IIT Madras

12°59′29″N 80°14′01″E / 12.99151°N 80.23362°E / 12.99151; 80.23362

Template:Infobox Indian Institute of Technology

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) is an elite engineering and technology school located in Chennai (formerly Madras) in southern India. It is officially recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India and is regarded as one of the finest engineering institutions in India. Founded in 1959 with technical and financial assistance from the Government of the erstwhile West Germany, IIT Madras was third among currently seven Indian Institutes of Technology established by the Government of India through an Act of Parliament, to provide world-class education and research facilities in engineering and technology.

General information

File:Iitm.maingate.logo.jpg

The entrance to the campus, showing the logo (a stylized lamp) and the motto "Siddhirbhavati Karmaja" (taken from the Bhagavad Gita, meaning "It is inherent to human nature that success comes through hard work").

The IIT Madras is a residential institute located in 2.5 km² (620 acres) campus that was formerly part of adjoining Guindy National Park. IIT Madras has nearly 360 faculty, 4,000 students and 1,250 administrative & supporting staff. It has been growing ever since it obtained its charter from the Indian Parliament in 1961 and has established itself as a premier centre for teaching, research and industrial consultancy in the country.

The Institute has 15 academic departments and a few advanced research centres in various disciplines of engineering and pure sciences, with nearly 100 laboratories. The IITs are rated among the finest educational institutions in the world in terms of peer-ranking. Most of the campus is a protected forest, carved from Guindy National Park, and home to chital (spotted deer) and the black buck, amongst other wild life. There is a natural lake inside IITM, to where most of the rainwater inside IIT drains. This lake was deepened in the year 2003.

History

In 1956, the German Government offered technical assistance for establishing an institute of higher education in engineering in India. The first Indo-German agreement in Bonn, West Germany for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras was signed in 1959. IIT Madras was started with technical, academic and financial assistance from the Government of West Germany; and at the time was the largest educational project sponsored by the West German Government outside West Germany. This has led to several collaborative research efforts with universities and institutions in Germany over the years.^[1] Although official support from the German government has ended, several research efforts involving the DAAD program and Humboldt Fellowships exist.

The Institute was formally inaugurated in 1959 by Prof.Humayun Kabir, the then Union Minister for Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs. In 1961, the IITs were declared to be Institutions of national importance. The IIT circuit spans seven Institutes of Technology located at Kharagpur (estb. 1951), Mumbai (estb. 1958), Chennai (estb. 1959), Kanpur (estb. 1959), Delhi (estb. 1961), Guwahati (estb. 1994) and Roorkee (estb. 1847, upgraded to an IIT in 2001).

Campus

File:Iitmgc.jpg

The Gajendra Circle is the first landmark one sees after the main entrance. It shows two painted elephants standing back to back on either side of a fountain inside a traffic circle.

The main entrance of IIT Madras is located on Chennai's Sardar Patel Road, and is flanked by the affluent residential districts of Adyar, and Velachery. The campus is close to the Raj Bhavan, the official seat of the Governor of Tamilnadu state. IIT Madras is recognized as a separate postal zone (PIN 600036). There are secondary entrances for IIT Madras campus in Velachery, Gandhi Road and Tharamani.

The campus is located about 10 km from the Chennai Airport and 12 km from the Chennai Central Railway station and is well connected by buses.

File:Iitm.chemplast.pavilion.jpg

The pavilion of the Chemplast Cricket Ground.

Two parallel roads, Bonn Avenue and Delhi avenue, lead through the residential zone for the faculty, under a canopy of green, to the Gajendra Circle (otherwise called GC) and the administrative block. Buses ply between the gate and other locations on campus at regular intervals. Named after mountains, the IITM buses and electric mini buses ply to and from the GC, academic zone and hostels at minimal fare( 1-2 INR)

Organization

Administration

File:Iitmadblock.jpg

Administrative Block.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras is an autonomous statutory organization functioning within the Institute of Technology Act. The seven IITs (others being at Kharagpur, Kanpur, New Delhi, Mumbai, Guwahati and Roorkee) are administered centrally by the IIT Council, an apex body established by the Government of India. The Minister of Human Resource & Development, Government of India, is the Chairman of the Council. Each Institute has a Board of Governors responsible for its overall administration and control.

The Senate comprising all professors of the Institute decides the academic policy of the Institute. It controls and approves the curriculum, courses, examinations and results. It appoints committees to look into specific academic matters arising from time to time. The teaching, training and research activities of various departments of the Institute are periodically reviewed to improve faciliites and maintain standards. The Director of the Institute is the ex-officio Chairman of the Senate.

