Feb 15, 2017, will be remembered for the birth of the State’s first premier digital technology institute, having its roots firmly held in the temple city of Tirupati, which is emerging as a full-fledged academic hub.
The perennial mismatch between the dynamic needs of the industry and the perceived ‘staleness’ in the academic content has resulted in the creation of hordes of ‘unemployable graduates’. It was hence decided to let the industry tailor-make the curriculum for a premier digital university, which is the International Institute of Digital Technologies (IIDT) .
The engineering college and natural sciences building (Block 2) on the Sri Venkateswara University campus are being revamped to temporarily accommodate the institute.
The permanent campus of the institute would come up somewhere around Tirupati in a couple of years.
Though several premier institutes offer digital technology courses, what makes IIDT really unique is its pedagogy, which is totally industry-driven. Looking beyond the mundane regulations and stereotyped norms that drive the regular universities, the institute gives quality in content and dynamism in syllabus a deserving place. “Industry interaction does not need a charter here, as our students are guided by the industry captains right from the day one,” IIDT Director Ravi Kishore Bhagavaula told The Hindu .
Centres of excellence
The creation of centres of excellence is its second noteworthy feature, where the industry presents live cases, challenges and roadblocks to the students for resolving them. At the macro level, the same will translate into a strong and sustainable start-up ecosystem, adds Dr Kishore.
While computerisation and automation have already set in over a couple of decades, the challenge today is their security and sustenance. It is this futuristic area that the IIDT will take up for serious study, research and execution.
The institute initially offers two postgraduate courses, viz., Cyber Security and Business Analytics, supported respectively by the Gujarat Forensic Sciences University (Gandhinagar) and Praxis Business School (Kolkata), with an intake of 30 and 22 seats.
The IIDT plans to introduce later courses on Internet of Things, Blockchain technology, cloud computing and artificial intelligence and machine learning.
