Engineering essential in solving society's problems:Chatterjee

Engineering is becoming increasingly essential to solve societys problems and not at all losing its relevance, the founder Chairman of the Chatterjee Group Purnendu Chatterjee said.

"Technology, Design and Entrepreneurship are imperative to make a good engineer into a great engineer, Chatterjee said at the 68th Foundation Day function of IIT Kharagpur yesterday.

Chatterjee egged on the IIT KGP to deliver on all three fronts and emphasised on "experiential learning" that the institution delivered.

"Engineering is absolutely essential to solving societys problems and not losing its relevance," he said and advocated greater diversity and collaboration in research.

Chatterjee, who has been awarded Life Fellowship by the institute, is deeply involved in IIT KGP's diverse initiatives that range from the setting up of a world class VLSI laboratory to supporting research in Artificial Intelligence.

 

The Foundation Day programme also saw announcement from its Director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti about the Institutes intention to make its presence felt in four top cities of the country.

"We also wish to involve the massive potential of our 60,000 alumni in both research and education," he said.

Chakrabarti said that the IIT KGP had evolved into a Tech-centred university with multifarious departments that ranged from the core sciences to the newly set up 400-bed super speciality hospital and research facility."

The 68th Foundation Day of IIT Kharagpur saw the Young Alumni Achieve Award being conferred on 13 outstanding persons below the age of 40, who are high achievers as professionals, academics, scientists, and mentors.

Many of the awardees are already mentoring the students at IIT KGP and are likely to further deepen their involvement in the institute.

Around 160 school students from class VIII-IX from eight schools around IIT Kharagpur campus also attended the Institutes Foundation Day.

The students got an opportunity to run experiments at the undergraduate chemistry laboratory and attend interactive sessions with the director and seminar on quantum physics and the National Digital Library of India.