The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Step in with ideas; step out with projects 24/7

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Step in with ideas; step out with projects 24/7

Special Correspondent

The Centre for Innovation in IIT-M thrown open to students

— Photo: K.V.Srinivasan

Encouraging ideas: Principal Scientific Advisor to the Union Government R.Chidambaram (centre) and IIT-M Director M.S.Ananth being briefed on a display at the Centre for Innovation, IIT-M, on Friday.

CHENNAI: When inspiration strikes at midnight, IIT-ians no longer have to wait till dawn. The Centre for Innovation is now open 24/7, so they can get started on the perspiration that Thomas Edison claimed was 99 per cent of genius.

“Earlier, we would have to go to the workshop during workshop timings,” says Vivek Rajkumar, a third year engineering design student who worked on the unmanned aerial vehicle project “Want to Fly 2” that was a highlight of this year’s Shaastra. “Now we can work through the night, sleep here if we want to.”

The Centre, established with donations from IIT’s 1981 graduates, has been in use since the summer vacation for students working on Shaastra’s Spirit of Engineering projects. However, it was thrown open to the entire student community on Friday, after a formal inauguration by R.Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Union Government and chairman of the IIT-M board of governors.

The Centre is dedicated to the concept that a student can “walk in with an idea and walk out with a project.”

On Friday, the first wave of such products were on display, including futuristic projects such as a vacuum blimp and vertical take-off and landing craft, as well as others meant to benefit rural India, such as a farming machine to inject fertiliser at the roots of a crop.

In fact, such socially relevant projects are a major component of the Centre’s vision. It will also support an elective course in innovation and invention, open to both undergraduate and post-graduate students at the institute.

“We have a whole lot of quality Bosch power tools in the fabrication shop, along with computers and electrical components in the electronics lab,” says Ravi Teja, a third year student who led the team which crafted a self-balancing bicycle for Shaastra here at the Centre for Innovation.

Such large projects, whether for IIT events or international competitions, will also be financially supported by the Centre.

Ravikanth, head of the student team set up to run the Centre, is scouting for sponsors to help fund the Centre’s future development.

A universal milling machine, lathe, vertical driller, vertical bandsaw, bench grinder, printed circuit board (PCB) making machine, computer numerical control (CNC) machine and modelling software are among the items on the wish list as the Centre for Innovation expands, he says.

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