President Pratibha Patil speaking at the 46th Convocation of IIT Bombay, called on engineers of premier Indian institutes to develop modern equipment to combat terror. Industrialist Ratan Tata was conferred a degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa). IIT-B conferred 1,604 degrees this year, the highest in the history of the institute and an increase of 8.2% over the total number of degrees awarded last year. Two hundred of the degrees were PhDs. "This number is the high

The management-engineering combination has become possible at the IIT Bombay from this year after the institution recently revamped its academic year requirement by reducing the mandatory credits for the Bachelor of Technology (BTech) programme from 330 to 252, thus allowing students to squeeze in a minor area of their interest ... students can choose from a range of 17 minor courses, including management, CompSci, EE etc. Apart from minors, students can also pursue an honours degree, or take up a BTech with honours along with two minor programmes. The same combination is also offered to students pursuing five-year dual degrees.

The IITs are yet to implement the reservations policy among their faculty, a month after the human resource development (HRD) ministry asked them to do so "with immediate effect". And seven months after the ministry, which oversees education, asked all Central universities to reserve 27% of staff seats for other backward classes (OBCs), that process has not begun. The reasons vary, from confusion over the edict to legal challenges, but the main problem is that finding educators is hard enough - and finding them from less privileged classes is even harder. "In any case, we struggle to fill up the existing vacancies. With almost half of the vacancies for teachers going to reserved categories, it might just get more difficult," said Juzer Vasi, deputy director of IIT Bombay.

Seclore Technology, incubated by IIT Bombay has entered into a strategic alliance with Datamatics Technologies Ltd (DTL). The alliance will help Seclore to strengthen its market presence as DTL has an existing rich customer base and a strong focus on the BFSI segment. DTL is one of the largest service providers for IBM FileNet in India, and this alliance will enable it to extend its offerings and include information security in its focus.

India's Gems Lose Out in $2 Billion Industry ... India's caste-based affirmative-action program in higher education isn't leveling the playing field. The economics of a talent search are loaded against discovering gems that lack the polish of tutoring. It's an irony that in a country where returns on higher education have probably never been higher, many of the IIT seats reserved on the basis of caste haven't been filled this year. A big part of the problem is that the IIT entrance test has now become an estimated $2 billion industry. This creates an unfair system. Students from poor families who can't afford private coaching stand a small chance against their more affluent peers who start preparing as early as the seventh grade to get ready for a test they won't be taking for another five years. As M.S. Ananth, Director of the IIT in Chennai, told the Times of India newspaper recently, coaching classes are producing masters of "pattern recognition." "With this, you can't get students with raw intelligence," he said.

Gujarat's first Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) opened in the Vishwakarma Engineering College campus in Chandkheda area on Saturday with 103 students, with only eight girls among them. Classes will begin Monday onwards and initially the faculty will come from Mumbai. Director of IIT-Bombay Ashok Misra who also heads the new IIT here said, "IIT-Gandhinagar has been chosen by many students. The merit list in Mumbai's chemical engineering branch closed at 4,300 rank while Gandhinagar has gone beyond this number". At the outset, this IIT will offer only chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering branches. According to Misra, chemical engineering was given priority given the many chemical industries in the state, which make prospects for these graduates brighter.

Getting into the IITs just got a tad easier. With the increase in the pool of seats, the final cut-off score dropped to 180 as compared to last year's 206 out of a total of 489 marks. Similarly, the cut off for reserved category students —Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) — fell from 126 to 104. "In the JEE, the lowest score is not zero. It stretches to negative 38," explained IIT-Bombay JEE chairman N Venkatramani.

The IITs, which have already been lowering admission levels for SCs and STs, now feel that with the number of seats for these categories going up, while general category seats stay constant, a larger population of students will have to be taken in, probably at rock-bottom scores. IIT-Bombay director Ashok Misra, who had pointed this out to the Veerappa Moily Oversight Committee, feels the issue has been completely overlooked. “To take in so many reserved category students, admission criteria will have to be relaxed''.

Alumni in the news ...

• Imran Khan should actually have been Imran Anil Pal. His father, Anil Pal (BTech '80 EE) was a classmate of director Mansoor Khan, Imran’s mother’s brother at IIT Bombay.

Hundreds of former and present students, including many faculty members of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B), have protested acceptance of sponsorship by an alumni group from US-based Dow Chemicals for a golden jubilee conference in New York July 18-20. Addressing the media in Mumbai Monday, Janak Daftari, an IIT-B alumni, said: "A group of IIT-B alumni, mostly from Silicon Valley, in total disregard to the sentiments and the callous practices being followed by the firm in their (alumini's) origin country, has gone ahead and under the aegis of IIT-Bombay Heritage Fund are organizing a two-day golden jubilee function in New York between July 18-20."

Over one thousand people - friends and alumni of IIT Bombay - came together to celebrate 50 years of IIT Bombay. It was the largest alumni event for an Indian university, outside India. During the conference, as much as $7 million was pledged through private donations from IIT alumni, including $5 million from Romesh Wadhwani, founder of the Symphony Group.

• Payback time: Old boy gifts IIT-B $5m ... 

• 1012 alumni at GJ conference in NY ...

• All news coverage of 2008 GJ Conference ... 

• Director Ashok Misra announces resignation ...

IITBAA announces elections for 4 positions on the Board of Directors ... nominations are due by Aug 4 and online voting will take place from Aug 14-20.  The Annual General Meeting be held at 5 pm on Aug 23 at the PC Saxena Auditorium.
IITBAA Annual Report for 2007-08 ...

Payback time: Old boy gifts IIT-B $5m ... The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) has received one of its largest private donations from an old boy in New York. At an alumni gathering in the Big Apple, Romesh Wadhwani, founder of the Symphony Group, gifted his alma mater a purse of $5 million (about Rs 22 crore) to set up a research centre in the area of bio-sciences.

Concerned over the quality of teachings in IITs, a panel of alumni of Indian Institutes of Technology has suggested that the institution should work more cooperatively and each one need not have all the faculties. The panelists expressed apprehension that as the number of IIT increases, the quality could suffer because of standard of students joining them as also of teaching faculty. The panel discussion was held Saturday as part of the golden jubilee celebrations of the IIT Mumbai.

Indian Institute of Technology - Mumbai Director Prof Ashok Misra is leaving the institute in October to join Intellectual Ventures, a private company which seeks to create invention capital network by developing a large patent portfolio. Prof Misra announced his decision at the Golden Jubilee Celebration of IIT-Mumbai, here, saying he considered this forum to the best place to make his departure known. Misra has been Director of the premier institute since May 2000 and is serving second term.

Alumni of prestigious IIT Bombay have decided to celebrate their alma mater's 50th birthday with a Golden Jubilee Conference in New York. The three-day conference, ''Looking Ahead: The Next Fifty Years'', will begin from July 18 and will feature eminent speakers like Ronen Sen, Ambassador of India to the United States, Jamie Dimon, CEO, JP Morgan Chase, Frank Wisner, Vice Chairman, AIG. Former US Ambassador to India. More than 700 people from over 325 organisations have already registered for this event, which features networking, knowledge-sharing and thought leadership on various subjects such as globalisation, energy, technology, career development, and social entrepreneurship.

IIT Bombay has entered into a collaborative research program with Semiconductor Research Corp. and Applied Materials, Inc. to advance NAND flash memory technology. NAND flash is one of the most rapidly evolving technologies today, enabling a large variety of portable electronic devices from media players to navigation systems to solid-state drives for laptop computers. This international research effort is focused on providing breakthrough technology that can lead to a broad range of significantly smaller and more powerful portable electronic devices in the next five years.

