The Microsoft Innovation Centre – the first of its kind among 50 such centres – was inaugurated by Joseph Landes, General Manager and Country Head, DPE, Microsoft, at the university campus last week.
Landes and V Raju, Vice Chancellor of VIT University exchanged the MoU in the presence of Vice Presidents Sankar Viswanathan and GV Sampath. “The mission is to provide students, IT professionals, software developers, entrepreneurs and academic researchers the tools to improve the software eco-system through such innovations,” said Landes, adding that institutes to establish MICs had been identified.
Microsoft has earlier established a Microsoft Skill Centre (MIC) on campus with the objective of enabling students to develop their skills in information technology. a total of 800 students were currently engaged in improving their knowledge in It and carrying out research in the same.
The MIC however, will provide students with an opportunity to access resources for developing applications on different platforms including Windows 8 in such a way that applications consume fewer resources without compromising on quality and performance. One hundred and five students, professors and young researchers can engage themselves in developing new software at the innovation centre. This collaboration would result in enhanced academic-industry partnership. Resultantly, the students will also be mentored by experts from Microsoft, IITs, IBM, Cisco, Cognizant, HP and Wipro.
Describing the inauguration as a milestone, VIT’s Director of School of Information and Technology, Dr R Sarvanan that necessary training to students to work on software development work would be provided free of cost by VIT and Microsoft.
