National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli

History

During the second five-year plan (1956–60) in India, a number of industrial projects were contemplated. To ensure enough supply of trained personnel to meet the demand for these projects, a decision was taken to start the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), at the rate of one per each major state, which can churn out graduates with good engineering merit. Thus, seventeen RECs were established from 1959 onwards in each of the major states. Each college was a joint and cooperative enterprise of the central government and the concerned state government. The entire non-recurring expenditure and expenditure for post-graduate courses during the REC times were borne by the central government. As regards in the REC system the entire recurring expenditure on undergraduate courses, the same was shared by the central government and the state government on 50:50 basis. In 2002, former Minister of Human Resource Development Murali Manoher Joshi decided to upgrade the RECs to National Institutes of Technology (NIT) with the goal of modeling the school based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but with roots in Indian culture.

The Regional Engineering College at Tiruchirappalli was founded in 1964 under the affiliation of University of Madras, as a co-operative venture between the Government of India and the Government of Tamil Nadu to cater to the country's need for manpower in technology. The college was given autonomy in financial and administrative matters to achieve rapid development. In 2003, the institution was granted Deemed University status with the approval of the University Grants Commission / All India Council for Technical Education and was renamed National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli. The Chairperson of the institute is Kumud Srinivasan, President of Intel India. Dr. Mini Shaji Thomas is the Director of the institute since January 2017. The institute is undergoing accelerated growth through the World Bank-funded Technical Education Quality Improvement Program (TEQIP).

NIT Trichy celebrated its Golden Jubilee anniversary on July 19/20, 2014, with the President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee presiding over the event as the chief guest. The institute has received a lot of funds from the Government of India to improve the infrastructural facilities in the campus and to bring international standards. As part of the golden jubilee plans, a brand new lecture hall complex, sports arena, convention center, computer center, dining messes and several hostels were built in the campus.

Administration

The President of India is the ex officio visitor of all the National Institutes of Technology (NITs). The National Institutes of Technology Council (NIT Council) works directly under him and it includes the minister-in-charge of technical education in Central Government, the Chairmen and the Directors of all the NITs, the Chairman of University Grants Commission (India), the Director General of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Directors of other selected central institutions of repute, members of Parliament, Joint Council Secretary of Ministry of Human Resource Development, nominees of the Central Government, All India Council for Technical Education and the Visitor.

Below the NIT Council is each NIT's Board of Governors. The Board of Governors of each NIT consists of the chairman and ten members, which include government, industry, alumni and faculty representation.

The Director serves under the Board of Governors, and is the school's chief academic and executive officer. Academic policies are decided by its Senate, which is composed of some professors and other representatives. The Senate controls and approves the curriculum, courses, examinations, and results. Senate committees examine specific academic matters. The teaching, training, and research activities of various departments of the institute are periodically reviewed to maintain educational standards. The Director is the ex officio Chairman of the Senate. The Deputy Director is subordinate to the Director. Together they manage the Deans, Heads of Departments, Registrar, President of the Students' Council, and Chairman of the Hall Management Committee. Deans and Heads of Departments in NITs are administrative postings rather than career paths. Faculty members serve as Deans and Heads of Departments for limited periods, typically 2 to 3 years, then returning to regular faculty duties. The Registrar is the chief administrative officer and overviews day-to-day operations. Below the Head of Department, are the various faculty members (professors, assistant professors, and lecturers). The Warden serves under the Chairman of the Hall Management Committee.

Academics

NIT Trichy offers undergraduate and graduate programs in disciplines spanning engineering, science, architecture and management. The institute has 16 departments with about 250 faculty members and more than 3,400 enrolled students. As of 2015, the annual intake for the Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) programmes was 810, with a student-faculty ratio of 25:1. Admission to most undergraduate and postgraduate courses in NIT Trichy is granted through written entrance examinations. Admissions to Master of Science (by research) and Doctorate of Philosophy programmes are based on written tests followed by personal interviews.

Admission to undergraduate programmes is through a merit list prepared by giving 60% weightage to Joint Entrance exam (Main) score and 40% weightage to marks scored in class 12 and is highly competitive. The Joint entrance exam (Main) is considered to be one of the toughest examinations in the world and the high school science students who clears the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) with high scores generally opt NIT Trichy as their first choice for admissions in undergraduate programmes. NIT Trichy follows the reservation policy declared by the Supreme Court of India, by which 27% of seats are reserved for Other Backward Classes, 15% for Scheduled Castes, and 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes. The institute also accepts foreign nationals through scholarships awarded by the Government of India, and non-resident Indians through an independent scheme known as Direct Admission for Students Abroad that uses SAT scores.

Graduate admissions are through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering, conducted by the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science for the Master of Technology (M.Tech.) and Master of Science programs (M.Sc.), and through NIMCET for the Master of Computer Applications (M.C.A) program. Admissions for Master of Business Administration (MBA) program is through the Common Admission Test conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management.

Undergraduate education

The institute awards Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degrees in nine engineering disciplines as well as the Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) degree through its architecture program.

The B.Tech. program is a four-year program while the B.Arch. program is five years long. As in other NITs, the institute follows a credit system for evaluating academic performance. The grade point average (GPA) is on a scale of 0 to 10. Courses are allotted number of credits according to their importance. Each academic year is divided into two semesters and teaching programmes are organized around the credit system. Teaching includes lectures, tutorials, practicals, projects, seminars, dissertations, and field and industrial training. The first year of the B.Tech. program is common across all disciplines, during which students take basic courses in engineering, mathematics and professional communication. From the second year onwards, the students take courses offered by their departments that are known as depth courses. At the end of the third year, the B.Tech students undertake industrial training for a minimum period of eight working weeks as part of the undergraduate curriculum. In the final year of their studies, most of the students are offered jobs in industries and other organisations through the Training and Placement section of the institute. Some students opt out of this facility in favour of higher studies or by applying to recruiting organisations directly.

