BITS Hyderabad to invest Rs. 1500 crores in research

The BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus is treading a new path in research encouraging its faculty to set up companies on the campus believing that academic institutions will die if they remain as mere degree producing machines.

Recently, the institution funded a project on urinary tract infections by its Ph.D students and the faculty are being allowed to commercially exploit it. The project aims at providing cheaper solutions for diagnosing urinary tract infections and that too relatively at a quicker time compared to alternatives methods available in the market.

“The future of any institution is research,” said the BITS Pilani Hyderabad Director, V.S. Rao. Realising its importance the institution plans to pump in Rs. 1500 crores during the next five years in its three campuses in Pilani, Hyderabad and Goa. The investments will be in post graduation and Ph.Ds. “We will encourage cross-campus collaboration and multi-disciplinary and inter-departmental research involving students and faculty of all the three campuses,” Prof. Rao said.

For example, the Centre for Excellence in Water and Energy Waste Management was established with a grant of Rs. Three crores where all departments have scope for research. Any student or faculty from any of its three campuses can join and work on a project.

The institution is also allowing its students to take up research projects as an elective in their academic courses and also funding the same. B.Tech students are encouraged to visit villages, identify a problem, formulate it as a project and get it whetted by the faculty, and they can pursue it as an elective of three credits.

Recently, a project on waste management was taken up. “In fact we are asking students to find solutions to the biggest garbage dump yard in the city that exists near by the campus in Jawaharnagar and students are evincing keen interest in that,” Prof. Rao said.

Prof. Rao believes that research culture will reinforce undergraduate education. “We are trying to inculcate research orientation among undergrads and the Technology Business Incubator set up on the campus is trying to fill that gap.”