Ashok Misra, Director of IIT-B, told TOI that Professor D S Misra had not been detained by the CBI. D S Misra had, however, moved out of his campus residential quarters soon after a CBI raid on his house because he was besieged by the media. Meanwhile, highly-placed sources in the IIT said the consultancy project D S Misra was doing with a Singapore-based diamond company was above board. They further explained that the controversy arose because the firm had split into two and the partners started quarrelling over the rights to the patented technology. D S Misra had reportedly helped develop a cheap technology to purify black diamonds into white ones.

Of the top 100 JEE rank holders, about 15% have opted for electrical engineering despite securing seats in computer science. "The perception is that computer science as a branch is limited. An electrical engineering graduate can opt for computer science at the post-graduate level, but the reverse is not possible." Of the 50 top 100 JEE rankers who got into IIT-Bombay, 44 took up computer science and engineering. But this year, of the 54 top 100 students, 10 have ditched computer science and engineering and chosen electrical engineering as their first preference.

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay or IIT-B has reason to cheer. It's been the top choice for the top 100 students who've taken the IIT-JEE four years in a row. IIT Bombay is the most favoured destination for the top 100 IIT Joint Entrance Exam rankers. That's according to records kept by the Joint Entrance Examination Commitee. Experts say it's the location in the country's financial capital - Mumbai and the record placement figures that's kept IIT Bombay on top of the "most wanted" list of students.

The cream of the country's young brains continues to hanker after IIT-Bombay. The institution has retained its position as the most sought-after IIT in the country, with Delhi and Madras a distant second and third respectively. A number of factors have been responsible for this: from geography to gastronomy and placement records to what coaching classes tell students. Of the top 100 JEE-2008 rankers who have been admitted to the IITs this year, more than 50% preferred IIT-B over any other IIT. This was followed by Delhi — where 27 of the top 100 — have been admitted. While Bombay and Delhi have maintained their positions over the years, IIT-Madras has overtaken IIT-Kanpur this year.

Defending the autonomy of world-class institutes of excellence, nearly 200 students and professors of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) staged a candlelight march to protest the government's direction to reserve 49.5 percent of faculty positions in IITs for socially backward classes. The protest, which started a little after 8 p.m., continued for an hour with 45 professors and more than 150 students holding candles and walking around the IIT campus. The "silent protesters" said they were against 49.5 percent quota - 27 percent for other backward classes (OBCs), and 22.5 percent for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes - in the IIT faculties.

Buoyed by its success in pushing through a quota for OBC students in higher education, the government has now ordered IITs to introduce - with "immediate effect" - quotas in the teaching faculty for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and OBCs. IIT Directors, not surprisingly, were livid with the decision, though none of the four TOI spoke to were willing to go on record. The high quality of IIT faculty has built the institution into a globally respected brand. Said an IIT-Delhi professor: "It is hard to imagine that even teachers will now use the caste flag to get in."

Alumni in the news ...

• India Infoline interviews Sudhir Rangnekar (BTech '71 ChE), Managing Director & Group CEO, is in charge of overall operations, financials, and human resources for Sical Logistics Ltd and its group companies.

• Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) announced key changes in the management committee of the company ... Hemant Bakshi (BTech '86 ChE) replacing Kakkar as Executive Director, Sales and Customer Development in the Management Committee.

• India's first online single music release, 'Ek Kaagaz' is the result of collaboration between Devika and Delhi-based Pralay Bakshi (BTech '96 Che). Pralay Bakshi is currently the Station Head for Fever 104 FM, Kolkata.

• CNBC-18 - Want to become a successful manager? Nandan Nilekani, Co-Chairman – Infosys said the desire was to create a company that was different from multinationals and put the employee at the center of it. He told CNBC-TV18 that Infosys was a calling and they were committed to it.

• Rediff.com India Limited has invested an undisclosed sum in Vakow.com, a fast growing SMS content sharing social community started by IIT Bombay alumni Rahul Gupta and Amit Upadhyay.

• Aster Data Systems announced that CEO and Co-Founder, Mayank Bawa (BTech '99 CSE) has been chosen to participate in a key panel session on database analytics at GigaOm’s upcoming Structure 2008 Conference.

• NASSCOM Chairman Dr Ganesh Natarajan speaks about Bill Gates, Microsoft's past, present and future, and also about what made Gates a great businessman. He is an alumnus of IIT Bombay and the Harvard Business School. He was named 'CEO of the Year' by the Asia Pacific HR Conference in 1999 and received the Asia HRD Congress Award for Contributions to the Organisation through HR in 2005.

In an attempt to reduce the carbon dioxide emission levels from coal-based power projects, the government has asked the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and India’s largest power generation utility NTPC Ltd to work together in finding ways to use bacteria for clean-coal technology.

Have quotas really worked? How do students from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC/ST), inducted on the basis of lower qualifying marks, fare in terms of performance and salaries at the IITs and the IIMs? According to information provided by IIT-Powai in Mumbai, 21 SC/ST students were asked to terminate their undergraduate BTech course in 2006-2007. In the last three years, the number of reserved category students terminating their courses at Powai has risen quietly. In 2005-2006, the institute had asked 20 SC/ST students to pack their bags. A year earlier, in 2004-2005, 19 students left without completing the course. Between 2003 and 2007, the yearly average dropout number for IIT, Powai, is a high 16 students.

The smooth and flawless launch of eight nano satellites developed by universities from across the world along with two Indian spacecraft in one go by the April 28 path-breaking flight of the four stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), while helping put ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) on par with front-ranking international space agencies, has brought into sharp focus the growing popularity of nano, micro and mini satellites. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Mumbai and Kanpur are also planning micro satellites for launch by ISRO.

IIT-Bombay plans to increase the number of faculty chairs to 50 from the current 20 by the year-end. Each chair, the institute estimates, can provide a top-up salary of Rs 20,000 per professor. Recently, Rahul Bajaj and Naushad Forbes committed one chair each at IIT-Bombay. The institute already has chairs from Larsen and Toubro and ICICI Bank among others. "There are only two ways of increasing the salary for the faculty: either the human resource development ministry increases it or we have new means of creating chairs. We have decided to go the other way. Earlier, we used the chair money to give salaries to the professors. But now we use it to give their top-up salaries," says Ashok Misra, director, IIT-Bombay.

In a bid to increase private sector investment for its incubation projects, the country's premier engineering institute — Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay — has recruited an investment banker as Chief Executive Officer of the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), its incubation centre. Sushanto Mitra, the newly-appointed CEO of SINE, has spent several years as an investment banker. His earlier stints include working at Techcap India and Meghraj Financial Services India. "We are looking at a plan that will institutionalise private sector investment into these companies," says Mitra. IIT-B Director Ashok Misra expects SINE to contribute Rs 4-5 crore to the institute's exchequer.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, has instituted 14 chairs for professors. This is part of the institute’s attempt to recognise existing professors and attract new ones. The chair professors will be paid more than regular professors. This is one of the initiatives planned by IIT-B to tide over faculty crunch. The institute is short of 100 professors and is looking to increase faculty by 50 per cent over the next five years. "Student numbers will rise by over 50 per cent in the next three years,” said professor Devang Khakhar, dean of faculty. “We are planning to hire at least 300 teachers."

The late 1990s saw a sharp decline in the number of doctoral students graduating from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). But this year is seeing the start of what could be a new trend. In fact, the number of students who will complete PhDs from IIT-Bombay this year will cross 200. Never in the history of the IITs have so many doctoral students graduated from a single institute in an academic year.

