Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
Motto	Shradhavaan Labhathe Jnaanam
Motto in English	The earnest aspirant gains supreme wisdom
Established	2003
Type	Private
Chancellor	Mata Amritanandamayi Devi
Vice-Chancellor	P. Venkat Rangan
Academic staff	1500
Students	13000
Location	Coimbatore, India 10°54′4″N 76°54′10″E
Campus	Amritapuri, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Kochi, Mysore
Website	www.amrita.edu

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham or Amrita University is a multi-campus, multi-disciplinary, NAAC A grade accredited, research and teaching university located in India. The university spread across eight acre campuses in the three states of South India, in Kerala at Amritapuri and Kochi, in Tamil Nadu at Coimbatore and in Karnataka at Bangalore and Mysore. The University Headquarters are at Ettimadai in a campus near the foothills of the Western Ghats, about 22 km from Coimbatore City. Extensive interaction between all campuses is made possible through the Amrita-ISRO satellite network for e-learning.

The university offers bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree programs in computer science, engineering, business, biotechnology, nanotechnology, ayurveda, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, social work, journalism, education, and basic sciences. Areas of specialization which include Medical Informatics, Computational Engineering, Cyber Security, Clinical Research, and Oncology have been designed keeping in mind India's National Development Plans. 13,000 students are enrolled in nearly a 100 different degree programs.

In partnership with national and international organizations, it has undertaken research projects to benefit society. For example, a project to investigate the use of wireless sensors in a novel manner, is currently underway to help predict disasters in landslide-prone areas. Another project involves the design and fabrication of an inexpensive, indigenous insulin pump for use by diabetic patients in poorer countries.

Administration

The Chancellor of the university is Mata Amritanandamayi, also known as Amma or Mother.

Inspired by the Chancellor, many noted academicians from all over the world have left high-profile careers elsewhere to join Amrita University. Amrita Alumni Association or A3 is the umbrella association for the alumni of Amrita University.

History

The two campuses, Amritapuri and Ettimadai, started as computer training centers and slowly evolved into colleges, christened as Amrita Institute of Technology (AITEC). The AITEC, Amritapuri was affiliated to the University of Kerala and AITEC, Ettimadai was affiliated to the Bharathiyar University. In 2002, the two colleges were rechristened as Amrita School of Engineering when the Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham was born.

Campuses

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has five campuses, with the headquarters in Ettimadai, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. It has four other campuses, namely Amritapuri and Kochi campuses in Kerala and Bangalore and Mysore Campuses in Karnataka. The university is also planning to open up new campuses in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, Hyderabad & Vishakapatnam (Vizag) in Andhra Pradesh and one in New Delhi.

Schools

Amrita Schools of Engineering

The Amrita School of Engineering at Ettimadai predates Amrita University. In 1994, when it was established, it became the first Amrita institution for higher education. In 2008, the School celebrated its 13th Institution Day. In a survey of nearly 1500 AICTE-approved engineering colleges in India, Outlook (magazine) ranked the Amrita School of Engineering as 21st among private engineering colleges. Considering placements alone, the School received the 11th rank.

The three Schools of Engineering altogether offer B.Tech degree degree programs in Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Information Technology, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Instrumentation Engineering, and Chemical Engineering. Various M.Tech and PhD degree programs are offered in the three campuses and one at the Kochi campus, where a M.Tech. in Nanotechnology is also offered.

Amrita School of Business

The school offers a fully residential two-year MBA degree program. In addition, it offers a dual degree program leading to an MS in Information Technology and MBA in collaboration with State University of New York at Buffalo, for working professionals at the Bangalore campus. Faculty members have degrees from IITs, IIMs and reputed foreign universities such as University of California, Berkeley, Cornell University, NYU Stern School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, and Kellogg School of Management. Outlook (magazine) ranks this school as 27th among Business Schools in the nation.

Amrita Schools of Arts and Sciences

Amrita School of Engineering kollam

The schools offer Bachelor of Commerce (BCom), Bachelor of Business Management (BBM), Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA), Master of Computer Applications (MCA), Master of Science (MSc) in Computer Science and Information Technology degree programs.

