IIT Delhi's flagship industry-academia partnership event, Industry Day 2022, will be held on December 10. The fourth edition of the daylong event will give an opportunity to the industry to witness how IIT Delhi is working to develop technologies that will benefit both the industry and society. Top leadership from over 15 large corporate and business houses will be present at the event. Professor Sunil Khare, Dean, Corporate Relations at IIT Delhi spoke about the event and its relevance.?
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi?called for making India a global centre of research and innovation. This requires collaborative effort of academia-industry partnerships. IIT Delhi is working in several critical areas to strengthen such partnerships.?
"India is experiencing a new kind of growth trajectory in the research-driven solutions for global and local problems. The global focus on the country's scientific workforce is more visible than before. This has fuelled a spirit of collaborative research culture in labs of?IIT Delhi and other premier research institutes across India. To strengthen and sustain these successes, we need to create a culture of innovation that fuels successful and productive industry-academia partnerships and produce an industry-ready solution, workforce and framework," says Prof Khare.?
"With the ever-changing landscape of economic outputs globally we realised that it will be vital for us to be perceived as a research-based institution to support the temperament of innovation in everything that we do now.?This shift has fuelled a culture of start-ups that are disrupting our economy by creating products and solutions of significance to the industry as well as to the society in general. We are now witnessing an increased investment from the industry via sponsored research projects and this has resulted in more such product-oriented research happening in our laboratories," he added.?
The research of IIT Delhi faculty members are actively shared with industry partners through sponsored research and consultancy projects and outreach training programmes for working professionals.??
Faculty at IIT?Delhi?has initiated over 890 sponsored research projects in last 5 years.?These works have the potential to contribute positively in addressing problems like global energy crises, providing affordable healthcare to a massive population, application of communication based on 5G technology to boost economic activities and making India self- reliant in EV ecosystem.?
"The underlying intent of our research work is to create a positive socio-economic impact not just for India but for global problems too,?such as Sustainable Energy, Environment & Climate Changes. The?learnings of our faculty members from these sponsored projects translate directly into our classrooms, due to which our rankings in national and international employment surveys are also so very high," said Prof Khare.??
There are multiple sponsored projects from Fortune 500 companies as well as large multinational firms that run in IIT Delhi.?The Institute also provides innovation ecosystem with about 75+ Start-Ups being supported currently.
"We are now ready to embrace science-driven socio-economy solutions to address our issues. Large scale social programmes by the Government need to be supported by scientific temperament.? Cleaning of the river, providing water to all, reducing air pollution in cities and towns, affordable healthcare are some of the immediate impacts that general people will see coming out of the collaborative work by policy, academic and commercial stakeholders," he added.
Further, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA), a flagship programme of the Ministry of Education (MoE) is being coordinated by IIT Delhi.? This programme envisions to involve the professional & higher education of the country in the development of rural economy for societal benefits.
Industry Day is a very important event in IIT Delhi calendar as it aims to foster the power of Industry-Academia collaboration. It will be an opportunity to showcase cutting edge research driven by our faculty, research community and students. Many of these research works are being funded or commissioned by various government departments and industry leaders.??
"The fourth edition of the Industry Day will feature themes that are critical in the development of 21 century India that includes sustainable?Energy,?Climate Change, Electric Vehicles,?5/6 G Communications and Healthcare technologies. We will also be showcasing a variety of industry ready solutions. We expect that Industry Day will further strengthen the message of Jai Anusandhan, a call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to push for innovation.