IIT-GN begins to rope in faculty from overseas

Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (IIT-GN) today said it has begun to rope in faculty from overseas in order to raise the teaching standards and improve quality of research output.

“The institute having faculty strength of 41, so far has got four members with foreign citizenship on board, and another five are likely to join in soon,” said S K Jain, director, IIT-GN

“For an institution to excel its essential to have a diverse faculty pool. We aim to have 20 per cent faculty from overseas at any given point of time here,” Jain added.

“Recruitment of faculty from overseas would not only help us in raising the teaching standards, but will also improve the quality of research output,” he said.

According to Jain, two professors from Switzerland based Ecole Polytechnic Federale de Lousanne are expected to join the institute by November, one each in the streams of computer science and mechanical engineering.

Besides, Prof Emmanuel Deriot from University of Paris X, in Mechanical Engineering, and another two including Prof. Subash Deodhar, a US resident, will join in Chemical Engineering.

Meanwhile, close to 19 IIT-GN engineering students visited various institutions overseas in the academic year 2009-10, as part of the research projects in streams like bio-medical engineering, energy and environmental science, fire engineering.

Amongst the newly established IIT’s, the institute has batch strength of 350 students.