Innovation is not the only forte of IITians. Their latest experiment with the Right to Information (RTI) has helped about 1,200 IIT research scholars in matters as varied as hiking scholarships and finding out the reasons for the spurt in suicides in IIT-Kanpur as well as felling of trees in the IIT-Bombay campus. Arvind Kejriwal, RTI activist and Magsaysay Award winner, described this as the real magic of RTI. IIT-Bombay student Amit Jariwala asked his institution the reasons for the delay in giving the stipend. His RTI application prompted the IIT to install new software to ensure that the students get the stipend of Rs 5,000-Rs 6,000 per month on time.

The Indian Institute of Technology's (IIT) Industrial Design Centre (IDC) is already attracting investors with its new flush of designs created by students. Bharat Electronics Limited took up IDC's electronic voting machine (EVM) idea and mass-produced the gadget to be used first in 1998 elections. This time around, one finds a household cylinder on which you can read the gas level, a mobile phone for your grandmother which sends automated messages every time her pressure dips and a personal water vehicle on the students' list of creations. "Some of these solutions are sought after internationally as well. We would be delighted to take up their ideas, and if they fit well with our strategies, we will be more than willing to set up pilots with them," said Banmali Agarwala, executive director, strategy and business development, Tata Power Co Ltd.

Everybody wants to be at IIT Bombay ... For a large number of the top-ranking candidates of the joint entrance examination (JEE), IIT Bombay continues to be the most preferred destination. This was evident on the second day of counselling at the Powai campus, which was attended by close to 500 students (around 330 from the general category and over 150 from the scheduled castes). IIT Bombay again topped the wish list of the vast majority of students. The reasons for this are many: some says it’s the institute’s location in the country’s financial hub; for others it’s the vibrant campus life and international exposure. But for most, IIT Bombay is the place that guarantees good placements.

If you score 7% in your Class XII mathematics paper, you fail. But if you score 7% in your IIT-JEE mathematics paper, you can still make it. That's exactly what happened in the 2007 entrance exam, an RTI query has revealed. The top 7,202 general category candidates who qualified in the 2007 joint entrance examination, with an aggregate cutoff of 206 marks, included those whose score in one of the subjects was as low as 12 (mathematics), 22 (physics) and 18 (chemistry). These details have come to light from the fresh data supplied last month under RTI by IIT-Bombay on JEE 2007, which had been organized by it. If such poor performance in individual subjects could not stop candidates from making it to the all-India rank (AIR) list, it was thanks to a radical change in the 2007 examination in the procedure for calculating subject-wise cutoffs.

In a unique solution to the persistent problem of faculty crunch, the batch of 1982 of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) on Monday presented a ‘Legacy Gift’ of Rs 3 lakh to each of the faculty members who recently joined IIT-B. The Class of 1982 of IIT-Bombay had pledged Rs 4.3 crore to address faculty compensation at their alma mater.

The India Semiconductor Association (ISA) has announced the winners of Technovation Awards 2008. Prof. Juzer M Vasi, deputy director, IIT Mumbai won the TechnoVisionary Award for his outstanding contribution in the field of semiconductors.

Alumni in the news ...

• Pralay Bakshi (BTech '96 ChE) has been appointed as Station Head for Fever FM Kolkata. Bakshi is a chemical engineer from IIT Mumbai, with a PG Diploma in Business Studies from the London School of Economics.

• Ankit Mehta (Dual Degree '05 ME), Rahul Singh and Ashish Bhat turned an idea into a company called IdeaForge Technology and were soon inducted into IIT-B’s incubation centre, the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), which supports start-ups during the initial phase when they are most vulnerable, as they transform into real companies.

• Vishal Gupta (BTech '00 EE) saw the opportunity in his final year's thesis at IIT Bombay and converted it into a business plan. Gupta figured out a way to match fingerprints without matching the entire image. The core technology is called IntelliPush ... IntelliRADAR is used in companies across a spectrum of industries. One of them is Quintet Strategies, a hedge fund in Connecticut with over $300 million under management.

This year, 44 graduating students (masters programme) of Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at IIT-Bombay took up “socially purposive” projects such as developing an inexpensive explosive detector that can be used by a common man. These projects are on display at the largest ever Design Degree Show, which started on Monday. Selective and sensitive detection of explosives is crucial in countering terrorist threats, particularly at high in-transit areas in the city. “What is available at present is expensive and cannot be deployed at all places. The challenge was to develop a system that can be used by a common man and implemented with ease,” said Manojkumar AG, graduating student of IDC.

The government had announced that it would start six new IITs by July this year. But three of them at Rajasthan, Andhra and Bihar are facing starting trouble and three more are still on paper. With a tight deadline of less than two months, there is still nothing on-ground regarding the three new IITs in Gujarat, Orissa and Punjab. Ashok Misra, Director, IIT Bombay which is mentoring the new IIT in Gujarat said, "With regard to the new IITs, no funds have been allocated so far. We will have to hire new faculty. It's a greenfield project. Nothing really exists on ground there. So, we will have to see how we can attract new faculty to those areas, to that IIT."

Brushing aside objections over brand dilution, the government has reportedly begun work on modifying the IIT Act, 1961, to ensure that the eight new engineering institutes it is setting up come under the premier Indian Institute of Technology umbrella. With the government's plan to set up engineering institutes in Rajasthan, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab, besides converting the institute of technology at Banaras Hindu University into an IIT, the total number of IITs will increase to 16. "I am surely in favour of the government's idea of creating new quality institutes like the IITs but they should be given a different name so that a different branding can be created," said Ashok Misra, Director, IIT Bombay.

The Government of India held a high-level meeting with IIT and IIM directors to gauge the preparedness of their institutes for implementing the OBC quota in the current academic year. The meeting between directors of the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and HRD Ministry officials went into details about the infrastructural requirements for increased students. "This meeting was basically about the preparedness and what are the areas that require more attention," a senior ministry official said.

IIT Bombay BTech and dual-degree programme students will not be able to opt for foreign internships from the academic year beginning 2008-09. As part of its course curriculum, the premier institute has decided to make it mandatory for students to enrol with an Indian company or institution for an internship if they want their course credits (the degree).

India awarded 230,000 engineering degrees in 2006, but only a small fraction of these engineers are actually employable by industry, leading education experts and industry executives said. A majority of these graduates come from tier-III and tier-IV colleges, which have very poor infrastructure, they added. On the other hand, tier-I and tier-II colleges, namely the IITs, IISc and the NITs produce, less than 1 per cent of engineering graduates, 20 per cent MTechs and 40 per cent PhD in India, said Prof Rangan Banerjee of IIT Bombay at a panel discussion on ‘India’s leadership in manufacturing role of engineering education’ in Mumbai.

There is an urgent need to launch a 'National PhD Initiative' in a mission mode to increase the engineering and science PhDs output and realise India's potential of becoming a global technology leader, according to a study on higher education. The study carried out by IIT Mumbai professors Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak P Muley of the Department of Energy Science and Engineering, said a series of initiatives are required to attract our brightest students to pursue research and reach international standard in order to meet our future requirements. 'National PhD Initiative' is urgently needed to increase the number of engineering PhDs from the present abysmal 1,000 a year to at least 10,00 a year for the future success of Indian industry and growth of engineering education in India.

Third offering from IIT passout flies off shelves ... Putting the notion that book reading is a dying hobby to rest, the latest tome penned by Chetan Bhagat has been flying off the shelves of bookstores.

Alumni in the news ...

• Business communications applications provider Avaya on Tuesday said it is expanding its research and development operations in Pune. The company has also announced the appointment of Sam (Samir) Gulve (BTech '83 CivE) as Managing Director of Avaya India and Vice President of Avaya Global Communication Solutions division.

• Two Indian-Americans were among seven people selected by the Asian American Heritage Council of New Jersey for its 2008 achievement awards. IT entrepreneur Dr Rajan Vaz (BTech '75 ChE) will receive the President's Award.

