Writing AI, ML Codes Not Enough For India to Grow, Need More Civil, Mechanical Engineers: IIT-Madras Director

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras has been rated the topmost higher education institution overall for the sixth consecutive year in the National Institutional Rankings Framework (NIRF) 2024 released by the Ministry of Education (MoE) recently. The institute has ranked on top in the ‘engineering’ category for the ninth year in a row. It stood second in the ‘research’ and ‘innovation’ categories.

IIT-Madras director Prof V Kamakoti, a cyber security expert, spoke to News18 about how a common focus and working on national priorities keep the institute ahead of others. He also spoke about his goal to get a start-up at the institute every third day, how the institute became the first IIT to introduce sports category admissions, as a measure to address mental health issues on campus and why students must not focus as much on the pay package.

He said that not having enough civil, mechanical or core sector engineers could be a concern for the country in the future, which the institute is trying to address.

Excerpts from the interview:

What makes IIT-Madras rule the Indian rankings year-on-year?

We have been looking at our NIRF data and three important aspects I’d like to share, which I believe make us count on the top year-on-year. Also, I’d like to share these for the benefit of other institutions. First, 2003 onwards, we have been working on a strategic plan for the institute and unlike other institutions that hire external agencies to make a strategic plan for them, ours is a home-grown plan where we involve young faculty members. For example, I was part of it back in 2003. The plan is made for what we aim to do over the next five-seven years. So the idea is that the young faculty will be the ones implementing it and by the time the new plan is to be evolved, these faculty members would be at the helm of the outcomes of the previous plan. The strategic plan gives us a common focus area and a cohesive approach, which includes all stakeholders — faculty, students, staff, alumni, industry partners, ministries, funding agencies. This common focus has enabled us to reach the top. For example, our focus has been to reach out to students using technology, who are not physically on campus, but can study by enrolling in our online courses such BS in data science. There is an eligibility test for the same. Currently, 30,000 students are enrolled in it, of which 8,000 are those from the below poverty line category, who are given full scholarships. These are students from rural and semi-urban areas.

The second aspect is that we started working on certain national priorities, including quality education for all, increasing gross enrolment ratio, innovation and entrepreneurship and our target now is to churn out 100 start-ups a year, which means 20%-25% of the graduating batch are already CTOs (Chief Technology Officers). So far, we are filing a patent a day, now my faculty said that we should aim for two patents a day. Third, gender ratio, the number of female to male faculty has to improve. So, we have a Women Leading IITs (WLI) initiative, where this year 22 women faculty members across IITs, are discussing how women can get into leadership roles in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

There have been issues flagged within the NIRF rankings, and unlike international rankings, Indian rankings are still evolving. Do you think there is a need to further improve the rankings framework ?

I believe Indian rankings have evolved much better than the international rankings system. I don’t say this because we have been ranked number one. I am saying this as third party. We are the most transparent ranking system. Here, perception is given 10%, while in global rankings it is 40%, which is something completely out of an institution’s hands. Coming to research, citation per faculty is the index, which even QS Rankings (global rankings) use as they cannot evaluate thousands of papers individually. Citation means how useful your research has been for someone else, which I believe is a good parameter. Of course, it can be gamed. So what? As an educational institution, we should look at rankings as an external audit. We do one national ranking and one international ranking, which has benefitted us. When it comes to perception, I’ll give an example to tell what it means to me. I went to a school in a rural area where a class 8 student asked me if I were from IIT-Madras and that he would like to join the BS in data science course at the institute eventually. To me this is the perception that matters and I strongly believe that local relevance will give us global relevance. For me, the other perception is out of syllabus, even though I will work for it, I will make myself relevant, but that is not my top priority because as an Indian institution we have different priorities and commitments to fulfil.

IIT-Madras was the first to start admissions based on sports excellence in Undergraduate (UG) programmes. What prompted this and what is it aimed at?

Yes, this is the first year of admissions in this category and five national champions have joined. All of them are from different sports, including lawn tennis, squash, table tennis and chess. We have 16 departments and two supernumerary seats are reserved in each for them. One of these two seats is reserved for women. Sports students have to clear JEE-Advanced and figure in any of the six rank lists while weightage will also be given to their sporting achievements. Only national and international level champions are considered for it. So how did it happen? The motivation for this came soon after I took over as director (in January 2022) when unfortunately, five student suicides occurred on campus within six months of my joining. When we went into the reasons, one of the important factors was lack of Vitamin D in most students as they have not had enough exposure to sunlight because they have not ventured into a field or playground for years, just studying and preparing for JEE. We also found that students lacked social skills, they don’t know how to take success and failure. This had a big impact on me, personally. Then I started working with my faculty and came out with the sports excellence admissions. I want to give a message to parents to not just push children into studies, they need to go out, play and learn other things at the same time. Also, not to focus on the pay package as much and just let students find out what is best for them.

I want to give a message to parents to not just push children into studies, they need to go out, play and learn other things at the same time. Also, not to focus on the pay package as much and just let students find out what is best for them.