Institute of Technology Roorkee

Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
Motto	"श्रमम् विना ना किमपि साध्यम्"
Motto in English	Nothing is Possible Without Hard Work
Established	1847
Type	Public
Chairman	Analjit Singh
Director	P. Banerji
Deputy Director	H. K. Verma
Academic staff	342
Admin. staff	1220
Students	4137
Location	Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India
Campus	Urban
Former names	University of Roorkee (1948-2001), Thomason College of Civil Engineering (1853-1948), College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee (1847-1853)
Website	www.iitr.ac.in

 The Indian Institute of Technology RoorkeeIIT Roorkee, Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान रुड़की), formerly the University of Roorkee, is a public university located in Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India. Established in 1847, it was given the University status in 1949 and in 2001 was converted into an IIT, thus becoming the seventh Indian Institute of Technology to be declared. Indian Institutes of technology are not Public Universities. Please refer to the notification on IIT elsewhere on the wiki pages. Thus IIT Roorkee is not a University, but a replacement of the great University of Roorkee. The name University of Roorkee appears in all the official documents till 2001, when it was closed. IIT Roorkee has 18 academic departments covering engineering, applied sciences, humanities & social sciences and management programs. It lays a claim to being the technical institutions with the largest number of academic units in India.

History

The institution has its origins in a class started in 1845 to train local youth in engineering to assist in public works then beginning. In 1847 it was officially established. It was renamed as the Thomson College of Civil Engineering in 1854 in honour of its founder, Sir James Thomason, Lieutenant Governor 1843-53. The first Indian to pass out from the Roorkee college was Rai Bahadur Kanhaiya Lal in 1852.

Main (administrative) building

Initially, the college had Engineers class only for Europeans, Upper subordinate class for Europeans and Indians and Lower subbordinate class for Indians only. Such was the reputation of the college, that the recruitment of the Engineering students was directly controlled by the Public Works Departments (PWD). Every student was guaranteed a post in the PWD/Irrigation departments. Roorkee pass outs played a role in all the areas of engineering primarily civil, including maintenance of the Ganges canal, construction of dam and irrigation projects like Bhakra Nangal, the Rajasthan canal, the Aswan dam on the Nile in Egypt, and construction of Chandigarh.

Between 1934 to 1943, officers of the Indian Army Corps of Engineers received training at the Thomson College of Engineering and even after the establishment of the School of Military Engineering (SME) at Roorkee in 1943, they continued to receive technical training at the Thomson college. In 1948 when SME was moved to Dapodi, Pune. It was given the status of University by Act No. IX of 1948 of the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh), and was title University of Roorkee. Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, presented the Charter in November 1949, elevating the erstwhile college to the first engineering university of independent India. Soil scientist Jagdish Narain was the first student to be admitted into University under this act.

On 21 September 2001, an ordinance issued by the Government of India declared it as the nation's seventh Indian Institute of Technology, renaming it to the current name, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. The ordinance was converted into an act by the Parliament to make IIT Roorkee an "Institution of National Importance".

Academics

IIT Roorkee offers academic programmes in Engineering, Technology, Applied Sciences, and Management. It runs eleven undergraduate (UG), five integrated dual degree, three integrated M.Tech., three integrated M.Sc., sixty one postgraduate (PG) and several Doctoral Programmes.

The institute admits students to B.Tech., B.Arch. and integrated M.Tech/M.Sc courses through the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) conducted at centers all over India. Prior to being converted into an IIT, the university selected students through an entrance exam, REE (Roorkee Entrance Exam) conducted on an All-India level. The selectivity of REE was close to 2%. After IIT-JEE, it was considered to be the second toughest engineering entrance examination in India. Admission to PG programmes in engineering and architecture is on the basis of GATE score and/or a written test and interview. For PG programmes in fundamental sciences admission is based on JAM (Joint Admission Test).

