Four IITs, including Delhi, have got new directors

New directors at the Indian Institutes of Technology in Delhi, Madras, Indore, and Mandi were appointed by the government on Monday.

IIT Bombay's Prof Rangan Banerjee has been named the next director of IIT Delhi, while IIT Madras' Prof V Kamakoti has been promoted to the same position. IIT Kanpur's Prof Laxmidhar Behera and IIT Bombay's Prof Suhas Joshi have been named directors of IIT Mandi and IIT Indore, respectively.

Prof Ramgopal Rao and Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, the outgoing directors of IIT Delhi and IIT Madras, were on a five-year extension when their terms ended in April 2021. Acting directors Prof Ajit Kumar and Prof Neelesh Kumar Jain led IIT Mandi and IIT Indore, respectively.

Prof Banerjee, a Forbes Marshall Chair Professor at IIT Bombay, holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the same institution. Later, he earned a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay as well. Prof. Rao shared the news of his successor's appointment on Facebook and wished him well.

M Jagadesh Kumar, the Vice-Chancellor of JNU, and Santosh Kapuria, an IIT Delhi professor in the Department of Applied Mechanics, have also been shortlisted for the position of next IIT Delhi director. In September of last year, a search-and-selection panel was formed for this purpose, and the selected individuals were interviewed.

Prof Banerjee, when approached, stated that while he had been told of the appointment, it was too early to comment on the matter.

Prof Kamakoti teaches at IIT Madras' Department of Computer Science and Engineering and is a member of the National Security Advisory Board. SHAKTI, India's first indigenously developed microprocessor, was designed with Kamakoti's support.

Prof Joshi is a Rahul Bajaj Chair Professor at IIT Bombay's Department of Mechanical Engineering. Prof Joshi is a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and serves as the Dean, Alumni and Corporate Relations at IIT-B.

Prof Behera, the Poonam and Prabhu Goel Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, is an expert in robots and artificial intelligence. "During the interview, I explained my plan to focus on particular sectors such as climate controlled agriculture, bioenergy, robotics and AI, and cognitive science," he told. My main focus will be on raising IIT Mandi's rating. He ran a community kitchen on campus during the Covid-19 shutdown in 2020, feeding over 800 street children every day.

In the engineering area, IIT Madras topped the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings for 2021. IIT Delhi was ranked second, IIT Indore was ranked tenth, and IIT Mandi was ranked thirty-first.