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Starting from a prison house in 1950, IIT Kharagpur has indeed come a long way. In the early days, the classrooms, laboratories and the administrative office were housed in the historic building of the Hijli Detention Camp.

From 224 freshers and 42 teachers in 10 academic departments in August 1951, when the first session started, the institute today boasts of over 4,700 students and 450 faculty members.

Today, there are 18 academic departments, and five centers of excellence, housed in a vast campus spreading over 2100 acres.

Strong R&D Tradition
IIT Kharagpur is known for its innovations and an excellent R&D culture. In the recent past, the institute successfully designed complete chip sets for communications and power supply sectors, with technology support from Cadence Design Systems. And no doubt, the R&D initiatives are spelling big bucks for the institute—last year alone the institute earned Rs 90 crore from research projects and industrial consultation, more than double of what IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, its nearest competitors could do.

One of the many projects underway is an Rs 8 crore effort, that will develop lithium ion batteries which will help run everything from mobile phones to electric cars. The veracity of the institute’s R&D efforts is clear from the fact that it admits only students with an MBBS degree to one of its program—a three-year Masters in Medical Sciences and Technology.

The credit for IIT Kharagpur’s strong industry interface goes to the institute’s Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy (SRIC) cell, which bagged a total of 333 projects this year. A lion’s share of these projects has come from the Government of India itself, while a large number have been given by international agencies also. Says dean of SRIC Partha Pratim Chakraborty, "The biggest and most prestigious projects were given to us by the different central ministries. Coal India gave us a Rs 19 crore project to computerize its works, the Prime Minister’s Office, that gave us a project worth Rs 15 crores to build cyclone shelters in coastal Orissa and the union ministry of ocean development gave us a project for building an automated underwater vehicle, to name a few." There is also a rupees two crore worth project on determining earthquake sensitivity of eastern India.

It is not the national agencies alone that have been looking up to this institute for consultancy, but also agencies like the National Semiconductor Corporation, USA, which gave the institute a project worth $250,000 to develop computer aided design tools, VLSI chips, power management circuitry and other types of circuit design.

Winning Over the Whiz Kids
With an impressive track record and a strong industry interface, IIT Kharagpur has ensured that grabbing its students is not exactly a cakewalk for corporates. The salaries for campus recruitment go up to a cool Rs 7 lakh per annum. Training and placement in charge Professor Gautam Sinha revelaed a couple of months ago, "placements are a whopping 93% and could even go up to 96% by May-end, when it gets over". Even in the thick of economic slowdown, the institute boasted of 80% placement last year. "IIT Kharagpur has been No 1 in this regard for the last three years," Sinha says.

Getting Ready for Future
The institute would invest more than Rs 300 crore over next 10 years in infrastructure development and creation of new accommodation facilities for students as it plans to increase the total seat strength from 4300 to 10,000 and staff strength from 450 to 1000 by 2013. There are plans for introducing a PG diploma course in Business Management, only for engineering graduates. Recently, the institute was in news for signing a MoU with University of Waterloo in Canada, to explore cooperation possibilities in research, scholarship and exchange programs.

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