• Deutsche Bank appointed Anurag Mahesh (BTech '90 ME) as head of global investments and sales in Asia Pacific to boost its private banking business in the region.

• Altera Corporation announced that Krish A. Prabhu (MSc '75 Phys), will join the company’s board of directors on May 13, 2008. Mr. Prabhu most recently served as chief executive officer, president, and director of Tellabs. Prior to Tellabs, Mr. Prabhu spent 17 years of his 28-year career at Alcatel.

• The man who made Aamir Khan a star ... One of the best things Aamir Khan said he did during the making of Jaane Tu ... Ya Jaane Na was bring cousin and ace director Mansoor Khan back to Bollywood. "You went to IIT, then dropped out; went to USA for further studies and then dropped out of that as well. Then, you made your first film, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and then after Josh in 2000, you disappeared and took up farming. Why do you keep moving on one thing to another?"

• The Sona Koyo Group on Tuesday announced the promotion of Kiran Deshmukh (BTech '75 MetE/MatSc) as the Deputy Managing Director of Sona Koyo Steerings Systems. Deshmukh served as the Chief Operating Officer of the company for five years. He is a graduate in Metallurgical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai and has 33 years of experience in automotive components manufacturing.

A Bihar boy, Shitikanth, has topped this year’s Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) conducted for admissions to the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). In all, 8,652 candidates passed the exams. This year 311,258 students appeared in what is considered as one of the most gruelling under-graduate entrance exam. About 840 out of 78,159 girls qualified, while of the 72,116 OBC students 1,134 passed. Similarly, 690 SC and 159 ST candidates cleared the exam. There are 6,872 seats in IITs at Mumbai, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Chennai, and Roorkee besides the three new IITs proposed by the Central Government.

In April, the IITs had announced that the 2008 Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) scores would be used to also admit students to the three new IITs coming up in Bihar, Rajasthan and Hyderabad. However, what came as a bonanza for students was that the IITs have decided to start campuses in Gujarat, Punjab and Orissa as well from this year. Sources said the "sudden" decision followed a directive from the HRD ministry. The six new IITs translate into over 700 more seats. This year, of the 3.11 lakh students who took the exam, 8,652 have been declared qualified to seek admissions to 6,872 seats in the 13 IITs.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is to soon launch its new branch in Gujarat from the next session ... IIT Bombay, which set up its extension centre at Government Engineering College (GEC), Chandkheda, six months ago, will support the state education department in the entire process of setting up a full-fledged IIT here, including faculty recruitment. The IIT will function from GEC Chandkheda - the institute from where IIT Bombay currently conducts 12 short-term courses under its continuing education programme.

Embers from the fiery debate over the International Organisation for Standardisation's (ISO) acceptance of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) file format as an international standard refuse to die out in India. The IIT Bombay, has taken strong objection to the fact that despite a "No" to OOXML by a majority of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) members, the software giant "continued to make representations to the top Indian leadership pressuring them to change the Indian vote". Deepak B Phatak, who represented IIT Bombay along with three other professors, has written an open letter to all BIS members, expressing unhappiness over Microsoft's "accusation" that his institution and the National Informatics Centre (NIC), among others, have an "ODF alliance" bias.

The Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), through its Global Research Collaboration program, announced a collaborative effort between the Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay (IIT) and Applied Materials, Inc. to advance NAND flash memory technology. NAND flash is one of the most rapidly evolving technologies today, enabling a large variety of portable electronic devices from media players to navigation systems to solid-state drives for laptop computers. This international research effort is focused on providing breakthrough technology that can lead to a broad range of significantly smaller and more powerful portable electronic devices in the next five years.

Roadblocks for admission of OBC candidates in post-graduate courses including in IIMs and IITs were on Friday cleared by the Supreme Court which lifted the Calcutta High Court order staying implementation of the 27 per cent quota for them in Central educational institutions. The court stayed all proceedings relating to OBC quota that are pending in the High Courts of Delhi, Calcutta and Bombay and issued notices to those petitioners, including Delhi-based Youth for Equality, on the Centre's petition seeking transfer of those matters to the apex court.

Agreeing to implement OBC reservation from this year, heads of more than 80 central educational institutions — including IITs, IIMs and NIITs — voiced concern about the problem of faculty and resources they would face in expanding seats. It is also clear that these institutes would have to start implementation from their own resources, and the government would compensate them only after the cabinet clears the extra funding to these institutes. Sources said heads of IITs and other institutes voiced maximum concern about implementation.

"A look at globalization and IT spending"  ... CNBC's Billionaire Summit featured Bharat Desai (BTech '75 EE), President and CEO of Syntel, one of the sponsors of the 2008 Golden Jubilee Conference.

IIT Bombay has launched a Mega Global Initiative to discover "10 Great Ideas to Change the World in the next 50 years." This initiative was launched by noted industrialist Mr. Adi Godrej, Chairman, Godrej Group and a member of IITB Advisory Council, along with Prof Ashok Misra, Director, IIT Bombay, at a gala event at IITB’s Powai campus in Mumbai.

There is some good news for India, which has long been struggling with the problem of brain drain. The reputation of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) coupled with India’s technology visibility is attracting talent back into the country. IIT graduates are credited for their leadership role in establishing the booming Indian tech industry. Freedom to work is the major reason why S Janardhanan, Assistant professor of electrical engineering at IIT, left his job with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. "No matter how good you are, you will always be a foreigner in a foreign land," says Janardhanan, an IIT Bombay graduate.

Last year after IIT Bombay restricted internet usage in its hostel rooms, it's counterpart in Delhi has now gone ahead and rationed net usage on their campus. Delhi's decision follows the same reasons - students missing out on morning lectures after downloading movies, games and entertainment till the wee hours. Unlike IIT-B and IIT-M, Delhi has placed a limit on the data students can download on their hostel computers. According to student affairs dean Anurag Sharma, it has served two purposes: improved internet speed and restricted students from downloading heavy movie and gaming files.

CoCubes is an Indian startup founded by two fresh IIT Bombay graduates. CoCubes is attempting to address the large labor market of fresh college graduates. Every year nearly 12 lakh students graduate from Indian undergraduate universities. Most students graduate and then hunt for jobs. The lucky few have formal recruitment events at their college campuses. CoCubes is building an online platform enabling colleges and companies to host the recruitment process online.

An air of confidence, tinged with nervousness and urgency filled a room of restless youngsters at IT-D, as they awaited their turn to showcase their business plans to a handful of leading venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Helion Ventures Pvt. Ltd.The winning team from IIT Mumbai called Shuddh Technologies, which has water-treatment technology, is clear it meant business. The founders of this start-up are Yash Singh, 20, from Vadodara and Praveen Sarda, 21, from Nagaur in Rajasthan, who graduates next year. Hellointern.com, the third winner from IIT Bombay, runs an internship portal for engineering and management students and already has 60 recruiters such as Qualcomm Inc.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is pedestrian. But when an Indian company goes a step beyond, it’s worth a mention. Communicate 2 has done just that by launching ‘reputation management’, to net in top companies as its clients in just a couple of years. For Communicate 2, this was not an easy job. They had to hire the expertise of IIT Bombay. "We worked with a professor there to develop this application called Infocomm." The application tracks all the material about an entity online - be it on blogs or news sites or advertisements of competitors, and then collects the material.

What happens when what is perhaps India's best-known global brand — as represented by the existing seven IITs — goes from producing just a few thousand IITians to many, many more. Is it like a designer label gone pret, accessible to all but special to none? Many academicians and alumni are convinced that is the fate in store if institutes with inadequate infrastructure and lack of quality teachers sprout up across the country. Says Bhamy Shenoy: "Brand IIT will be diluted and individual IITs will end up becoming brands. Today, it doesn't matter whether a student is from IIT Madras or IIT Bombay. But in the future, people would want to know which IIT a student is from."

