courts, guest rooms, conference facilities, exhibition space, terrace gardens and landscaped front and back yards.
Shaastra is the annual technical festival of IIT Madras. It is typically held in the first week of October and is the first ISO 9001:2000 certified student festival in the world. It is known for its organization and activities. Forums include the symposia, workshops, video conferences, lectures, demonstrations, and technical exhibitions. Competitive activities cover design events, programming, simulations, quizzes, applied engineering, robotics, junkyard wars and contraptions.
Saarang is the annual social and cultural festival of IIT Madras. It is a five-day long event held towards the end of January every year and attracts a crowd of 100,000 students and young people from across the country, making it one of the largest such fests in India. Saarang events include speaking, dancing, thespian, quizzing and word games, professional shows (nicknamed proshows) and workshops on music, fashion, art, and dance. Saarang has been awarded ISO 9001:2008 certificate recently.
Saarang, is the new name of the festival that was once called "Mardi Gras". It was changed in the early 1990s in effort to reflect the cultural and environmental roots of this festival.
Several departments organize department festivals. ExeBit, Wavez, Mechanica, CEA Fest, Chemclave, Amalgam and Forays are some of the festivals organized by the Computer Science and Engineering, Ocean Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering and Maths departments respectively.
| Fest name | Department |
|---|---|
| Exebit | Computer Science and Engineering |
| Amalgam | Metallurgical and Materials Engineering |
| CEA Fest | Civil Engineering |
| Chemclave | Chemical Engineering |
| Forays | Mathematics |
| Mechanica | Mechanical Engineering |
| Wavez | Ocean Engineering |
| Samanvay | Management Studies |
The departments of Aerospace Engineering and Electrical Engineering organises events at the time of Shaastra itself.
Most students at IIT Madras reside in the hostels, where extracurricular activities complement the academic routine. The campus has 18 hostels, of which three, Sharavati, Sarayu and the recently constructed Sarayu Extension (at the beginning of the Academic year 2011-'12 to accommodate more more girls students of various PG programmes) are exclusively for women. In earlier times each hostel had attached dining facilities but they have since closed down. Sharavati, Sarayu Extension and four seven-storeyed men's hostels do not have mess halls. Dining facilities are provided in two centralized halls dubbed 'Vindhya' and 'Himalaya'. The hostels may accommodate undergraduate and graduate students, though they tend to keep the two apart. Students are assigned to hostels at the time of admission, where they usually spend their entire stay at the Institute.
The hostels are named after the principal rivers of India and the campus buses used to be named after mountains, resulting in an epigram about IIT Madras that it is the only place where the mountains move and the rivers remain still.
The hostels of IITM are:
Sindhu, Pampa, Mahanadhi and Tamiraparani are seven-storeyed whereas all the other (older classic) hostels are three or four storeyed. The older hostels were all three-storeyed till the early 2000s when extra rooms in the form of an extra floor and rooms above the common room were added. These four hostels can accommodate more than 1,500 students. Construction activities have been undertaken in the three or four storeyed hostels to build new floor (in case of three storeyed hostels) and new block at the place of old mess halls. These new blocks will serve as entrances to the hostels once completed.
Saarang, the annual cultural festival, is held in winter. The technical festival of the institute is known as Shaastra. The Open Air Theatre hosts the weekly movie, a Saturday night tradition, besides other activities. It seats over 7,000. The annual inter-hostel sports event is known as the Schroeter. Ganga Hostel has won Schroeter five times in a row, from 2006 to 2011.
Hobby clubs include the speaking club, the astro club, dramatics, music and robotics.
Two student bodies, the Vivekananda Study Circle (VSC) and Reflections focus on spiritual discussions.
The campus has evolved a slang, attracting a published Master's thesis at a German University. A mix of English, Hindi, Telugu(Gult), Malayalam(Mallu) and Tamil(Tam), aspects of the campus slang have been adopted by some other Chennai colleges.
Unlike its sister institutions, IIT Madras lacks a single uniting Indian language among its students: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, English and Hindi are all used, leading to divisions between the students. Consequently, all student participatory activities like debating, dramatics, short-film making, and others are held in English. This is even reflected in the slang that uses more of English than Hindi, unlike in IITM's northern counterparts.
IIT Madras provides residential accommodation for its students, faculty, administrative and supporting staff, and their families. The residential houses employ private caterers. The self-contained campus includes two schools (Vanavani and Kendriya Vidyalaya), three temples (Jalakanteshwara, Durga Peliamman and Ganapathi temple), three bank branches(SBI, ICICI, Canara Bank), a hospital, shopping centers, food shops, a gym, a swimming pool, cricket, football, hockey and badminton stadiums. Internet is available in the academic zone and the faculty and staff residential zone. Internet is available in the hostel zone from 2pm till midnight and from 5am to 8am.[17]
The number of companies registered with the placement office of the IIT in Chennai in 2011 nearly doubled over 2010 from 70 to 126.[18]
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||