IIT Kanpur plans BTech in intelligent systems, hackathon for admission to cybersecurity course

KANPUR: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur is planning an undergraduate programme in intelligent systems, exploring the possibility of holding a hackathon to pick students for its cybersecurity programme and introducing a “uniform” data analysis course in all undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

IIT Kanpur director Manindra Agrawal spoke to Careers360 about new courses and curriculum, preventing suicides among PG students on campus, raising funds and more. Edited excerpts below.

Q. What new courses, departments or centres have been launched recently and are there others in the pipeline?

We have introduced several new programmes in the past two years. We started with a two-year MSc in Economics and in 2023-24, two MTech programmes, in Unmanned Aerial Systems Engineering and Cognitive Systems. We also started a very novel MTech programme in Biomedical Engineering, where during MTech thesis, students actually go to a hospital and work with the doctor and identify what technological interventions can facilitate a doctor's work substantially. They come back and develop that prototype. This is a very unique programme that started a year ago.

Then we also have two joint degree programmes with the University of Wisconsin, for MBA and MTech.

We are planning to create a School of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Systems that's in the works with a separate undergraduate programme in intelligent systems.

All this still requires approval of our Board of Governors and others. This undergraduate BTech programme will come under the Joint Entrance Examination [JEE Advanced].

Q. Has IIT K revised its curriculum?

We have a tradition of revising our undergraduate curriculum every 10 years. The last curriculum review committee was constituted in 2019. The committee’s revision, which was quite dramatic, has been mostly implemented. We also have a standing committee that is always operational, which is a Curriculum Development and Monitoring Committee, whose task is to continuously observe how things are happening in the outside world and within the institute and suggest changes in the curriculum accordingly.

So, a uniform course on data analysis for all undergraduate and postgraduate courses is currently being debated. With AI being applied in all domains, a basic understanding of how to work with large amounts of data is becoming increasingly important. So, that debate is on and hopefully over the next few months we'll make a final decision.

The data analysis course implementation in the curriculum depends on how quickly we can approve it. We have a certain process before it gets implemented. The proposal is ready. It is now being sent to all departments for their comments. Once we receive their comments, it will come to the Education Policy Committee (EPC), whose recommendation will go to the Senate for approval. So, there is still some way to go, at least another month or so. We'll certainly try to bring it in for the coming batch.

With four-five student deaths in a row, what steps have been taken to address the mental well-being of PhD and other students on campus? Is there a no-termination policy for PG and PhD scholars?

That's really a matter of great concern for us, that these deaths are happening at an unacceptably high rate on campus. And as you said, in the last year and a half, we have had five deaths. They're all postgraduate (PG) students. This tells us that the stresses faced by undergraduate (UG) students are quite different from the issues faced by PG students. The UG student management is working reasonably well. The data also suggests so. But the PG student management certainly needs addressing.

Over the last few years, we have had extensive discussions on how to upgrade our mental health management and we have now come to a conclusion that we need to set up a Center for Mental Well-being, which already exists as counseling service for students. There are a lot of students, counselors and faculty to help the students.

Now, we are going to get one or two full-time professionals or psychiatrists on campus who will be available 24/7. We want to bring in the clinical part of mental health management and strengthen it apart from the usual psychology side. And we should be able to roll it out over the next few months. I am hoping that this will help eliminate many of the issues amongst PG students.

We have found in our surveys that undergraduate students are open to seeking help from counseling services but PG students do not because they have this fear in mind that their name will reach their advisor or thesis supervisor. Students often think that their thesis supervisor will get alarmed and will probably not give attention to the student. So, we expect setting up a whole professional wing will help.

Students should not feel constrained to seek professional help or be bothered with students or faculty on campus. Then the confidentiality fear that they have will get a rest. So, we hope that we will be able to eliminate this issue to a large extent.

Further, a five-member committee, which was set up after the death of a PhD scholar in February, submitted its report on March 18. The committee had two external members, two student members, and one institute employee and so, it’s a fairly independent committee with representation from students and it has given a unanimous report. We will share the details of the report after we share it with the campus community.

Further, a no-termination policy can only work in conjunction with a limited-stay policy in the hostels. This is something that we need to debate thoroughly, both within faculty and with students. While the no-termination part is attractive to students, the limited-stay in hostels is not. This needs to be reconciled and only then we can move forward.

After the recent suicide, the students council had submitted an 11-point agenda which alleged that a few other students had dropped out from the same department.

The agenda by the student council was based on the understanding or knowledge that they had available to them at that point but was not complete. Some parts of the problem they did identify but there are other aspects to the problem.

A comprehensive view of the issue needs to be taken before we do anything. That is why the committee was set up. The committee has given a series of recommendations. Those are the ones we will be implementing because they have taken a complete 360 degree view of the issue – of this student and other students of the lab. They have found certain problems with the way things are being done and have made explicit recommendations as to how to address it.

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Q. Has IITK entered into any new partnerships to foster research?

We have had a number of partners, including the Government of India and various departments within it. We have long-standing collaboration with them.

