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Indian Express
3 days ago
- Science
- Indian Express
IIT Hyderabad 14th Convocation: 1273 degrees awarded; Rahul Ramachandran from CSE receives Prez gold medal
The Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) on Saturday celebrated its 14th Convocation with 1273 students graduating across various programmes, including BTech, MTech, MSc, MDes and PhD. Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister of Railways, Information & Broadcasting, and Electronics & Information Technology, was the Chief Guest of the Convocation, who delivered the address and presented the four gold medals and 44 silver medals. Rahul Ramachandran from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering received the President of India Gold Medal. He scored 9.89 CGPA. Heads of Departments, Deans, Registrar, Director, Chairman and Chief Guest participated in the Convocation procession. The chief guest also toured campus facilities, including the Technology Innovation Hub on Autonomous Navigation (TiHAN). Among the undergraduate programs, 460 students graduated with a BTech degree, while 20 students completed their BDes. The postgraduate cohort included 11 MA graduates in Development Studies and Health, Gender & Society, 98 MSc graduates, and 33 MDes graduates, including 10 who completed MDes by Practice. The MTech programme saw the largest postgraduate turnout with 511 degrees awarded, encompassing traditional MTech, MTech by BTech conversion (1 student), Direct BTech to PhD (4 students), MTech through PhD conversion (6 students), Executive MTech (12 students), and Online MTech (40 students), claimed the press release. Additionally, 1 MPhil, 4 MS by Coursework, and 1 MS by Research degrees were awarded. The institute also celebrated the achievements of 134 PhD scholars. This convocation also marked the graduation of the first batch from launched interdisciplinary programmes, including BTech in Biotechnology & Bioinformatics, Computational Engineering, and Industrial Chemistry; MTech in Quantum & Solid-State Devices and Sustainable Engineering; MSc in Medical Physics; and the first PhD in Artificial Intelligence. Meanwhile, the Institute has been officially recognised as an Institute of National Eminence by the Income Tax Department, Ministry of Finance, on March 27, 2025. This designation grants 100 per cent tax exemption under Section 80G of the Income-tax Act, 1961, on donations made to the institute. In the 2024 National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings, the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) was ranked 8th in the engineering category and 12th in the overall category.
The Hindu
4 days ago
- Science
- The Hindu
NIRF to award mild penalty to institutions for retractions this year, harsh penalty next year
In a first, starting this year, the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) will award negative scores to higher educational institutions for papers that have been retracted from journals in the last three calendar years and their corresponding citations. 'This year, we will award some negative weightage for retracted papers and their citations. Next year, the penalty will be harsher,' says Anil Sahashrabudhe, Chairperson of the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), the agency managing the NIRF. This is the first time the NIRF will be awarding negative weightage while calculating the ranking. 'Both the number of retractions as well as citations from these retracted papers will be taken into account,' Dr. Sahashrabudhe says. 'We are also learning and will fine-tune the negative scoring system as we go.' 'By awarding a negative score for retractions, we want to send out a strong message that research should be conducted ethically,' he says. Explaining the reason why the NIRF is awarding a negative score for retractions, he says: 'The number of retractions was small a few years ago but the numbers have increased in the couple of years. So we are taking this seriously.' While most of the retractions are due to unethical research practices such as data fabrication, manipulation of images, using the same image in multiple papers dealing with completely different materials, using large language models (LLMs) without proper disclosure etc., some are due to genuine mistakes. It is for this reason that journals do not wish to give the impression that retractions are necessarily bad. Will it be correct to penalise institutions for retractions that have been due to genuine mistakes and not due to unethical practices? 'Retractions due to genuine mistakes are far less, and that had been happening some years ago. But most of the retractions now are due to unethical practices,' he asserts. That the number of retracted papers from China and the U.S. is far higher than India cannot be cited as a reason, he says. 'India should not be in the race with China and the U.S. for negative things.' He does not rule out harsher penalties to institutions that continue to have a large number of retractions in the years to come. To begin with, the penalty will be mild this year, which will become harsh next year and harsher in the future if institutions continue to have a large number of retractions every year, he says. 'Maybe we may even blacklist institutions for a few years if the retractions stay high,' Dr. Sahashrabudhe says. Dismissing any objections that institutions should not be penalised for wrongdoings of individual researchers, he retorts: 'If institutions can take the credit for the number of papers published by their researchers, they should also take the discredit [penalty] for the retracted papers. They should take measures to ensure that the number of papers retracted reduces.' He then asks: 'What are the authorities doing? Where is the governance? Institutions already have internal quality teams. What are they doing?' It is time that institutions take research ethics seriously and encourage their faculty to engage in ethical research practices, he says. 'The focus should shift from mere quantity to quality of research and research ethics,' Dr. Sahashrabudhe says. 'Research and Professional Practices' is one of the important parameters used by the NIRF for ranking institutions. Under this head, scores are awarded for parameters such as the weighted number of publications in a given year, quality of publications which are measured based on the total citation counts over previous three years and the number of citations in the top 25 percentile averaged over the previous three years. According to him, international bodies involved in ranking institutions have started to take into account the retracted papers. This, he says, is a reflection of the increasing number of retractions in recent years. Unlike a few years ago, journals have now become more responsive to red flags raised by independent research integrity researchers who point out serious flaws in published papers. The time taken to retract papers has also reduced considerably. Also, journals on their own have begun investigations into papers produced using LLMs without correct disclosures, authors added or changed during the reviewing process without adequate explanations, and manuscripts produced by paper mills — fraudulent organisations that make money by writing fake manuscripts and offering authorship slots for sale to academic customers.
