Chennai: In a move to encourage young faculty to get into research, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras has decided to award Rs 10,000 as incentive a month for a number of years to bright young faculty. This is the institute’s response to constant criticism heard in academic circles over the dearth of quality research and publishing of research papers in the country.
Presenting the annual report at the IIT-M’s 51st convocation on Friday, IIT-M director Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi announced that the institute’s Board of Governors, which met an hour before the convocation, decided to award '10,000 a month to bright young faculty for a few years at least.“All new faculty at the institute will get benefited and the number of years of incentive will vary depending on the starting salary of a faculty, which also depends on the amount of experience,” he said.
The director also informed that the institute admitted 491 research scholars for Ph.D programme this year keeping with the national goal to increase availability of high quality researchers and teachers for industry and academia. “IIT Madras continues to attract foreign students in sizeable numbers, particularly from Europe. The number of students coming into course-based programmes increased by 30 per cent from 96 in 2012 to 122 in 2013,” he said.
This year’s convocation marked the first time that B. Tech Honours and B.S. and M.S. degrees in Physics degrees were being awarded. A total of 1,973 students were awarded degrees.
IIT Madras conferred honorary doctorate on Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, founder of Narayana Hrudayala hospitals. In his convocation address, Dr Shetty pointed out that except India no other country in the world recognised an Indian medical degree. “We have been invited by the Cayman Islands government to start a hospital in the country and we asked them to recognise our medical degree in reciprocation and they accepted,” he said.