We have collaborated with a number of recent partners, including Adani group, which is working with us in the defense sector. Then the Reliance group which is working on graphene technology with us. Aditya Birla group is working with us on advanced materials, particularly battery technology. In cyber security, we are working very closely with both the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

Then, we also collaborated with Engineers India Limited to work on hydrocarbon technology. With Apollo Hospitals, we are working on brain-computer interface, essentially creating a hand exo-skeleton, which can be controlled through the brain. With General Steel, we are working on casting mold and improvement of the technology. And with the Command Works Engineer Services, which is an army entity, we are working on solid waste management.

Besides this, in Kanpur city, we are developing an end-to-end sustainable solution for solid waste management for the city. There are many more in the pipeline.

Q. How has the response to SATHEE been?

SATHEE, a platform to prepare for competitive exams, has attracted a lot of attention and a lot of students are today benefiting from it.

There is an increasing demand to make it available in other languages and to expand its scope to cover different levels of classes and examinations. We started with the programmes for competitive exams, and then slowly we are expanding the scope to cover school education and college education.

This is turning out to be a very successful programme and the hope is that over the next four to five years it will grow into almost all levels of education in the country. We may not cover all domains of education because we have expertise in science and technology.

More than 10,000 students have been trained till December 2024. But I have a sense that the number has gone up since then.

Q. Are you planning to have parallel admission policies like IIT Madras’ for sports, culture and international olympiads?

We are discussing a proposal to admit students through a hackathon into a special programme on cybersecurity and have received approval from all the academic bodies of the institute. The proposal is ready. It is now currently being discussed in the Education Policy Committee (EPC). Once EPC clears it, it will go to the Senate and then to the Board of Governors.

Q. With HEFA loans and decreasing government funding, how has IIT Kanpur raised funds ?

The other ways we raise funds is through donations, which can be from our alumni, through CSR funds or even through well-wishers who just like what we are and wish to support it. We do raise a good amount of funds every year through these mechanisms. We are aiming to increase that revenue stream substantially. The other source is the research and development funding from industry and the government. This number is also growing year-on-year quite substantially.

Fundraising is always a big challenge. The government now has a large number of IITs, All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and other institutions to support. They naturally prefer giving more support to newer institutions than us older ones because we have more chances of raising funds from other sources. Now, it's certainly a new kind of challenge to find these alternative sources of funds. And it is something that we have been working on and learning as we go along.

In the tenure of the previous director, there was a substantial upgrade of our setup to do fundraising and there was quite a bit of success. I want to build on it.

I would like to increase our fundraising through these sources by the factor of five. That's an ambitious target and we'll try our best to succeed.

Q. What are the areas you will be focusing on during your tenure?

It's a big responsibility because as the director you get to decide the direction that the institute takes. Being an old, well-established institution, we have our own momentum and so, it's not easy to change direction. But if I want to accomplish something, I have to work hard, convince everyone that this is the change that we need, get their support and then initiate the change.

I've been doing this over the past year since I took charge and we collectively have evolved a plan of action for us. The next four years for me are going to be devoted to implementing this plan.

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It's a simple plan: to generate a certain amount of funds that we need to create or improve our infrastructure, facilitate faculty and students in certain directions; developing technologies, products which are deeply impactful and provide all the necessary support to them; also, create a faculty mechanism which facilitates their teaching so that the students can get an even better education. These are some simple targets and we have evolved a detailed plan of implementing them. That would be my target: to successfully implement.

Q. How have the placements been for 2024-25?

We did better than last year. There was about a 14% increase in the placement this year compared to the last one. In absolute numbers, about 1,227 students have been placed so far and there is still time to go.

Almost 30% of our students went into their core domain, which is a very welcome change from a time when almost all students were going into either finance or software.

Salary packages have increased by around 10% from the last year, if you look at the average salary that has been offered.

Q. Will IIT Kanpur get an international campus like IIT Delhi and IIT Madras?

This decision is not in our hands. It is a decision taken by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) in conjunction with the ministry of education. And these international campuses are because MEA is involved. They have a strategic component in the decision making. So if and when these decisions are made by the ministries, I think we do have the necessary capacity to initiate a new campus.

Q. What are the broad submissions IIT Kanpur is planning to make at the next IIT Council meeting? Any movement on NAAC accreditation of IITs?

There are a few things that we had suggested. One was on the family pension of employees. This challenge came when there was an unfortunate death of an employee while working. Due to the new pension scheme, there is no provision of any family pension for the survivors of the employee. Under the old pension scheme, families of deceased employees did receive a family pension. Now, the government has modified the rule for its own employees – surviving families of employees are given family pension – but that is not applicable to autonomous institutions like IITs.

We would like this to be taken up by the council too and with the government. These employee numbers are very small but the families are left to fend for themselves, which is not very good. There are a couple of other issues.

On NAAC accreditation of IITs, I haven't seen any movement.

Q. How are courses on Indian Knowledge Systems added in the curriculum?

We do not have a compulsory course in the Indian Knowledge System. We do have a center for the Indian Knowledge System and the associated faculty members are developing courses to be offered to our students but these are going to elective courses. That a student may choose to take these courses depending on his or her interest.