BHUBANESWAR: The permanent campus of IIT-Bhubaneswar will be dedicated to the nation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Odisha on December 24. One among the eight-second generation IITs started in 2008, the institute is on a growth path.
According to Director Prof RV Rajakumar, IIT-BBS now has established five centres of excellence in Augmented and Virtual Reality, Energy Materials, Design Innovation, Bay of Bengal Coastal Observatory and Probiotics.
The institute received 81 sponsored and 101 consultancy projects worth Rs 55.61 crore in the last three years. More than 1000 research papers have been published in refereed journals and filed 30 patents.
The premier institute started from the off-campus of its mentor IIT-Kharagpur before moving to a transit campus in 2009. Now it operates from a sprawling campus of 936 acres located at the foot of Barunei hills at Arugul on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. IIT-BBS started operation from this campus on July 18, 2015 and became fully functional with shifting of the central administration on July 14, 2018 on the occasion of Rath Yatra. The institute is fully functional on its permanent campus and has seven academic schools with 1,765 students and 149 faculty members.
Rajakumar said the first phase infrastructure (1,10,082 sqm) constructed at Rs 410 crore is complete. Work on second phase infrastructure (1,99,139 sqm) with a financial involvement of Rs 850 crore is underway for educating 2,500 more students. Construction of new buildings will be completed and delivered in phases by end of 2019.
Speaking about Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Berhampur, its Director KVR Chary said the institute will be built on 200 acres of land located in Laudigam, Ganjam district before December 2021 with the total project cost of Rs 1582.78 crore.
“The ultimate scale of IISER Berhampur campus is set by the size of the academic faculty, which is envisaged to reach around 200 on the time scale of about 10 years,” he said and added that concomitantly, it is planned to have around 200 students.
Established in 2016, IISER Berhampur is currently functioning from the building of Industrial Training Institute (ITI) in the Silk City. The PM will lay the foundation stone for the permanent campus of the institute during his visit to the State.