Mumbai: The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), in association with Maharashtra's Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) organised a DTE-IITB Workshop on May 12 and 13 2023.
Prof. Rajesh Zele was the Convener for the workshop aimed at promoting collaborations between faculty members from IIT Bombay and government-funded engineering institutes in Maharashtra. The workshop also facilitated knowledge exchange and saw participation from around 60 representatives from 15 government-funded engineering institutes.
The Director of IIT Bombay, Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri, in his opening remarks, stated that IIT-B hopes to facilitate collaborations with technical institutes in Maharashtra to have mutually beneficial programs. Prof. Milind Atrey, Dean (R&D), addressed the participants and enumerated the R&D work at IIT Bombay and several avenues of collaboration.
Dr. Vinod Mohitkar, Director, Technical Education, discussed the outcomes of the Technical Education Quality Improvement Programmes (TEQIP) schemes, in his address.
He added that various IIT Bombay faculty members were instrumental in contributing to the same. The next goal is the implementation of Multidisciplinary Education and Research Improvement in Technical Education (MERITE) - expanding across more institutes in Maharashtra.
The workshop also provided a platform to showcase IIT-B's expertise in various areas, including educational outreach, IoT & IoE, Hydrogen storage, electrochemical energy storage materials for powering electric vehicles, computational fluid dynamics, high-performance computing, e-Yantra, and Climate Studies among others.
The workshop featured presentations from various professors from IITB. The workshop included visits to the Advanced Mechanical Testing Facility, NanoBios Lab, Battery Prototyping Lab, IIT-B Nanofabrication Facility, and the Environmental Science and Engineering Department.
The discussions on the second day of the workshop focused on the way forward on internships, R&D collaborations, and training. It was suggested that IITB may provide professional training to faculty members of colleges, support for curriculum development and curriculum/academic audit, internships for students, use of IITB infrastructure for students of colleges, start-up incubation and commercialization. Additionally, IIT-B professors can deliver expert lectures, provide mentorship, and offer access to labs.
