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The alma mater of NR Narayanmurthy, Pradeep Sandhu and Ashok Jhunjhunwala among hundreds of distinguished others, IIT Kanpur is one of the few institutions in India engaged in carrying out original research and technology development at a cutting edge.

The Beginnings
IIT Kanpur began functioning in the borrowed building of Harcourt Butler Technological Institute in 1959 with 100 students and a small faculty. Today, the institute boasts of about 1450 undergraduate and 850 postgraduate students, 300 faculty members, all housed in a neat campus spread over 1055 acres.

The big turning point in young institute’s life came quite early, when The Kanpur Indo-American Program (1962-1972) earned the institute technical assistance from a consortium of nine leading Institutions of US. Under the program, faculty members from these Institutions assisted the Institute in the setting up of the academic programs and development of laboratories for instruction as well as research.

Over the years, IIT Kanpur has grown a formidable reputation as one of the best engineering schools of the world. During the academic year 2001-2002, the Institute graduated 406 BTechs, 78 MSc, 261 MTechs, 41 PhDs and 4 DIIT in the engineering and science disciplines, besides conducting a total of 66 short term courses for engineering colleges, polytechnics and the industry. The institute also revels in strong R&D initiatives a team from the institute succeeded in designing the world's first algorithm for simplifying identification of prime numbers. Partner of Media Labs Asia in its research projects, the institute is actively researching natural language translation and Linux technologies for Indian languages. IIT Kanpur also boasts of 'National Wind Tunnel Facility', a state-of-the-art Low Speed Closed Circuit Wind Tunnel' with considerable associated equipment and modern instrumentation that meets the national need in areas of aeronautical and non-aeronautical related R&D work. There is also a 'National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering', which collects and maintains information resources on Earthquake Engineering with a view to mitigate earthquake disasters in India. Research is also undertaken in the fields of computer system security, environmental pollution and control, synthesis of new organic and inorganic compounds and VLSI design.

Synaptic with Industry
IIT Kanpur is one of the first IITs to have set up its own business incubators. The institute is also striking rich in research and consultancy projects—earning a sponsorship money totaling Rs 12 crore for these projects from the granting agencies and the private industry.

With the kind of pedigree it is blessed with, it is no wonder that corporates line up at the doors at each placement season. According to Prof. Ravinder Arora, "We saw 70% placement for the BTech and MTech batches. Two years back, the figure was only 50% while last year it was 60%. In fact, 80% of the BTech batch has already been placed."

This year IIT Kanpur saw around 16 new companies—including Tavant India, Yasu Tech and Transversal eNetworks. PSUs like GSSL, HPCL, IOCL and ISRO were also in line.

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