There are three Senate Sub-Committees, namely, Board of Academic Research, Board of Academic Courses and Board of Students to help academic administration and efficient functioning of the Institute. The Finance Committee advises on all financial policy matters while the Building and Works Committee advises on matters relating to buildings and other works. In addition, the Board of Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research and Library Advisory Committee advises on matters of industrial consultancy and library matters respectively.

Academics

IIT Madras offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees in 15 disciplines in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. Around 360 faculty belonging to various science and engineering departments and centres of the Institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.

The academic calendar is organized on semester programs. Each semester provides for a minimum of seventy instructional days. The medium of instruction is English. Students are evaluated on a continuous basis throughout the semester. Evaluation is done by the faculty, a consequence of the autonomous status granted to the Institute. Research work is evaluated on the basis of the review thesis by peer examiners both from within the country and abroad. Ordinances in respect of the academic program of study are prepared by the senate, the highest academic body within the Institute.

Undergraduate academics

Admission to Undergraduate Curriculum

JEE: The Joint Entrance Examination to the IITs is conducted every year and forms the basis of admission to the undergraduate programs. It is considered an extremely competitive exam.

HSEE: IIT Madras offers a unique and innovative Five Year Integrated Masters Programme, leading to M.A. degrees in 3 disciplines, viz., Development Studies Economics English Studies

Graduate academics

Admission to Graduate Curriculum

GATE: The Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering is the entrance exam used to govern admission to post graduate engineering programs at the IITs.

JAM: The Joint Admission to M.Sc. is the entrance exam used to govern admission to post graduate science programs at the IITs.

Management programme

Admission to MBA Curriculum

JMET: The Joint Management Entrance Test is the entrance exam used to govern admission to the MBA programme at the IITs. It is followed by a group task & Personal Interview.

Credit system

As with the other IITs, IITM follows a credit system for evaluating academic performance. The GPA is on a scale of 0 to 10. Each course carries a certain number of credits (usually ranging from 1 to 4) and the following letter grades are awarded for each course:

Letter Grade	S	A	B	C	D	E	U	W
Grade Points	10	9	8	7	6	4	0	0

The GPA is computed as the cumulative credit-weighted average of the grade points:

CGPA\,\!={\sum _{i=1}^{N}C_{i}.{GP}_{i} \over \sum _{i=1}^{N}C_{i}}

where:

$N$ is the number of courses,
$C_{i}$ is credits for the $i^{th}$ course,
${GP}_{i}$ is grade points for the $i^{th}$ course, and,
$CGPA$ is the cumulative grade point average.

Presently, for courses in which a student got a failing grade and subsequently a passing grade, the failing grades are not used in computation of $CGPA$ ; these failing grades are also removed from the transcript and replaced by a footnote indicating the number of attemtps made to obtain the passing grade.

Other academic activities

Academic research programs

The Institute has several departments and advanced research centres in various disciplines of engineering and the pure sciences, with nearly 100 laboratories organised on a unique pattern of functioning. A faculty of international repute, a brilliant student community, excellent technical and supporting staff and an effective administration have all contributed to the pre-eminent status of IIT Madras.

These relate to research work undertaken by individual faculty or specific research groups in each departmnent running academic programmes leading to M.S or Ph. D degree. Research is carried out by scholars admitted to the programmes of study by research under the guidance of the faculty in each department.

Areas of interest for each department is made known to the academic community through handbooks, brochures and bulletins. Topics of interest include both the theoretical and experimental aspects. IIT Madras has initiated the following 16 inter-disciplinary research projects under the identified thrust areas.

The rigors of academic study at each level are balanced with a number of other related activities which include co-curricular activities. Special lectures on diverse topics of academic relevance are held under the Extra Mural Lecture series. A number of conferences, symposia and workshops are organized by the faculty which attract participation from scholars all over the world.

Partnership with other universities

The Institute maintains academic friendship with several other educational institutes in the world through faculty exchange programs. The Institute has signed Memoranda Of Understanding (MOUs) with several universities abroad, resulting in co-operative projects and assignments for mututal benefit.

The faculty of the Institute have distinguished themselves through awards for academic activity from national as well as international organizations.

Industrial consultancy and sponsored research

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The Industrial Consultancy And Sponsored Research building.

