IIT Delhi awards record 530 PhDs at 56th Convocation; 'Missile Woman' Dr Tessy Thomas addresses graduates
This year marked the first batch of graduates from the B Tech in Energy Engineering and three postgraduate programmes—Interdisciplinary M Tech in Robotics, and MS(R) in VLSI Design and Artificial Intelligence. Among the graduates were 735 women and 43 international students from around 20 countries. Chandan Godara (20), B Tech in Civil Engineering, and Gopal Krishan Taneja (63), PhD, were the youngest and oldest graduates respectively.
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India Today
12 hours ago
- India Today
India's Best Universities: Why IIT Delhi remains the prime engine of innovation
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated August 11, 2025)No 1. INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI, New DelhiSpread across 373 acres in the heart of India's capital, IIT Delhi stands as one of the country's 23 premier institutions for training, research and development in science, engineering and technology. Established in 1961 and declared an 'Institution of National Importance' under the Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Act, 1963, it earned the coveted tag of 'Institute of Eminence' (IoE) in the decades, IIT Delhi has steadily built a reputation for academic excellence and cutting-edge research. In the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject (2025), it climbed to 26th place globally in engineering & technology—up from 45th last year—making it the highest-ranked Indian institution in this category. With 16 departments, 11 centres and six interdisciplinary schools, IIT Delhi currently serves around 10,761 undergraduate and postgraduate students, offering a wide spectrum of programmes, from BTech and MTech to MBA, Master of Public Policy, MSc and MA. Since its inception, more than 63,000 students have graduated, including over 7,500 with a and innovation are central to the institute's mission. Faculty and students are actively involved in projects across domains—from fundamental science to applied technology. The Research and Innovation Park, inaugurated in 2022, exemplifies this approach. It fosters collaboration between academia, industry and government to translate research into real-world applications and market-ready institute recently undertook a comprehensive curriculum revamp across all levels—undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral. Effective from the 2025–26 academic year, the new curriculum reflects themes such as flexibility, hands-on learning, sustainability, ethical reasoning and technological foresight, including AI and machine learning. For MTech and MS (Research) students, the structure is now more outcome-oriented, with greater industry engagement and the option to undertake master's theses within industry settings.A PhD conversion option has also been built in for postgraduate students, while undergraduate students can now seamlessly transition into an MTech programme after three years, making them eligible for a five-year dual degree. Doctoral training has similarly been formalised, with a focus on producing independent, ethically grounded the Kusuma School of Biological Sciences has launched a new MSc programme with a strong emphasis on quantitative biology and 'learning by doing', addressing a critical skills gap in data-driven life sciences. IIT Delhi recently inaugurated a cutting-edge MRI research facility under its IoE initiative. Housing a 1.5 Tesla clinical-grade MRI scanner, it is India's first such standalone facility within an engineering campus—free from hospital constraints and designed to spark innovation in medical imaging.'The institute is also part of the National Quantum Mission, anchoring a new hub on quantum materials and devices,' says IIT Delhi director Prof. Rangan Banerjee. 'Notably, its collaboration with DRDO has resulted in a joint technology centre where several products and prototypes developed by researchers are now being transferred to industry.'advertisementLooking ahead, the institute is laying the foundation for its next chapter through a strategic roadmap titled 'IIT Delhi 2035'. 'Every department is being reviewed as part of an external academic audit led by global experts, and the long-term vision will be finalised by next year,' a spokesperson reveals. Alongside academic restructuring, the institute is preparing for a major overhaul of its physical infrastructure—demolishing and rebuilding parts of the campus to meet modern COLUMN | A curriculum for Gen NextBy Prof. Rangan Banerjee Director, IIT DelhiThis has been an eventful year. After nearly 12-13 years, we have completely revamped our curriculum. The changes are centred on flexibility, hands-on learning and preparing students for interdisciplinary careers. Every student—whether in undergraduate, master's or doctoral programmes—will now engage with concepts in Artificial Intelligence and sustainability, essential for any future the master's level, students will now take part in a capstone project, fostering teamwork and real-world problem-solving. There is also an increased focus on communication, internships with industry and a recalibrated credit structure to enhance academic depth. PhD programmes have