Along with the engineering courses, the institute offers a two year residential MBA program for which the admissions, starting from 2011, will be done on the basis of Common Admission Test, thus replacing Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET) previously conducted by IITs. Institute also offers a interdisciplinary program in computer applications leading to a degree in Master of computer applications (MCA). The MCA program is a three-year course and admission for the course is through JAM.

According to statistics published by institute in 2007-08 4137 students were enrolled in the institute across all programs.,the Student:Academic staff ratio was 2.6:1 and that of UG/PG students was 1.4:1.

As in other IITs, the institute follows a credit system for evaluating academic performance. The Grade Point Average (GPA) is on a scale of 0 to 10. Courses are allotted number of credits according to their importance. Each academic year is divided into two semesters and teaching programmes are organized around the credit system. Teaching includes lectures, tutorials, practicals, projects, seminars, dissertations, and field and industrial training.

Departments and Centres

IIT Roorkee has 18 Departments which offer undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes :

The Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department

• Architecture and Planning
• Biotechnology
• Chemical Engineering
• Chemistry
• Civil Engineering
• Earthquake Engineering
• Earth Sciences
• Electrical Engineering
• Electronics and Computer Engineering
• Humanities and Social Sciences
• Hydrology
• Management Studies
• Mathematics
• Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
• Metallurgical and Materials Engineering
• Paper Technology
• Physics
• Water Resources Development and Management

Apart from these departments there are some academic centres which offer post graduate courses, doctoral programmes and short term training programmes:

Computer Centre

• Alternate Hydro Energy Centre
• Centre of Nanotechnology
• Centre for Transportation Systems (CTRANS)
• Centre of Excellence in Disaster Mitigation & Management (CoEDMM)
• Continuing Education Centre (CEC)
• Institute Computer Centre (ICC)
• Institute Instrumentation Centre (IIC)
• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Cell
• Quality Improvement Programme(QIP)
• TIFAC Core

These academic centres also offer courses which students enrolled in other departments can opt for. Academic centres are also involved in sponsored research activities.

Other Services Centres:

• Mahatma Gandhi Central Library
• Information Super Highway Centre(ISC)
• Educational Technology Cell
• Institute Hospital

Research

Research activities at the institute are conducted at either the departmental level, or under the central office of Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy (SRIC). Major research funding was awarded by several ministries and departments of the Government of India, including the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (India), Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and others. Apart from these, a number of major research organizations who have awarded projects to IIT Roorkee include the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian Space Research Organisation and others.

Academic collaboration

IIT Roorkee has academic collaboration with the many universities in India and abroad. The collaborative programmes include student and faculty exchange, internship for students and joint research activities among others.

Some of the major universities which have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with IIT Roorkee include National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore; Royal Institute of Technology(KTH),Stockholm; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL); Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland (ETH); Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany; Institut National des Télécommunications, EVRY, France; University of Texas at Dallas, USA; New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) at Newark, USA; University of Waterloo, Canada; University of Western Ontario, Canada

IIT Roorkee's contribution towards the International community in field of Science and technology include the courses and training programs run for the developing countries. Every year students from more than 50 countries join IIT Roorkee for full time or short term training courses. In 1955 the department of Water Resources Development and Management (WRDM) was established as an Asian African Centre to honour India's commitment at the Asian African Conference held in Bandung. WRDM and the Department of Hydrology run special postgraduate (PG) programmes for students of Afro Asian region. The department has so far trained over 2469 in service engineers and agricultural scientists from 48 countries including India. The courses, offered by the Department of Hydrology are presently sponsored by the Government of India and the UNESCO.

Research organizations in India which have a MOU with IIT Roorkee include Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun; Department of Atomic Engineering (DAE), Mumbai; Intel Technology India Pvt. Ltd.; Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital among others.