Technology (IIT)-Bombay wants to create a national resource centre for solar thermal power generation. “Nearly 50 per cent of households in India do not have electricity. It is estimated that 10,00,000 MW of power will have to be added in the next 10 years. One option worth looking at is solar thermal power,” said Rangan Banerjee, head, Department of Energy Science and Engineering (DESE), IIT-Bombay. IIT-Bombay now proposes to build solar thermal power plants in India in a demonstration-cum-research facility, which would help in developing indigenous capability and serve as a national resource centre and testing facility.

The IITs could hike their fees soon, Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh Monday told parliament. He told the Rajya Sabha that the Standing Committee of IIT Council (SCIC) has recommended increase in its tution fee for graduate and post-graduate courses. However, he did not specify the amount of the fee hike being considered by the SCIC. Singh is chairperson of the IITs Council. The SCIC had proposed a fee hike from Rs.25,000 to Rs.50,000 per year. Despite doubling the fee, the IITs would still spend about Rs.150,000 on every student. According to an IIT Delhi official, the IIT spends almost Rs.200,000 a student every year.

naukri.com head Sanjeev Bikhchandani (stated) on TV that IIM Ahmedabad had to lower its entrance level cutoff marks by just a couple of percentage points to accommodate SC/ST candidates for its management course. A call to IIT Bombay revealed similar findings, again off the record. IIT Bombay’s dean had made a presentation where he said the SC/ST candidates there hadn’t scored any worse than the general category students. It flies in the face of a recent data-packed study of the impact of affirmative action in India, by Marianne Bertrand, Rema Hanna and Sendhil Mullainatan (http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13926). The trio from the Universities of Chicago, New York and Harvard looked at the scores of those applying for engineering in one Indian state in 1996. The results are amazing ... the average scores are 480 for the upper caste candidates, 419 for the OBCs (13 per cent lower) and a mere 182 for the SC category (62 per cent lower).

The immediate implementation of the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota is likely to make life difficult for students living in IIT hostels. In order to accommodate an additional number of students, the authorities may have to cram in more students in every room. IIT Bombay, which has 13 hostels on its campus, is already short of space. Currently, students from first and second year BTech are sharing rooms. However, with the increased student intake of nine per cent in the first year of OBC quota implementation, followed by 18 and 27 per cent in consecutive years, authorities said that henceforth they would be left with no option but to increase the number of students living in each hostel.

The Dilbert cartoon strip features Asok, the Indian Institute of Technology alumnus, on April 21, 22 and 23 ... more.

Alumni in the news ...

• The Indian prime minister described the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses as a “national shame ... Sabu George (MSc '80 Chem), another prominent campaigner, welcomed the prime minister’s decision to devote an entire speech to the subject, but agreed that the content was "very disappointing."

• Applied Materials, Inc. has appointed Dr Madhusudan V. Atre (MSc '78 Phys) as President of Applied Materials India, responsible for strategy and operations throughout India.

• A group of students at the XLRI School of Business and Human Resources is coming up with a state-of-the-art design centre here to train tribal artisans in making saleable products. "While developing the portal, we realised there was a huge disconnect between what the market wants and what tribal handicraft artists were making," said Kaushal Chandok, an IIT Bombay alumnus.

• Kota coaching classes to get into IIT coaching classes ... students who crack the JEE and make it big in the private sector touch the feet of their tutors in coaching classes. When Devendra Kumar Agrawal, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, got his first job at Texas Instruments, Bangalore, he bought Rao, his tutor in Kota, an expensive suit from his first salary.

• OnMobile Global Ltd, the first Indian company in the mobile value-added services (VAS) space to go public, made its debut on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Promoters of the holding company include founders Arvind Rao (BTech '80 ChE) and other investors.

Chairman of IIT JEE 2008, Prof N M Bhandari, admitted that the subject-wise cut-offs for reserved candidates may turn out to be less than one mark which was the level to which the bar was lowered last year in one of the subjects for general candidates. The ridiculous cut-offs are thanks to a rather liberal ranking procedure adopted last year by the IIT system, stung as it was by an RTI application seeking statistical basis for the cut-off marks of the 2006 examination.

A call to IIT Bombay off the record ... IIT Bombay’s Dean had made a presentation where he said the SC/ST candidates there hadn’t scored any worse than the general category students ... it flies in the face of a recent data-packed study of the impact of affirmative action in India by Marianne Bertrand, Rema Hanna and Sendhil Mullainatan. The average scores are 480 for the upper caste candidates, 419 for the OBCs (13 per cent lower) and a mere 182 for the SC category (62 per cent lower). If the creamy layer is to be excluded from reservations, chances are there won’t be enough OBCs to benefit from reservations, especially since the Court has said the qualifying marks for admission cannot be lowered by more than 10 per cent.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B), is partnering with University of Cambridge for research and exchange of students in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The research activities will be funded through Cambridge Commonwealth Trust that will make an initial investment of Euro 800,000 over a period of five years. 30 students from IIT-B will go to Cambridge over the next three years.

The three-year-long 27% OBC quota rollout which will also see an increase of 54% in seats for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes has put the IITs, which are already relaxing entry scores drastically to fill these seats, in a fix. The IITs which have already been lowering admission levels for SCs and STs, now feel that with seats for these categories going up, a larger population of students will have to taken in — probably at rock-bottom scores. IIT Bombay director Ashok Misra, who had also pointed this issue out to the Veerappa Moily Oversight Committee, feels that the issue has been completely overlooked. "To take in so many reserved category students, admission criteria will have to be relaxed," he said.

The sylvan campus in Mumbai's Powai too is slowly peeling off its green cover to meet the demands of expansion. IIT-Bombay chopped down some of its oldest trees recently to construct the new girls' hostel. Permission to pull down more trees has been sought so that a new boys' hostel can be set up. Currently, there are 5,270 students accommodated in 4,200 rooms. Many second-year students share rooms. IIT-B director Ashok Misra said that implementing the 27% OBC quota for undergraduates will put pressure on all fronts — from building larger classrooms to investing more in laboratories, every facility will need expansion.

"Never happy unless I am pursuing five different interests at the same time." This tagline that welcomes you on his personal blog sums up the character of Ganesh Natarajan (PhD '05 Mgmt), CEO of Zensar Technologies, who took over as Chairman of National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) for 2008-09 on April 7, 2008. Apart from handling these twin responsibilities, Ganesh also chairs the Outsourcing Forum of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in Western India and is part of the CII Western Region Council. He is also an avid writer, traveller, cricket enthusiast and doting father. An alumnus of IIT Bombay and Harvard Business School, Ganesh has been at the helm of Pune-based Zensar Technologies, a BPO firm, for over seven years now and has turned it into one of Fortune's Top 10 global offshore outsourcing companies from India.

Times of India Editorial ... The directors of some Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) feel that giving the same name to new institutes proposed by the government would dilute the brand image of the existing institutions. They are said to have written to the government to consider giving a different name to the new institutes being set up ... this increased production in no way weakens a brand. It only enhances it. Even in case of the seven IITs we are so proud about, lack of high grade research and development prevents them from making the list of top research institutes in the world. We must not give up the attempt to build more and better IITs.

Half a century after being kickstarted with foreign assistance, the IITs are now handholding other developing nations in establishing engineering institutes. India’s proudest symbols of excellence in technical education are flooded with requests from countries that want to emulate the IIT model. IIT Bombay has signed an agreement with the Nelson Mandela Foundation to help create "the best technical education institute Africa has ever seen", with five campuses spread across the vast continent. "We, the IITs, were handheld and assisted by other countries in our initial days. Now, it is time we helped out countries in need," Professor Pradipta Banerjee, IIT Bombay’s dean, international relations, told The Telegraph. The joint venture, to be called the Africa Institute of Technology, will have its first campus in Nigeria, IIT Bombay officials said.