similarly evolved. While depth in research remains central, the structure now includes elements of breadth—ranging from teaching practicum to research communication. Our goal is to ensure that doctoral candidates are not only strong researchers but are also prepared for academic or industry the fast-changing nature of work, IIT Delhi has deepened its ties with industry over the past year. This includes the launch of a Hyundai research centre—one of the company's few facilities outside Korea—which also involves IIT Bombay and IIT Madras. It will function as a national research centre, focused on areas relevant to industry. Entrepreneurship, especially among master's and doctoral students, is being actively promoted. If students—across UG and PG levels—come up with a strong idea, we support them to turn it into a well-being remains a core concern, especially in high-pressure academic environments. IIT Delhi has scaled up its mental health infrastructure significantly in the last year. This includes 24x7 counsellor access, online support tools and a more robust academic support system.—as told to Shelly AnandCAMPUS NOTES | From lab life to life lessonsadvertisementBy Juwayria, PhD scholarIIT Delhi is my home away from home. The postgraduate experience here is like no other; there is a culture and community that rewards the practice of excellence. This, in my opinion, is the primary purpose of any avenues and exposure that IIT Delhi offers are unparalleled. From hands-on work in world-class labs to collaboration with the most productive labs across the globe, the research environment helps students thrive in their respective from the department-wise labs, the institute boasts three campus-wide facilities: the Central Research Facility (CRF), with 90+ working facilities and 8,500+ users; the Nanoscale Research Facility (NRF), with several state-of-the-art fabrication/thin film deposition instruments and characterisation laboratories; and the Makerspace, the one-stop shop for prototyping and end-to-end product Delhi actively encourages participation in domestic and international conferences through schemes like RETA (Research Excellence Travel Award) and RSTA (Research Scholar Travel Award), where students are given a Rs 2 lakh grant. I attended two such conferences in the UK and ribbon that ties the entire experience together is the personal and overall growth of students on campus. In my time here, I reconnected with my passion for basketball after a three-year hiatus, received the Best Speaker Award at the institute-level debate competition, participated in classical dance classes. There is a strong culture of sports; we even have our own Formula to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
The Hindu
4 days ago
- The Hindu
A new district flood severity index factors in flood impact on people
Despite several places that get flooded repeatedly, adversely impacting people in terms of displacements, injury and even deaths, India lacks a comprehensive data-based flood severity index. To address this lacuna, researchers from IIT Delhi and IIT Gandhinagar have come up with a District Flood Severity Index (DFSI) that takes into account the mean duration in days of all flooding events in a district, percentage of area that is historically flooded, total number of deaths, number of people injured, and the population in the district. Though an entire district rarely gets flooded at any one point of time, according to the researchers, the need for creating a flood severity index at the district level was felt according to the researchers is because districts are the basic administrative and planning units in India, and most flood management-related measures are implemented with districts as a unit. But fundamentally, the data used in the study have been collected every year since 1967 by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). IMD collects and publishes data of disastrous weather events, wherein mainly riverine floods, and floods that inundate large areas get counted. Due to practical reasons, small flooding events or small cities that get flooded may be overlooked. Addressing the shortcomings 'But the salient point about various indices that already exist is that they concentrate on the magnitude of the floods or the inundation caused by the floods. They don't really account for the impact of the flooding events,' says Dr. Manabendra Saharia from the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Delhi and the corresponding author of a study published in the journal Natural Hazards. To address these shortcomings, the authors have developed a more comprehensive index to identify districts that experience severe floods and where the severity is defined not only by the magnitude of the floods but also by their impacts on people, Dr. Saharia says. A first-cut measure 'Even if a district experiences a large number of flooding events, the entirety of the district is typically not flooded. In that case, we can find out what percentage of that district is historically flooded as we have a 40-year dataset developed and curated at IIT Delhi. This allows us to compute the percentage of flooded areas,' he says. 