New Indian Express
4 days ago
- Health
- New Indian Express
SOA University aims to be one of India's top notch institutions: V-C
BHUBANESWAR: The SOA University is aiming to be counted as one of India's top-notch institutions of excellence, said its vice-chancellor Pradipta Kumar Nanda on Friday. Addressing the foundation day programme of the university, Nanda said SOA has been focusing on quality education, healthcare and focused research, while aiming to be one of the top 10 universities in the country. 'Ranked 14th in the country by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2024, SOA is a category-I university governed by the UGC,' he said. The V-C said over 115 of research projects of the university have been funded by the government. The university has set up 18 inter-disciplinary research centres and 60 laboratories to facilitate the work, he said. Nanda also said that the research publications which were around 300 a few years ago have now increased to 15,800. Around 300 PhD researchers are getting enrolled to the university every year, he said. Speaking on the occasion, director of the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar Dr Debasis Dash said SOA should think of a project in which researchers from health sciences, engineers and life scientists can collaborate. He also called on researchers to take up projects that are more relevant to the society.
Indian Express
6 days ago
- Health
- Indian Express
NEET UG 2025 Counselling in Tamil Nadu: List of medical, dental colleges; admission rules
The Directorate of Medical Education, Tamil Nadu, which administers the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET UG) admissions, started the registration for NEET UG counselling. Candidates can apply for TN NEET counselling for admission to both government and management quota seats and can register online at Tamil Nadu's Christian Medical College (CMC) is the top medical college in the state and was ranked third in the Education Ministry's National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2024 medical college rankings. These are the seven medical colleges that have ranked in the 2024 NIRF rankings under the medical category. Rank 3: Christian Medical College Rank 8: Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Rank 10: Madras Medical College and Government General Hospital, Chennai Rank 12: Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences Rank 18: S.R.M. Institute of Science and Technology Rank 20: Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research Rank 41: PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research In the NIRF 2024 dental colleges ranking Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences comes at first in the list. Rank 1: Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences Rank 7: SRM Dental College Rank 10: Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research Rank 13: Meenakshi Academy of Higher Education and Research Rank 14: Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Rank 20: Dr. M. G. R. Educational and Research Institute Rank 32: SRM Kattankulathur Dental College Rank 33: Chettinad Dental College and Research Institute Rank 39: Adhiparasakthi Dental College and Hospital, Kancheepuram From the total number of MBBS / BDS seats available in the government medical/ dental colleges, 15 per cent of the seats are surrendered to all India quota and the remaining 85 per cent of seats are allotted to state quota for the academic year 2025-2026, whereas in Government Erode Medical College and Hospital, Perundurai, Erode District, the Government has sanctioned an annual intake of 100 students of which 30 seats are earmarked for the wards of employees of the State Transport Corporation and Institute of Road Transport Corporation members who are contributing to the Corpus Fund and 15 per cent of total seats (15 seats) surrendered to All India Quota and the remaining 55 seats are allotted to State Quota (General Pool). Seat sharing with self-financing minority and non-minority medical and dental colleges will be as per the state policy and National Medical Commission or Dental Council of India regulations and applicable court orders. A total of 30 per cent seats of Christian Medical College, Vellore, will be filled by the state government following its policy of reservation strictly in accordance with the government quota merit list. For 20 per cent of seats of Christian Medical College, Vellore will be filled from the candidates who are native of Tamil Nadu and belonging to Christian Minority List. The remaining 50 per cent of seats are earmarked for admission under CMC Quota for which admissions will be made by the Selection Committee based on the criteria given by the management of CMC.
Indian Express
7 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
After nearly 2 years, IIM Calcutta gets a full-time director
The Union Ministry of Education on Wednesday appointed Alok Kumar Rai, the vice-chancellor of Lucknow University, as the full-time director of the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta. The IIM-Calcutta did not have a regular full-term director for nearly two years. The appointment of a full-time director comes in the wake of the arrest of a second-year student in a rape case. 'The President, in her capacity as Visitor of IIM Calcutta, has approved the appointment of Alok Kumar Rai, Vice Chancellor of Lucknow University as the Director of IIM Calcutta,' the ministry said in a letter to the IIM Calcutta Board of Governors. Prior to becoming the V-C of Lucknow University, Rai served as a professor of management at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). He also held several posts in various high-level committees and panels. Under Rai's leadership, LU became the first university in Uttar Pradesh to be accredited with an A++ grade by NAAC. It was conferred Category-I status by the UGC, and ranked among the top 100 institutions in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), securing the 32nd position among State Public Universities.