3.2 lakh students would appear in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) on April 13 for admission into IITs across the country, registering an increase of about 70,000 candidates over last year. There are nearly 4000 seats in these elite institutions. Studying in the IITs could be costlier this year with the elite institutions proposing to hike the fees. The students in all the seven IITs are now paying about Rs 25,000 per annum as fees. It could be increased up to Rs 50,000, he said. "We have proposed a fee hike. But the final decision will be taken by the government," Prasad said.

The proposed fee hike to Rs.50,000 by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) is unlikely to be rolled back. According to officials of the human resource development ministry, the hike was inevitable as these institutions spend almost Rs.200,000 on a student every year. IIT Bombay had said that it did not have enough money to pay salaries to its staff.

It is the turn of students of IIT Powai to unveil a home-grown racing car. The car will be participating in the esteemed Formula SAE in Michigan, USA in May this year. The competition will see 120 teams from across the world, making it one of the biggest international engineering design and manufacturing events. The Formula SAE is a prestigious event for engineering and design competition at university level and breeding ground for future car engineers and designers. "The USP of the car is that it is made in India. It is our dream to make a completely Indian car for Formula One in the next ten years," said Shyam Jade, student, IIT Mumbai. The car was unveiled by India's only Formula One car racer Narain Karthikeyan amid fanfare at the IIT campus in Mumbai on Friday night.

Exactly one year ago, officials at the elite IIT Bombay began restricting the Internet in hostels after fearing high-speed access was impeding socialization, replacing talk with instant messaging, virtual gaming instead of the sweaty, heart-rate-quickening variety. Initially, the "LAN ban", as it was dubbed, was between 4.30pm and 7pm, and then midnight and 7am. The action was greeted with protest and much fear about just how a generation that largely grew up on the Internet would manage. A year later, a funny thing has happened: it’s working.

Google's nationwide contest among computer science students to select 'product prodigies' drew entries from nearly 100 teams. The top prize went to the team from IIT Bombay for "Collaborate-Draw," a web tool that allowed multiple users to jointly work on drawings, charts and blueprints. The first-runner up team was also from IIT Bombay ... "Polls," a tool which helps set up your own online opinion poll, quiz your friends or your community and, most usefully, analyse the results at lightning speed in multiple ways.

Phosphorus compounds made by scientists in India and the US have shown anticancer activity without using metals. Maravanji Balakrishna and Dulal Panda's team at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and Tulane University, New Orleans, US, has created metal-free compounds with a view to developing novel cancer therapies.

Following an invitation from the Union Ministry of Urban Development to participate in policy-making and research on urban development and particularly urban transport planning, the Indian Institute of Technology - Powai is proposing an “urban scenario simulator model” that will use real census data, actual traffic data and other accurate inputs to model the response of a city to various interventions through infrastructure building.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) announced the locations of eight new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) along with 30 Central and ‘world class universities’ to be set up in the country during the 11th Plan period. Out of the eight IITs, first announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his Independence Day speech, one IIT would be set up at Indore in Madhya Pradesh while Orissa, Gujarat and Punjab would get one each. The ministry had earlier announced IITs for Bihar, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. Medak district near Hyderabad has been identified for Andhra Pradesh IIT, according to state government official.

For many women, not only in India but even abroad, wedding bells sound the death knell of a career or education. Sudha Murty’s Gently Falls the Bakula is the story of one such woman - Shrimati, who marries her childhood sweetheart and classmate Shrikant despite family opposition. The marriage works, Shrikant does well in his job in a software company, and is in fact the most successful of his IIT Bombay batch, but somewhere along the way his ambitions begin to take a toll on their life.

Despite being the leader in technical education in the country, IITs are still regarded less than first grade when it comes to providing business education. Management graduates from IITs have education in a technical environment and are thus expected to do well in the technical department. Hence, they are given second preference which does affect the remuneration of these graduates ... while the remuneration for IIM graduates typically averages around Rs 12-15 lakh per annum, a fresh management graduate from IIT pockets only around Rs 6-7 lakh.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, is gearing up to host the biggest ever gathering of IIT alumni in New York this year to mark the 50th anniversary of its founding. The July 18 through 20 golden jubilee celebration at Marriott Marquis in Times Square will bring Bombay IIT-ians as well as alumni from other IITs from all over the United States as well as from overseas, including India.

For all its reputation as one of the toughest competitive examinations in the world, IIT-JEE has seen a dramatic fall in standards. Or so it seems from the steep fall in the cutoff marks of each of the three subjects in the last examination as compared with those of the previous one. In 2006, the cutoff marks in maths, physics and chemistry were 37, 48 and 55 respectively. The corresponding marks for IIT-JEE 2007 fell to as low as 1, 4 and 3. The fall in the cutoffs in last year's examination defies logic as the overall performance of candidates actually went up.

According to the press release of Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay (SJMSOM) ... the average domestic salary increased by 44% from the previous year’s figure of Rs 9.71 lakhs to Rs 13.96 lakhs this year. 90 pc of the batch received offers of above Rs 10 Lakh per annum. The highest international offer was US$ 85,000 by Olam International (Singapore).

Alumni in the news ...

• Raghu Raghuram (MTech '86 EE), vice president of products and solutions, figures to have more than a little influence on the direction and shaping of VMware Inc.'s products and services over the next few years. He holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay.

• Research and analytics firm Dexterity has announced a refocusing of its business on marketing and customer informatics, and appointed former IIT Bombay alumnus and Accenture USA Partner Anantha Krishnan as Chairman and CEO.

• Ankur Gattani (BTech '06 EnggPhy) has again turned his back on big bucks to pursue his dream. The 23-year-old is the only student in the 2006-08 batch of the postgraduate programme of IIM Calcutta to have opted out of the final placement. Gattani has started a portal, lifeinlines.com, as a first step on his entrepreneurial journey. "You can record little moments of your life on Lifeinlines.” said the IIT Bombay alumnus.

• Mahindra & Mahindra announced the appointment of Mr. Rajan Wadhera (BTech '79 Aero / MTech '81 Aero) as Executive VP, R&D and Global Product Development, Automotive Sector.

• Milpitas, California-based Kovair Software, Inc., a Development Life Cycle and IT Software Management company announced that Mr. Raj Mashruwala (BTech '75 ME) a veteran of Tibco Software who has been COO and Executive Vice President of Tibco has joined the Board of Kovair as one of its Directors effective.

• Dr. Sheel Kant Sharma (MSc '71 Phys / PhD '75 Phys) of India has assumed the office of the Secretary General of SAARC from March 1, 2008. Dr. Sharma had served as Ambassador of India to Vienna. He Joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1973.

• As a small child growing up in the 1950s in the rural village of Ladnun in the Nagaur district of Rajasthan, Dr. Suresh Sethi (BTech '67 ME) had never even heard of the prestigious IIT Bombay. In March, the highly regarded UT Dallas School of Management professor will be named an IITB Distinguished Alum.

• An alumnus of IIT Bombay has announced a potentially perfect way to sort and distribute the massive amounts of data that travel daily over optical fibres to people across the world. Rana Biswas (MSc '78 Phys) says that the new technology, a three-dimensional photonic crystal add-drop filter, shows promise to dramatically enhance the transmission of multiple wavelength channels (wavelengths of light) that travel along the same optical fibre.

