IIT-BHU, IIT-Guwahati sign MoU for joint doctoral prog

VARANASI: To start a joint doctoral programme, the Indian Institute of Technology-Banaras Hindu University and IIT-Guwahati signed a memorandum of understanding through virtual meeting on Friday.
After signing the MoU, the director IIT-BHU Prof Pramod Kumar Jain and director of IIT-Guwahati Prof TG Sitharam addressed an online meeting and claimed that this was the first time in the country that two IITs have come together to offer a joint degree programme.
Providing details of this virtual meeting, the IIT-BHU spokesman said, the idea of a joint PhD programme was originally proposed in 53rd IIT Council meeting held on September 27, 2019. The vision behind it is to build a ‘network of excellence of all IITs’ rather than each one striving to become a ‘tower of excellence.’ The IIT Council accepted the proposal to start the Joint Degree Programme. It will start from July 2020-21 academic session.
Through this academic collaboration, both the institutes are expecting a significant boost in high quality Research and foundation for further academic collaborations. Considering the National Education Policy (NEP-2020), such educational reform and academic collaborations between the premier educational institutes will promote multi-disciplinary academic programme and research for knowledge based economy of the country. IIT-BHU and IIT-Guwahati are also considering to start a joint MTech programme on the similar lines to provide multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary and MTech programmes.
Maximum ten students in IIT(BHU) and maximum ten research students in IIT-Guwahati will be able to register for research in subjects of Engineering, Science and Humanity. These researchers will have two separate supervisors & the facility to do research work in both the institutes. Research students will be awarded joint degrees by both the institutes. However, it will be compulsory for research students to do at least one year of research work in both institutes.
The virtual meet conducted to mark signing of the MoU was also attended by the dean (academic affairs) Prof SB Dwivedi, associate dean (academic affairs) Dr Vikash Kumar Dubey, Dr Rajesh Kumar Upadhyay, of department of chemical engineering at IIT-BHU while from IIT Guwahati dean (outreach education programme) Prof Kalpesh Kapoor and dean (academic affairs) Prof Chitralekha Mahanta were present.