point
Menu
Magazines
Browse by year:
Beyond the IITs
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Dhirubhai Ambani made his mark as the pioneering architect of India’s famous industrial powerhouse, the Reliance Group. Like many highly successful businesspeople, Ambani has turned some of his attention to social pursuits. His Ambani Foundation has both a healthcare and an education initiative in India, and the flagship project of the education initiative is a pair of new engineering universities, created with the mission to one day be on par with the revered IITs.

The new Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology — located in Gandhinagar, Gujarat — is being headed up by IIT veteran Prof. A. P. Kudchadker. The Institute welcomed its first class of students in August — 240, chosen from an all-India exam that attracted 18,200 candidates. The Gandhinagar campus is a pilot project that will house as many as 1500 students when the first class is ready to graduate in four years.

The larger Dhirubhai Ambani University of Science and Technology will open its doors in roughly a year, in Jamnagar — site of Reliance’s principle refinery. Kudchadker will take over the reins of that project once it becomes operational.

The Gandhinagar Institute will be a research institution that offers a four-year bachelors program in information and communication technology, with the option to specialize in IT, computer science or communication technology. Masters and PhD. Programs will be instituted later. The Ambani University in Jamnagar will offer a broad base of engineering fields above and beyond the high-tech arena. Both institutes will also stress learning in the humanities and social sciences — somewhat on the American model of a balanced undergraduate education.

Kudchadker is on a mission to build both institutions essentially from scratch. The Ambani Foundation has kicked in all necessary resources to build new infrastructure. What he wants now is high quality faculty to go with his talented students.

“The bottom line is excellent students and excellent faculty. I have excellent students, now I am looking for faculty,” Kudchadker says with a laugh. “We need to attract them from all over India the U.S. and the world,” he says, during a trip to the United States in which he is looking to build relationships with and attract potential faculty, guest faculty, and even guest lecturers.

Kudchadker has done this before, as part of both IIT Kanpur and IIT Bombay. It’s all in the networking — convincing fresh American Ph.Ds that they will enjoy going back to India to teach rather than staying overseas. He’s tapping heavily into his powerful IIT network.

Kudchadker has big plans. In their first summer, all 240 members of his inaugural class in Gandhinagar will go out into rural areas in India for six weeks and study the effects of IT on rural life in terms of education and healthcare.

He has industry internships on the agenda, as well as research internships for his students. He is hoping to set up a lab on campus, where outside companies from all over the world can do research and thereby expose his students to leading edge technology.

For now Kudchadker is concentrating on obtaining faculty, and he encourages any potential candidates to seize the opportunity. He is hoping to have put the new institutes on the radar screen in two to four years. “A world class institute,” he admits, “takes a much longer time.” si

Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
facebook