The Higher and Technical Education Minister, Prem Prakash Pandey on Friday directed the officials concerned to complete the construction works on the campus of Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) for commencing the academic session from this calendar year (2015) itself.He issued these orders while inspecting the ongoing works at the site.
Pandey urged the officials to organise a national seminar on ‘Smart e-City’ in Raipur.Technical Education Department Secretary Amit Agrawal informed the Minister that finishing works will be completed by February and the classes for academic session 2015-16 will start soon.Agrawal said,”As per the State Government directives, the Institute will be developed on par with global standards and the faculty will be of great repute.
He said that 50 per cent of the seats are reserved for local students.Research work, Post-Graduate studies and Ph.D courses will be started in due course of time.Agrawal said that the construction work had been started with the co-operation of NTPC with funds of Rs100 crore.An additional capital of Rs100 crore was sanctioned by the NTPC to upgrade the facilities at par with international standards.
The Higher Education Minister inspected the class rooms, library and other construction spots.He asked the officials to complete the hostel and other facilities in time.It is pertinent to mention here that the construction work was started in December 2012. The built-up area is about 1.25 lakh sq.ft.The construction work of boys and girls hostels is almost complete. Nodal officer of IIIT GS Bedi, Joint Director, Technical Education, Himanshu Gupta and a number of senior officers of the Technical Education Department were present also present during the inspection.
Notably, in February last year, the Board of National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) ltd has approved a sizeable contribution of Rs18 crore for the ‘IIIT Scholarship Fund’.The IIIT-Naya Raipur has instituted a ‘Scholarship Fund’ to ensure equitable and improved access of talented students to industry-oriented ICT studies, officials stated.The Board also approved additional capital investment of Rs82 crore, over and above the initial Rs119 crore investment on campus infrastructure development last year.
The additional capital investment would provide on-campus social infrastructure for the faculty, staff and students, at par with the best of campuses in the country.This would include a fully residential campus for both faculty and students, attractive accommodation for faculty, adjunct faculty and students, extensive facilities for sports and other activities, a Health Centre, as well as attractive landscaping.
Notably, on September 11 last year, Chhattisgarh Governor and Chancellor of IIIT-Naya Raipur, Balramji Dass Tandon appointed Prof Rajat Moona of IIT-Kanpur as the founding vice-chancellor and Director of IIIT-Naya Raipur.As Director General, C-DAC, Prof Moona has led India’s efforts in diverse areas like development of supercomputers, the national supercomputing grid, multilingual computing, electronic devices and embedded systems, information and cyber security, health informatics, e-governance solutions and e-learning technologies.
Prior to this, he held the prestigious Poonam and Prabhu Goel Chair Professorship at IIT-Kanpur, where he taught Computer Science & Engineering Department.An alumnus of IIT-Kanpur and Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, he holds seven patents, and has authored about 30 research papers and two books.
As an Indo-US Science and Technology fellow, he has been visiting scientist to MIT in the US. His research interests span embedded computing, computer security, VlSI design and operating systems.