Used COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to start more online programmes: IIT Delhi Director

In an exclusive conversation with Shiksha, IIT Delhi Director Professor V Ramgopal Rao spells out the focus areas of new courses, parameters he focused on to maintain second spot in NIRF rankings and more.  

Professor V Ramgopal Rao, who completed his five-year term in April 2021, talks about research programmes, industry collaborations, hybrid mode of teaching and more. Read the complete interview below.

Q. IIT Delhi remains the second best institution after IIT Madras in engineering category as per the NIRF 2021. What factors contributed to the achievement?

A. We have grown in almost all aspects. There are many things that have changed at IIT Delhi. One thing is we were losing out on the faculty-student ratio. In the last five years, we have recruited 200 new faculty members. That has significantly improved the faculty-student ratio. Also, IIT Delhi was not filing enough patents earlier because there was no proper process in place. So, we have streamlined the patent process. Now, it takes a month or two to file a patent. Earlier, we were filing 20-25 patents per year, now we are filing 150-200 patents per year.

We have also started faculty interdisciplinary research programme (FIRP) under which if two faculty members from different disciplines want to work together, the institute gives them a seed grant of INR 5 lakh per year each for two years. The condition is that after they work for a couple of years on research areas, they have to go out and seek external support, meaning they have to write proposals to outside agencies. Under FIRP, we have so far funded over 100 projects. Now, they have all gone out and received external funding from various agencies. So, our research funding has gone up by at least four times. 

We have also created a Dean of Corporate Relations office, which organises Industry Days on monthly basis to facilitate industry-academia interaction. We have also set up 16 new centres of excellence with funding from alumni, industries and government agencies.

Q. How did the COVID-19 pandemic transform your role as a director? What are the changes that have been brought about by you in these trying times?

A. One of the major things was to move from offline to completely online education. Initially, when we suddenly closed down, we had no idea about how to take the entire education to online mode. Many students did not have internet, tablets and faculty training was also required as many of them had never taught online. So, that was a massive exercise for IIT Delhi. We were able to raise a lot of support from corporates and alumni. We distributed dongles and tablets among students. Those who still did not have internet access, we brought them back to the campus and made them stay in hostels and take online classes. We also conducted workshops to help faculty in teaching online. So, we were able to do transformation from offline to online very smoothly.

We also used the pandemic as an opportunity to start more and more online programmes. During our last convocation, we launched an initiative called eVIDYA under which we offer certificates to people in a variety of courses. If they accumulate a certain number of credits, they can get a diploma or degree from IIT Delhi. It also helped us earn some revenue because all of these courses are not free. 

Last year in March when we were closing down the institute, we invited students and faculty who wished to work in Covid-related areas because as a research institute we need to provide help to the country in fighting Covid. We brought back faculty and students who wished to work in labs for Covid. We were able to develop many new technologies for Covid since we kept some labs functional. We filed around 13 patents on Covid, signed 19 licensing deals and four technology transfers.

Q. IIT Delhi had launched INR 265 crore global alumni endowment fund in 2019 with an aim to raise $1 billion by 2025. How will that fund be used?

A. We realised that we need to connect with our alumni. For that, we wanted an endowment fund, unencumbered money, meaning money without any specific purpose. We wanted alumni to put in money into an endowment fund and we wanted this fund to grow to a substantial amount and then the interest earned from that fund is what we will use for a variety of activities, which are again decided by alumni board. Anyone who gives INR 10 crore becomes a founder of the board. For the first time now, we have taken some money out of the interest earned from the endowment fund and this year, we are investing on some start-ups from students and even give some scholarships to needy students.  

Our idea is to build the endowment fund to INR 1,000 crore first. Until it reaches that target, we don’t want to touch that money. In addition to that, there are alumni contributions for specific activities. For example, we started 10 new chairs in the past six months and each chair sponsorship at IIT Delhi cost INR 1 crore.

Q. IIT Delhi is going to offer Bachelor of Design (BDes) course from the 2022-23 session. What is the admission criteria, seat intake and fee structure of the course?

A. The BDes programme will be offered by the institute’s Department of Design. Fee will same as any BTech programme at IIT Delhi and admissions will be through Undergraduate Common Entrance Examination (UCEED). The four-year programme will have 20 seats to start with and later we can go up to 40 students. 

Two years down the line, we are also starting BTech in design that will start in 2025. If we are able to recruit faculty, we might start it even earlier. But admissions to BTech in design will be through JEE Advanced and some local test will be conducted to check creative abilities of students. 

Q. IIT Delhi has started BTech in Energy Engineering from this year for which it has also launched a new department. Please tell us the purpose behind introducing this course.

A. Yes, we have started BTech in Energy Engineering from this year and the Centre for Energy Studies (CES), which was earlier offering only MTechprogrammes, has been converted into the Department of Energy Science and Engineering to offer this course. Energy and environment are always closely linked as lot of pollution comes from the way you generate electricity. So, the aim is to achieve sustainable development goal of meeting increasing energy requirements at affordable price in an environmentally sustainable manner. 

Q. IIT Delhi launched several products, including rapid antigen test kit, at affordable prices to fight Covid. How do you think it added to the capabilities of the nation?

A. IIT Delhi launched low-cost RT-PCR kit priced at INR 399 in July 2020. We also supplied millions of PPE kits. The institute recently launched rapid antigen testing, costing INR 50, for Covid-19. I also get myself tested using it at regular intervals. Apart from this, we had also developed ‘Kawach’ facemask for protection against Covid-19 that costs just INR 40. Over 10 million people have benefited from the technologies developed at IIT Delhi.

Q. IIT Delhi had recently opened its Central Research Facility (CRF) for outside researchers. Was there any such demand from academic/industrial users from outside the institute? How can external users avail of the institute’s CRF facilities?

A. We want to set an example for other institutions and rest of the country. We have invested over INR 500 crore in building the Central Research Facility at IIT Delhi. We have put in a website where people can book slots and use the equipment. We thought that since we are anyway doing it within the institute, why not make it open to the outsiders so that even maintenance becomes easier and we can generate some revenue.

Q. Are you planning to introduce any new course in the coming future?

A. Our senators have just approved MTech in MINDS (Machine Intelligence and Data Science) and it will be offered from next year. The entry will be through GATE and even industries can also sponsor the course for their employees.

Q. Would you like to recount any interesting incident from the past five years?

A. Overall things have worked very well at IIT Delhi. It could not have been any better in terms of growth now. In every aspect, we have grown significantly. It has been a very satisfying sort of and experience. There was lot of cooperation from within the institute and even from the government.

Q. Many institutes have started new academic session in hybrid mode. What is your approach for the same?

A. This will definitely happen. I don’t think we want to go back to the offline mode once the pandemic is over. Optimum is not fully offline or fully online. It lies in between and I hope we will be able to achieve optimum once Covid is over. We have about 3,000 students on the campus right now. We are beginning to conduct examinations in halls and we are also planning to conduct lectures in physical mode. Students can attend in-person classes if they want.

Q. What message do you have for students who are looking forward to joining the institute?

A. IIT Delhi particularly has a lot of emphasis on entrepreneurship. If they want to become an entrepreneur or job providers, IIT Delhi is the place to be. Even if you look at among our alumni, IIT Delhi has produced maximum start-ups and unicorns. Half of unicorns in India are from IIT Delhi alone.

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