IIT Bombay has 4000 room shortage, Students Choose us because of best teaching, best ambience: Director

The Director of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri, in conversation with Shiksha.com talks about what makes IIT Bombay top choice among JEE students, new programmes and centres he is planning to start and his future plans in the post COVID era. Read the excerpts below:

Q. IIT Bombay has once again emerged as the top choice for JEE Advanced candidates. What are the reasons you see behind this trend?

A. There are several factors and the most important one is that IIT Bombay is not afraid of doing experiments. We take many decisions and implement them quickly. Sometimes this is very beneficial for the students and faculty.

We have realized that the core value of our institution is student experience, and we provide the best teaching, and best ambiance to students, as well as research and entrepreneurship opportunities to students these are the three important pillars we are working on.

Q. Many of the IITs are starting courses on AI, Data Science and so on, is IIT Bombay also starting such courses?

A. We have these courses, as we have minors in these subjects. We were the first ones to start the Dual Degree programme and now we have realized that we should change that. Now, what we have done is that in the second part of the B.Tech, M.Tech, we have allowed students to take subjects as long as there is no overlap.

We have started new programmes in Environment Science, it is an undergraduate course as it is very important from the sustainability point. We have started the Center for Machine Learning and Data Science as it is a very important domain now and it is very popular. We have not started the undergraduate programme because we feel that that's not the right thing to do at this point but we will offer it in the longer run.

We have recently started a Centre of Excellence in Quantum Computing, we have a metaspace where we have made available a lot of equipments 24*7 for students. We want them to try out these, we want them to use these. There are so many classes which are run by students and that's what helps them.

If I again go back to the previous question of why students choose IIT Bombay, we are the poorest in providing single beds to them, we have room limitations.

We have a four thousand shortage of rooms and because of that we are packing two students in a small room. Students do not mind that because they see value in getting into IIT Bombay.

Q. The NEP talks of a multidisciplinary approach and many of the IITs have been running humanities and management courses, now some of these are also working on establishing the medical college. Is IIT Bombay also planning a medical college and offering MBBS courses?

A. We are looking for options in related areas as we have a very strong health sciences-related activity, which is more into research. We have a very strong department of Bio-Sciences and Bio-Engineering at IIT Bombay.

But, if we talk of starting a medical college, we do not have the space at our campus so it is not possible. If we talk of starting a medical college in collaboration, where they can do the hospital running part, and we can do the research part.

Q. IIT Bombay is the front-runner in earning through research, inventions, consultancy and patents. How do you plan to scale it?

A. I think it is still not where it should be and we are working on it. We have been able to commercialize some of our projects, we probably file the largest number of patents, but patents doesn’t mean that we are commercializing.

Q. What are your priority areas as the head of IIT Bombay in the coming years?

A. We are setting up ‘Trust Labs’, this is on cyber-security, Quantum Computing it has to be there, semi-conductors, it has to be there, environmental, that means you have water, air all these and of-course AI and Machine Learning. 

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