Amrita Healthcare Campus

Attached to the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, a 1300-bed super-speciality hospital in Kochi that aims to provide the "best medical care regardless of the patient's ability to pay", is the University's healthcare campus. The Amrita Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Dentistry are all located on this campus. They respectively offer MBBS, Bachelors of Science (Nursing), Bachelor of Pharmacy, and Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree programs.

The School of Medicine also offers a large number of graduate programs including MSc in various disciplines, Diplomate of National Board (DNB), and PhD. In 2008, the first batch of MBBS students graduated with A. P. J. Abdul Kalam presiding over the graduation ceremony. Outlook (magazine) ranks the School of Medicine as 8th in the nation.

Amrita School of Ayurveda and Biotechnology

The School of Ayurveda offers the Bachelor of Ayurveda, Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) degree program. The School of Biotechnology offers BSc and MSc in Biotechnology, BSc and MSc in Microbiology, and MSc in Bioinformatics, as well as the PhD degree programs.

Amrita School of Communication

The School offers (BA and MA) degree programs in Communication. The course helps prepare students for careers in journalism, new media/animation, short film making and advertising, and is modeled on UNESCO guidelines. Amrita University was one among the first Indian Universities to adopt the UNESCO model curriculum.

Website : http://amrita.edu/ascom/index.php

Other programs

Degree programs in social work (MSW) are directly offered by the university.

Campus activites

ACM-ICPC

ACM-ICPC is held annually in the month of December at Amritapuri and Ettimadai campuses under ACM's Amritapuri Chapter. It is the only university in India to host this event other than IIT-Kanpur.

SAE India

Amrita has an SAE chapter and is very active member of SAE in South India.

Infosys Campus Connect

Amrita is a part of Infosys Campus Connect Programme undertaken by Infosys.

IEEE

IEEE has a chapter in Amrita for enhancing the skills of students in the areas of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science Engineering.

Techfests

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham plays hosts to two national techfests, Anokha in Ettimadai Campus and Vidyut in Amritapuri Campus in addition to numerous inter-department techfests across all five campuses.

Admissions

The competitive Amrita Engineering Entrance Examination (AEEE) is conducted to find the best of talents in and outside India.

Research

Centres of Excellence

In February 2007, the Amrita Center for Nanosciences became the nation's first centre to be set up for tissue engineering and stem cell research.

The Centres for Digital Health and Digital Earth participate in telemedicine projects to bring specialized healthcare to rural India. The Centre for E-learning develops the software and infrastructure needed, eventually aimed at helping bring distance learning to village clusters.

International symposiums organized by the centres include the Healing Across Cultures Symposium in 2007 organized by the Center for Environmental Studies. Products developed include Amrita MiTrans made at the Amrita Research Labs (ARL) to facilitate delivery of high bandwidth information to moving vehicles to help with flight scheduling, location tracking and other content delivery. ARL has filed for a patent for this product.

International collaborations

The earliest research projects were initiated in partnership with Indian Government Organizations such as Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). The Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), which helps promote industry-university collaborative research provided funding to start two research centres, in Biomedical Engineering and Cybersecurity, respectively.

In 2005, an MoU was signed with many Ivy League United States universities to "bring world-class technical education to India". As part of this agreement, nearly a hundred professors from these universities have taught short-term and full-semester courses in Amrita University. These courses were made available not only to students at the five campuses of Amrita University, but also to other participating colleges from across the nation. The use of open courseware developed at universities such as Yale and MIT is also made available through this consortium to universities all over India In 2008, as part of the European Research and Education Collaboration with Asia (EURECA), faculty and students from Amrita University will have the opportunity to conduct research at any of the nine partner European universities. Funding will be provided by the European Union.

See also

• Mata Amritanandamayi Devi
• Mata Amritanandamayi Math
• Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences
• Centre for Excellence in Computational Engineering
• Virtual Labs

External links

• Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham - Official Website