'We have used all available data, including district population, to get a first-cut measure of how severe a flood is in an area.' Dr. Saharia is quick to point out that what they have developed is an index and there is always room to improve it. For instance, the flood severity index in its current form does not take into account the aerial extent of agricultural fields that have been flooded as data on this are either not available or hard to access. 'When more information becomes available, we will refine the index. But we wanted to go ahead with the datasets that we already have, either from IMD or things that we have developed ourselves,' he says. Pointing out the fundamental difference between flooding of say the Indo-Gangetic Plain and urban areas, Dr. Sharad K. Jain from the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Gandhinagar and a coauthor of the paper says that urban flooding occurs partly because of hydrometeorological reasons and also due to unwise urban development. 'If the water management in urban areas improves, then some of these flood events may no longer happen,' says Dr. Jain. Besides heavy rainfall, unplanned development may be one of the reasons why Thiruvananthapuram district has experienced the greatest number of flooding events — more than 231, or more than four events per year on an average. Dhemaji, Kamrup, and Nagaon districts in Assam are three of the five districts in India that have experienced over 178 flooding events, or more than three events per year on an average. Explaining why Thiruvananthapuram district has recorded the greatest number of flooding events, much higher than even districts in Assam and in States along the Indo-Gangetic Plain, Dr. Saharia says it is probably because of data collection protocols at that place. How flood impact is measured 'There are certain limitations in the base data and that's also the reason why we are not using the number of flooding events as the only factor for arriving at the district flood severity index,' clarifies Dr. Saharia. 'Though Thiruvananthapuram is number one in terms of flooding events, it is absent in the top 30 districts in the flood severity index. Patna turns out to be number one on the index followed by many districts in the Indo-Gangetic Plain and in Assam.' Besides the number of flood events, we take into account the aerial spread of the flooding, the number of people who actually live in that area and the impact of the flood on people, besides other factors. 'So, if a relatively less populated district experiences a greater number of floods, it may be counted as a less severe flood-impacted district based on the parameters used to calculate the district flood severity index,' clarifies Dr. Jain. 'Since the index is now available, we hope that this will motivate collection and use of data of more variables at finer spatial resolution.'
India Today
4 days ago
- India Today
IIT Delhi convocation 2025 shows only 26% of 2,764 graduates are women
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi conferred degrees on 2,764 students at its 56th convocation ceremony on Saturday. Amongst them were 530 PhD scholars and 43 international students representing around 20 countries. Women made up less than a third of the graduating batch, with 735 female students, about 26% receiving their youngest graduate this year was 20-year-old Chandan Godara, while 63-year-old Gopal Krishan Taneja stood as the oldest degree the convocation address, Chief Guest Dr. Tessy Thomas, former Director General (Aeronautical Systems) at DRDO and Vice-Chancellor of Noorul Islam Centre for Higher Education, hailed IIT Delhi as 'a cradle of innovation, knowledge, and nation-building.' She called upon the graduating class to embrace 'responsible innovation' in an era defined by disruptive technologies. Highlighting the transformative potential of areas such as artificial intelligence, sustainable energy, quantum technologies, satellite systems, and human-machine interfaces, Dr. Thomas underscored the need for innovation that is ethical and human-centric. 'The coming years will demand AI to be explainable, unbiased, and human-centric,' she further noted that India's transition from a technology importer to a global exporter is no longer just a goal but a reality. Pointing to the strides made by ISRO, DRDO, indigenous semiconductor development, AgriTech startups, and Bharat-made AI platforms, she credited institutions like IIT Delhi for driving this change. 'In a world increasingly driven by data, algorithms, and automation, human values will matter more than the valuations,' she reminded the ceremony also celebrated the institute's top achievers. Ankit Mondal received the President's Gold Medal, Jaskaran Singh Sodhi was awarded the Director's Gold Medal, and Devinder Kumar earned the Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold Medal. Two students achieved the rare distinction of graduating with a perfect 10 a touch of legacy to the event, a Distinguished Alumni Award Wall was unveiled, honouring notable IIT Delhi alumni from the fields of academia, public service, and entrepreneurship. In their remarks, Board Chairperson Harish Salve and Director Professor Rangan Banerjee encouraged the graduates to uphold IIT Delhi's values of integrity, curiosity, and service as they step into the next chapter of their journeys.- Ends