Physicist Basanta Nandi, from IIT Mumbai has emerged as the world's 'hottest' reasearcher for 2007, according to annual the league tables published by academic publisher Thomson Scientific. Usually dominated by Japanese and American scientists, this year the trio of high-energy physicists- Mikhail Kopytine, Basanta K. Nandi, and Thomas Peitzmann - top the list with 12 hot papers each, for the first time edging out Japanese and American authors from the position. Their research is about quark-gluon plasma; in layman terms something to do with the state of the universe before the original big bang. Mikhail Kopytin is from Kent State University, US, while Thomas Peitzmann is from Utrecht University, Netherlands.

"IIT: Insufferable Indian Tribe" ... There are two distinct tribes in India: the one that went to IIT, and the one that did not. If you are wondering, how to tell them apart, I have good news: you do not have to. They would tell you before you can finish your hello. At times all you need is a glance at them, and they are too eager to blurt out, "I am from IIT, and my name is Raju." The other distinguishing characteristic of this tribe: they are insufferable. But as luck would have it, they are easy to spot from far as well - this is the recommended approach. Their tribal songs are everywhere: their license plates, their T-shirts, their coffee mug, their email signature, poster on their bedroom at home and cubicle at work. The first thing you should notice is that there are two "I"s in IIT, and that is no coincidence.

PanIIT 2008 will be held in Chennai this year on the sylvan IIT Madras campus. This three day event between December 19- 21st, will bring together IIT alumni comprising policy makers, leading academicians, thought leaders, industry captains and more from across the world to discuss and debate ideas, issues and find solutions to create a better India for tomorrow.

At a function organized to celebrate IIT Bombay's Golden Jubilee, Anand G. Mahindra, in his characteristic style, invoked the lessons from the Bhagvat to show the institutes of excellence a mirror. He raised questions that IITs need to ask themselves - urging them to discover their dharma – to be constant gardener of India’s technological future – to spread excellence as far as it can go without compromising on quality.

Until about four years ago, Chetan Bhagat was an investment banker ... while others planned weekend excursions on the golf course, Bhagat, then employed by Goldman Sachs, indulged a passion for writing. Today, Bhagat is still an investment banker, now with Deutsche Bank. But he has also become the biggest-selling English-language novelist ever in India. His story of campus life, "Five Point Someone," published in 2004, and a later novel about a call center, sold a combined one million copies. Only the autobiography of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi has sold more.

Kalpesh Khivasara, a student at IIT Bombay, knows he can get a job at a major company. But faced with being a small fish in a big ocean, Khivasara passed on all the big names at campus placements earlier this year. He chose working for a start-up, where a mix of adrenaline, growth and coffee will likely keep him working past midnight. In a few months, as his batchmates begin drawing eye-popping salaries, Khivasara will go to work for INI Consulting Pvt. Ltd, a company focusing on commercializing new technologies from academic and research institutions.To target students like Khivasara, IIT Bombay plans a start-up job fair at the end of the month.

The Department of Information and Technology (DIT) launched 'The Nanotechnology Development Programme' under which eight small and medium R&D projects and two major projects have been initiated. Between IIT Bombay and IISc, around Rs 100 crore has been spent to set up the infrastructure and machinery. Applied Materials opened a Nanomanufacturing Lab at IIT Bombay. The company contributed equipment worth $7.5 million.

The signature campaign for Raj Thackeray by actors Nana Patekar, Sajid Khan and others underlines the groundswell of support for the sons of the soil argument. Even north Indians are admitting it ... "Migrants are more dynamic, willing to take on small jobs, sweat more and are cheaper," says Kushal Deb, an Assistant Professor at IIT Mumbai. But he, a Bengali raised in Hyderabad, has overheard murmurs of approval for Thackeray among Maharashtrians at IIT.

It’s a shiny, new dance floor, but how many can dance? The Web 2.0 market in India is still struggling for direction and funding, though the start-up scene in the Indian consumer space has been vibrant. IIT Mumbai-incubated Uhuroo has had successful test-runs among scattered workforces in companies like Cap Gemini, L&T Infotech and Arch Pharma. "Three of our 10 enterprise deployments so far are up and running," says Uhuroo CEO, Kaushal Sarda.

Faculty crunch threatens Brand IIT ... Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg, say top IIT representatives, fearing that the faculty-crunch facing the institution could threaten Brand IIT. Their plea comes as the Centre looks to establish more IITs across the country. Over the years, the five older IITs and two recent ones have worked hard to establish higher levels of education, says IIT Bombay’s Director, Professor Ashok Misra, adding that the new technology institutions should not be called IIT. There is a need for several more technology institutions in the country and the IITs could incubate and support them in terms of resources and so on, he explains. He added that Brand IIT comes with its trademark qualities. The IIT brand name should be limited to the time-tested institutions, delivering quality education, Prof Misra said.

Houston, the world’s energy capital, is used to thinking big. Now Houston has met its match in India. When Ashok Misra, Professor and Director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay visited Rice University in May last year, he proposed that it should engage with India’s IITs. Eight months after Misra’s journey to Houston, David Leebron, president of Rice University, travelled to Mumbai to attend the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of IIT-B and signed a memorandum of understanding for joint research and student exchange as part of Rice’s second-century objective of growing as an international university.

The government’s plan to establish a National Knowledge Network by interconnecting all knowledge institutions in the country through an electronic digital broadband network is expected to give the much-needed boost to research and development activities in India and help it catch up with the pace of research happening in other countries. With such connectivity, critical mass between institutions will now happen,” said IIT Bombay R&D Dean Krithi Ramamritham.

Three more Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) would come up in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan in fiscal 2008-09, Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced in Parliament. While allocating Rs 344 billion for the education sector – an increase by 20 per cent over – he remarked that the new IITs will start soon. While IITs coming up at Patna in Bihar and Medak in AP is expected to start from the next session in 2008-09, the Rajasthan Government is yet to provide a suitable site for its IIT, considered as a premier engineering institution in the country.

The Indian industrial and manufacturing boom cannot be sustained if core engineers, especially chemical engineers, do not enter the field they are trained for, according to Ashok Misra, Director, IIT-Bombay. "On behalf of IIT Bombay, I am talking to industry leaders to ensure that engineers are paid as well as software or management professionals."

While professors and staff-members at IIT-B now have something special to look forward to thanks to the Alumni Centre being planned, the institute has embarked on a major drive whereby its roping in all faculty members to "reconnect" with their former students. office bearers from IIT-B’s Student Alumni Relation Cell (SARC) which has been playing a vital role in alumni networking, may attend the New York Alumni Meet in July 2008.

About five years ago, students looking to go overseas for an international degree had few options - it was US, US or US. Increasingly, for a variety of non-technical courses, the student population is looking at destinations cheaper or closer home. Parents, say consultants, are picking Singapore or Australia over the US. Jai Nithani, third-year mechanical engineering student from IIT Bombay, says he is intent on going to America after his BTech from the Powai college.

At a time when corporate slowdown is hitting headlines, IITians are happy that the effect of the weakening dollar has not made any impact on their pay packets. Salaries during placements at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) this year, has gone up 10-20 per cent. At IIT-Bombay and Kanpur, the highest offers were made for $92,000 per annum and $90,000 per annum by Mercer Oliver Wyman -- a Boston-based financial consulting firm and Lime Group, a US-based financial and technology conglomerate, respectively.

IIT Mumbai’s Professor Pradipta Banerji says there are some inherent biases in international rankings, for instance they look at research funding in dollar terms, whereas it is much cheaper in India. Some of the factors that have pulled down IITs are now being addressed, at least in Mumbai, says Banerji.

Alumni in the news ...

• EMC Data Storage Services India has named Sundar Balasubramanian as general manager, strategy and business productivity at the EMC India Center of Excellence (CoE), EMC’s largest R&D centre outside of North America based out of Bengaluru.

