IIT-Madras introduced option to do research in two fields at once

Indian Institute of Technology-Madras has introduced a new option for aspiring research candidates as they can sing up to pursue research on more than one field covering more than one subject at the same time.

IIT-M has been introducing different proposals in their efforts to be looked at as a global institution for research. IIT-M is among those few institutes which managed to secure a place among the top 500 institutions, however, no Indian institute has made it to the top 200 list.

S K Das, Dean of academic research, said, "We have pooled faculty interested in inter-disciplinary research from 16 departments in the institute to guide research scholars. They can be attached to one of the departments for administrative purpose, but can work with more than one."

According to Academics, such interdisciplinary research is rare in India because only universities with a comprehensive character can afford to take it up, where Indian policy has isolated the competency of universities into technical, medical and humanities.

There are only few model universities in this regard in India. Academics also informed that some research and developments labs of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) have been able to set up interdisciplinary research centre, but not academic institutions. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore has been able to remove this barrier.

Dean of planning and development of SASTRA University S Vaidhyasubramaniam, said, "Lack of interdisciplinary research does not mean that we lag behind in research output, only that we miss out on path breaking research and new knowledge. This is why we still import ideas from outside the country, and reflects on our poor patent output."

This new initiative will increase the number of students in Ph.D and M.Sc. Research course in the institute by 15% to 20%. This year the total number has reached to 10, 700 for these courses.