IIT Madras has set a fine example of interaction with the industry in the country, through consultancy services offered by the faculty. Innovative ideas are put to practice in many projects sponsored by other institutions in India.

Industrial Consultancy provides for faculty and staff of the institute to undertake specific assignments for the Industry, which may include project design, testing and evaluation or even training in new areas of industrial development. Industries and organisations involved in the industrial development request IIT faculty to take up specific assignments channeled through the Center For Industrial Consultancy and sponsored Research (ICSR).

Organisation at the national level sponsor specific programs of research by funding projects undertaken by the faculty. Research of this kind is time bound but provides for those involved in the project to register for a degree. project proposals are usually prepared by IIT faculty and forwarded to various organisations based on the nature of research and the interest shown by Government/Research bodies to fund new projects.

Sponsored projects allow for new resources to be created in a department and often permit staff employed for the project to register for academic degrees in the institute. All Sponsored Research activities in the institute are coordinated by IC & SR.

Student activities

Most students at IIT Madras live in the hostels, where a large number of extracurricular activities complement the hectic academic routine. The campus has 16 hostels, of which two (Sharavati and Sarayu) are exclusively occupied by girls. Before Sharavati was constructed, all the hostels had dining facilities attached; these mess halls have all been closed down. Sharavati and the four seven-storeyed men's hostels do not have mess halls. Dining facilities are now provided in two large centralized halls dubbed 'Vindhya' and 'Himalaya' . Hostels in IITM may accommodate undergraduate and/or graduate students, though they tend to keep the two separate. Students are assigned to hostels by the Institute Administration after at the time of admission, and usually spend the entire period of their stay in the Institute in the same hostel.

IIT Madras hostels are named after the principal rivers of India, and the buses that ply the campus are named after mountains. As a result, a common epigram about IIT Madras is that it is the only place where the mountains move and the rivers remain still.

The hostels of IITM currently are (names in bracket are the name the hostel are popularly called):

Saraswati (Saras)
Krishna
Cauvery
Brahmaputra (Brahms)
Tapti
Godavari (Godav)
Alaknanda (Alak)
Jamuna (Jam)
Ganga (Gang)
Narmada (Narmad)
Mandakini (Mandak)
Sharavati (Sharav)
Sarayu
Sindhu
Pampa
Tamraparani (Tambi)
Mahanadi

Sindhu, Pampa, Mahanadi and Tamraparani are seven-storeyed whereas all the other (older classic) hostels are three- or four-storeyed (the older hostels were all three-storeyed till sometime in the late 1990's when extra rooms in the form of an extra floor and rooms above the common room were added).These four hostels can accommodate more than 1500 students.

Extracurricular activities

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The Open Air Theater is used to screen movies and host rock shows and Carnatic music concerts.

The annual cultural festival of the institute, Saarang is held in winter. The technical festival of the institute is known as Shaastra. The Open Air Theatre is the venue for the weekly Saturday night Film Club movies and other activities. It can seat over 7,000 people and usually plays to packed capacity. The annual inter-hostel sports event is known as the Schroeter.

There are also a few Hobby Clubs in IIT Madras where students come together to pursue what they like most. Currently, the ones related to Music and Robotics are very popular.

Apart from these, there are also two student bodies in IITM which are meant for discussing spiritual ideas. One of them is Vivekananda Study Circle (VSC) and the other is Reflections.

Because it's predominantly an engineering university, IIT Madras has an adverse male/female ratio (about 10:1), especially amongst its undergraduate students.

File:Iitm.oat.pit.jpg

The Open Air Theater is used to screen movies and host rock shows and Carnatic music concerts.

Like other large institutions, IIT Madras has colourful slang that is unique to itself. An eclectic mix of English, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil, the slang is also popular in other Chennai colleges. Even a Master's thesis has been published on the lingo of IIT Madras at a German University.

There are a few food joints within the campus. A restaurant named Quark operates from 6pm to 2am and serves both North and South Indian cuisines. The Gurunath Patisserie is open until midnight on all days. Another, Tifanys, is open for even longer hours and offers mainly South Indian cuisine with some north Indian food items. A Cafe Coffee Day outlet was opened adjacent to the Department of Management Studies (DoMS) in the year 2006.