• A "Che" has nudged a leading Marxist and India’s premier B-school a little closer to putting their heads together on the common man’s problems. IIM Ahmedabad student Chepuri Sri Krishna (BTech '00 Aero) has persuaded the institute into including in its curriculum a project where students advise MPs on development issues in their constituencies.

• Eight Point Systems, winner of Eureka! 2008, the annual business plan showcase of IIT Bombay, took home not only the Rs. 4 lakh prize money but also a mentor and angel money to the tune of Rs. 50 lakh on Sunday evening. Vaibhav Goel and Puneet Kumar, the team from IIT Bombay, will be funded by Vishal Gondal, CEO and founder, Indiagames.com, in their venture to create a realistic gaming experience for the local market.

• The huge turnout of students for Utsav - an event organised by the World Alliance for Youth Empowerment (WAYE) under the aegis of 'Art of Living' - is reflective of the stress levels that the youth are subjected to these days. The workshop began with Khurshed Batliwala and Dinesh Ghodke (BTech '97 MetE) giving instructions about the breathing techniques and yogasana.

The Golden Jubilee Extension Centre of IIT Bombay was inaugurated in Gandhinagar by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the presence of Director Ashok Misra on February 7.

The Entrepreneurship Summit, a unique initiative by Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT Bombay, serves as a platform for bringing together aspiring and successful entrepreneurs, start-ups, venture capitalists and academicians on a common platform. E-Summit 2008 commemorates the Golden Jubilee celebrations of IIT Bombay with an overlying theme of the "emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem in India".

Stinking toilets, dilapidated laboratories and old hostels at the IITs may get their first makeover in years with the Centre planning an increase in the funding for the institutes’ day-to-day running. The human resource development ministry plans to raise by 10 per cent the non-plan funds for each IIT and the IISc in Bangalore. IIT Bombay, which receives the maximum maintenance grant among the IITs, will receive over Rs 90 crore for the first year.

K M Acharya, Special Secretary in Charge of Higher Education in the HRD Ministry, dismissed a suggestion that IIT Mumbai was unable to pay salaries to its faculty, saying there was no such crisis and the government was taking care of them.

Alumni in the news ...

• Pramod P. Khargonekar (BTech '77 EE), Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Florida, spoke about the role of the university as a distributor of knowledge that's faced with the challenge of competing in an increasingly innovative and technological global market.

• Many young educated students have given up a lucrative career to pursue a political dream. Ajit Shukla (DD '02 ME), an IIT Mumbai alumnus spearheads the Bharat Punarnirman Dal (BPD), a party of like-minded educated people who are tired of caste-ridden politics.

• Optra Systems announced a partnership with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), to jointly design and implement complete imaging software solutions for the life science and health care industry ... Abhijeet Gholap (MTech '94 BioMed), is CEO and President of Optra.

• Miction, management plus fiction, is how author, Virender Kapoor (MTech '83 CSE) describes his new book - "My honeymoon with a pinch of salt." He is currently the Director of Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management.

• A husband-wife team of Indian American scientists, Dr Asha and Dr Anil Oroskar (BTech '77 ChE), are set to take their joint venture Orochem Technologies to a new high now with a recent technical, marketing and financial collaboration with Drug Monitoring and Research Institute (DMRI).

• Despite competing against giants like Yahoo! and Google, Bhaskar Ballapragada’s (BTech '89 ChE) company, AdOn Network, has made strides in the online advertising industry, attracting a substantial customer base and recognition for its growth.

Prof. Ram Puniyani and Mumbai-based Setu Charitable Trust have been selected for the National Communal Harmony Award for the year 2007 in the individual and organisation categories. Puniyani, a former Professor at IIT Mumbai, has been spreading the message of peace and amity through lectures, publications, workshops and meetings and by travelling extensively to different parts of the country disseminating messages of secularism, pluralism and communal harmony.

Several states are competing with one another to house one or more of the 30 world-class universities mooted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to upgrade the higher education system. The larger blueprint includes an upgrade of the existing eight Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and five Indian Institutes of Science ((IISc) and research establishments. Also on the cards are 14 additional IITs and IIMs across the country, for which the human resource development ministry has prepared a blueprint and which has been submitted to the Prime Minister's Office and the Planning Commission, officials said.

Amphibian vehicles, eco-houses, cracking complex codes, building mighty cranes… these and other equally fantastic innovations will be common place at IIT, Bombay during this weekend. For, starting from Friday, IIT would be hosting three-day-long Techfest 2008, Asia’s largest international science and technology festival. Now in its eleventh year, Techfest has become a platform for showcasing cutting-edge research and bringing together some of the best known names from the world of technology.

After Ratan Tata's 'Nano', now it is time for another revolution, an electric car. The electric car, developed by IIT Bombay, is named 'E-on'. This is a proto-type of the car which does not require petrol and runs at the speed of 30 km per hour. "We have been working on this project for last one year and now ready to run this car on road," said Professor of Industrial and Automobile Design Kishor Munshi. Initially the car will run in the campus of IIT-B, which plans to modify the car in future. Developers are still testing various options to make it better and commercially viable.

When IIT Bombay kicked off its Golden Jubilee celebrations, ex-students received a package from their alma mater. It was a news capsule on the engineering college they had graduated from. For many, it evoked warm memories of a leafy campus where they had spent their best years. Along with the CD, the institute had also sent them details of the forthcoming celebrations and a donation form. It was like the perfect marketing pitch: the response was "phenomenal". IIT-B has been snowed under with funds in the last five months. To acknowledge each and every donor, the institute is building a 'Brick Wall of Fame'. Every donor of Rs 1 lakh will find his name on this wall.

The current fund-crunch in the IITs repeats itself from one campus to another. Hefty donations from alumni and corporates are being ploughed into the IITs to build infrastructure and set up research programmes, but this cannot conceal the fact that government grants for regular expenditure on water, power, materials for labs, etc. are not in keeping with rising costs. In the last three year, IIT-Bombay, as a result, has drawn Rs 31 crore from its endowment fund to meet the shortfall in non-plan expenditure. "This is not conducive for an institution that depends on its savings from capital expenses for future growth," said a senior professor. "The money that has been saved over the years is meant for expansion, not for running the institute on a day-to-day basis."

Elite IITs go bankrupt, no salary for Mumbai staff ... In a recent development, all the seven institutes have written to the Union HRD Minister saying that they are on the verge of bankruptcy - so much so that IIT Bombay does not even have enough money to pay its staff members their salary for the month of January. The Directors say that the resource crunch is nothing new and that they have been withdrawing money from their corpus for a long time now. However, they insist that they cannot keep on doing the same and that they need the financial aid from the HRD Ministry now to keep afloat.

Taking another step towards becoming a "world-class research university in science and technology", the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) will tie up with four foreign universities - Monash University (Australia), Rice University (USA), University of Southhampton (UK) and University of Cambridge (UK) - to collaborate on research.

In order to maintain "brand value", Directors of two Indian Institute of Technologies have suggested that the proposed additional IITs by the HRD Ministry should not be given the same name. "There is no need at all to name the new institutes as IITs," said Ashok Misra, Director - IIT Mumbai at the New Delhi Chapter of the institute's Golden Jubilee outreach programme. "You don't go about building new Oxfords and Cambridges," he stressed ... echoing Mishra's sentiment, IIT Delhi Director Surendra Prasad said he had serious concerns about the brand value of IIT. "I see no issues in setting up new technical institutes. But there are issues when it comes to calling them IITs."

The IIT Academic Advisory Council’s Standing Committee will shortly make a presentation to the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry on the financial needs of the seven IITs, where it will ask the government for over Rs 160 crore (around 20 crore for each IIT)