Campus

The main campus in Roorkee has an area of 356 acres (1,440,000 m²). IIT Roorkee also has a campus of 25 acres (100,000 m²) in Saharanpur which offers courses in Polymer Science, Process Engineering and Paper Technology. In addition to this a new ten acre campus has been established in Greater Noida, Knowledge park II, which was inaugurated on April 4, 2011. The Noida extension centre has 16 lecture rooms, software laboratories, faculty offices, a library and a computer centre.

Hostels (Bhawans)

Most students live in the hostels, where extracurricular activities complement the academic routine. The campus has 16 hostels, of which three (Sarojini, Kasturba and Indira) are occupied by girls. Hostels may accommodate undergraduate and graduate students along with doctoral students. Students are assigned to hostels by the Institute Administration after their freshmen year. There are four hostels for married students, doctoral students and foreign students. Each bhawan has a mess. Mess administration consists of a staff advisor, a chief advisor, and a student mess secretary.

Student Activities

Student groups on the campus include: STIFKI(Student Teacher Interaction Forum For Knowledge and Innovation),IMG (Information Management Group), SDSLabs (Software Development Section Labs), GIL (Group for Interactive Learning), EDC (Entrepreneurship Development Cell), HEC (Himalayan Explorers' Club), Kshitij, Watch Out, Cultural Society (Dramatics, Music, Choreography, Cinematic, Literary, Audio, Lights, Program Management), a local chapter of ShARE, Spic Macay in addition to student chapters of technical societies such as ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers, IIT Roorkee Student Section), SAE, IEEE etc.

IIT Roorkee has a hobbies club, one of its kind amongst all the IITs. It aims at facilitating activities like Photography, Philately, Star Gazing, Fine Arts, Gardening, Web Designing etc. It is headed by a Chief Advisor, who is supported by two Deputy Chief Advisors and a Council Secretary. It also hosts SRISHTI, an Annual Techno-Hobby Exhibition.

Alumni

The IIT Roorkee has produced many Alumni who played important roles in the technological development of India and made significant impact on corporate world. According to IIT Roorkee's website, ten Alumni have won Padma Bhushan awards and 25 have been Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology awardees. The institute has produced seven Chairmen of the Indian Railway Board, Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, more than a hundred Secretary Level officers in the Government of India, two Presidents of the Confederation of Indian Industry, six Directors of various IITs, and presidents of various bodies related to engineers and scientists like the Indian Institution of Engineers, the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Notable alumni

• Pradip Baijal, IAS and former chairman Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)
• Naveen Jain, founder and CEO of Intelius, founder of Moon Express, InfoSpace
• Ajit Gupta, founder, CEO of Aryaka; founder, chairman of AAyuja; founder, ex-CEO of Speedera; founder, chairman of Jantakhoj
• Vinita Gupta, founder, CEO of Quick Eagle Networks and first Indian-origin-woman to take her company public
• Nilmani Mitra, famous architect of the 19th century, designer of magnificent palaces in Kolkata.
• Dinesh Paliwal, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Harman International Industries
• Narendra Patni, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Patni Computer Systems
• Ashok Soota, founder of Happiest Minds Technologies, co-founder of MindTree, ex-president of Wipro Infotech
• Amit Singhal ,Google Fellow,rewrote the Google search algorithm in 2000

Alumni association

The IIT Roorkee Alumni Association was established and registered in 1940 as a Society under the Society Registration Act. The Association has 31 local chapters in the country and three chapters abroad. The association encourages the alumni to take interest in the activities of the alma mater and promotes relations between alumni.

Every year the association hosts Diamond, Golden and Silver jubilee functions, where alumni graduating 60, 50 and 25 years earlier are invited. Since 2001 the association has also been awarding a Distinguished Alumni Award to alumni who have made immense contributions in the fields of Academic/Research, Social Sciences, Engineering & Public Administration, Corporate Development/Entrepreneurship and Service to the Society.

The Student Alumni Mentorship Programme has been initiated by the association to help young students in achieving their career aspirations. The alumni visit the institute to interact with the students and staff and share their suggestions.