Facilities

IIT Madras provides residential accommodation for its students, faculty, administrative and supporting staff and their families. The residential houses employ private caterers to meet the needs of a burgeoning student population. Three bank branches; (SBI, ICICI, Canara Bank), a hospital, shopping centers, food joints, a primary and a high school situated within the IIT Madras campus make it self-contained. Internet access is available throughout the academic zone as well as in all hostel rooms and faculty quarters.

http://www.iitm.ac.in/Facilities/

http://www.iitm.ac.in/Resources/

Notable alumni

Academics

Dr. K. R. Rajagopal (University distinguished Professor and Forsyth Chair in Engineering at Texas A&M University)
Dr. Marti G Subrahmanyam (Charles E. Merrill Professor of Finance at Stern School of Business)
Dr. K. Sudhir (Professor of Marketing at Yale School of Management)
Dr. Ananth Raman (UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics at Harvard Business School)
Dr. Kasturi Rangan (Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School)
Dr. Ramchandran Jaikumar (late Daewoo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School)
Dr. Subra Suresh (Ford Professor of Engineering, Dean of the School of Engineering, MIT)
Dr. Hari Balakrishnan (Professor at MIT)
Dr. P. Venkat Rangan (Professor at University of California, San Diego, UCSD)
Dr. Kumar Manoj Bobba (Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
Dr. Ramesh Govindan [1] (Professor of Computer Science at University of Southern California)
Dr. Venkat Guruswami (Assistant Professor at UW Seattle)
Dr. Swaroop Darbha (Associate Professor at Texas A&M University)
Dr. Anand Rajaraman (Ph.D Stanford University, Founder of Junglee; Currently Heading Kosmix.com with Venky Harinarayan)
Dr. Narayanaswami Ranganathan (Professor at Université François Rabelais de Tours)
Dr. R. Shankar, Chair, Dept of Physics, Yale University
Dr. Narasimhan Jegadeesh, Dean's Distinguished University Chair in Finance at the Goizueta Business School

Industry

Asit K Barma (Vice President, Marketing & Strategy, Satyam Computers, Chennai)
Gopalkrishnan S. (Co-Founder, Managing Director and CEO of Infosys) [MS77 PH] [MT79 CS]
Gururaj Deshpande (Founder of Sycamore Networks) [BT73 EE]
Muthuraman B. (Managing Director of Tata Steel) [BT66 MT]
Satish Pai (Vice President, Schlumberger Oilfield Technologies)
Dr C. Mohan (IBM Fellow & IBM India Chief Scientist) [BT77 ChE]
Dr Mannige Vikram Rao (Chief Technology Officer of Halliburton)
B Santhanam (CEO Saint-Gobain India) [BT78 CV]
Dr Krishna Bharat (Creator of Google News, Principal Scientist, Google)
Phaneesh Murthy (Co-Chairman and CEO of iGate; Prior Worldwide Head of Sales and Marketing, & Board Member, Infosys)
Sunil Wadhwani (Founder, iGate) [BT74 ME]
Sreehari Narasipur (Vice President, Product Development, Telelogic India) [MT83 ME]
Shivakumar D. (Vice-President and Country General Manager for Customer and Market operations, Nokia India) [BT82 AE]
Hari T. N. (Vice President and Global Head of Human Resources, Virtusa Corp.) [BT86 ME]
Dr. Jalaiah Unnam (Natl. Prime Contractor of the Year award by US Small Business Administration) [BT70 MT]
K.N. Radhakrishnan (President, TVS Motor Company) [BT86 MT]
Yogesh Kumar (Director of Light Combat Aircraft (LCA-Tejas) project, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) [MT81 ME]
Partha De Sarkar (CEO-IT and ITES, Hinduja TMT Ltd.) [BT88 MT]
Sudarsun. S (Director R & D, Checktronix India Pvt Ltd.) [MT99 CS]
Krishna Kolluri (Board of Directors, Nevis Networks; Executive VP at Juniper Networks) [BT86 ME]
Srini Chari (President & CEO of TurboWorx) [BT81 ME]
B.N Narasimha Murthy (Senior VP, Business Transition & Domestic Markets, of Hinduja TMT) [BT79 ME]
Raj Srikanth (Managing Director, Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, New York, USA)
Kalpathi S. Suresh (Chairman and CEO, SSi Ltd) [BT86 EE]
Arvind Raghunathan (Managing Director, Deutsche Bank)
Ramanathan Guha ( Inventor of RSS feed technology )
C.V. Avadhani (Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General of India)
Sankara Narayanan Gopalakrishnan (Calpine IT - Lead)

Others

Rajinder Singh (Noted spiritual leader and winner of Colombia's highest award medal of golden cross, various U.N. awards and speaker in World Parliament of Religions) [BT67]