President urges IITs to develop cutting edge technologies

President Pranab Mukherjee has called upon the IITs to play a pivotal role in India's endeavour to develop newer, cutting edge technologies and utilize them to create in-house technology solutions for domestic requirements and also to export the same to other developing countries.

He said this while addressing the concluding session of the Conference of Chairmen, Board of Governors and Directors of IIT's yesterday.

The president said that the presentations made by the IIT's underscore their desire to undertake cutting-edge research with the engagement of local communities and their pursuit of synergetic industry-academia collaboration.

He also said that several suggestions have emanated from the IITs, including sharing of best practices like efforts to increase the number of published papers to three to five per year, promotion of a post-doctoral culture in order to develop and retain quality faculty, continuous up-gradation of curriculum and striving to spin-off a number of companies per IIT each year.

Mukherjee said he was happy to know the concept of "Ishan Vikas" - a comprehensive plan to bring school children from the northeastern states in close contact with the IITs and Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) during their vacation periods.

He said, "The human resource development ministry and the council of IITs need to coordinate and ensure early implementation of this initiative.