Some of the students receive scholarships from German Academic Exchange Service and Mitacs Canada to do internships at the universities and laboratories of Germany and Canada respectively.

Postgraduate and doctoral education

The institute offers graduate programs in 23 disciplines, including 21 programs in science and engineering, leading to a Master of Science (M.Sc.) or Master of Technology (M.Tech.) degree respectively, as well as a program in computer applications (MCA) and management (MBA). Some of the students are admitted in the M.Tech and M.S (by research) courses through the sponsorship of the companies like Larsen and Toubro, Bharat Heavy Electricals limited, and Ashok Leyland.

Department of Management Studies (DoMS) is among the oldest B-Schools in India, started in 1978. The programme at DoMS-NIT Trichy is rigorous and tailored to the needs of the industry. The programme follows a trimester pattern and makes the students experience the rigour and the tough situation prevalent in the corporate environment through case studies, live examples and simulations.

The Department of Computer Applications is one of the pioneering departments of the institution that offers Information Technology courses such as MCA and one among the top five offering MCA courses in the country. This department currently offers two full-time post-graduate programmes — three-year Master of Computer Applications (MCA) programme and two-year Master of Science (Operations Research & Computer Applications) programme.

All of the institute's academic departments offer Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) degrees programmes, except the architecture department. Admission to the PhD degree programs is either through industry sponsorship or through an entrance exam conducted by the institute. The doctoral research scholars are given a topic by the professor, or work on the consultancy projects sponsored by industry. The duration of the programme is usually unspecified and depends on the discipline. PhD scholars submit a dissertation as well as conduct an oral defence of their thesis. Teaching assistantships (TA) and research assistantships (RA) are provided based on the scholar's profile. After the completion of doctoral studies, the candidates are placed in reputed public or private companies and universities. Also many of the students after finishing their doctoral studies, do post doctoral fellowships at research labs and universities in India and abroad.

Sponsored research

Research in the institute is sponsored by major government agencies including Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Gas Authority of India (GAIL) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST); in 2015–16, research grants from these agencies exceeded seventeen crore Indian rupees (US $2.5 million).

The institute has signed MOUs with industries and institutions in and abroad to promote collaborative research and consultancies. MOU signed with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), the neighbouring industrial campus provides an opportunity for the young researchers to use the infrastructure in BHEL. BHEL offers scholarships for such research scholars pursuing PhD and MS. Another MOU has been signed with National Institute of Materials Science Japan for the collaborative research in the area of nanotechnology. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Neyvelli Lignite Corporation (NLC) had assigned numerous research projects to the professors of this institute. MOUs with IBM and HP, leading software industries have been executed. HP has offered a Chair position to monitor the ongoing HP projects undertaken by the students.

Rankings

NIT Trichy has been ranked as the 8th best Engineering college of India in the Outlook engineering rankings 2016. The institute was ranked 1st by the The Times of India National Institutes of Technology rankings 2014. NIT Trichy has been ranked 1806 in the world by Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. NIT Trichy is ranked 12 in National Institutional Ranking Framework published by Ministry of Human Resource Development in April 2016. The 2017 Outlook India and NIRF rankings will be published soon.

Awards and recognition

Awards given to the Department of Management studies, NIT Tiruchirappalli:

Engineering

Sciences

Other major departments

Allied departments

Centers of Excellence

Campus

The NIT Trichy campus is situated near Thuvakudi, on the outskirts of Tiruchirappalli. The campus spans 800 acres (3.2 km²). The main entrance is located on the southern end of the campus, facing National Highway 67. There is one other entrance, popularly called the Staff Gate. The administrative building (popularly referred to as the admin-block) with its iconic clock tower is one of the institute's landmarks. This building houses the administrative offices and also the offices of the director and deans. The eastern and western wings of this building are occupied by the physics and chemistry departments respectively. The campus has separate buildings for the departments of nine engineering, architecture, management, computer applications, energy and environment engineering. There are 2 lecture hall complexes, 3 computer centers and 26 hostel buildings in the campus. A defunct MIG 23 jet was gifted by the Indian Air Force and is put up near to the architecture department.

The institute's academic facilities are located in the southern half of the campus; these include the department buildings, laboratories and workshops, lecture halls, computer centres and the central library. Each department has its own library, in addition to the central library, which holds more than one lakh (100,000) resources including books, periodicals and journals in print and electronic format. A new lecture hall complex named as "Orion" was inaugurated in the year 2014 as a part of the institute's golden jubilee campus development plans, and it currently serves for the undergraduate students. The Orion consists of 24 large classrooms. Each classroom can accommodate 150 students and consists of projectors and televisions to make the lectures interactive. The old lecture hall complex is currently used for the academic classes and lectures of the postgraduate and doctoral students.

NIT Trichy has a modern central library with more than two and half lakhs of documents consisting of Technical books, reports, standards, CD-ROMS and back volumes of journals. The library subscribes to more than 150 periodicals (print), more than 5000 e-Journals and more than 600 e-books besides a holding of 17690 back volumes of journals. The library also contains 16,7500 books in the Book Bank scheme. The institute is holding membership with British Council Library, Chennai. They are also holding membership with Developing Library Network, New Delhi and providing Inter Library Loan services to the users. The library also provides air-conditioned and Wi-Fi enabled reading halls. It is situated opposite to the civil engineering department building. It is considered as the largest library in any NIT campus in India. The building also houses the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development and Incubation (CEDI). The old library building temporarily houses the Indian Institute of Management, Tiruchirappalli.

The Octagon is the institute's primary computer centre, with eight computer labs, printing facilities and a variety of engineering software for use by students. This Octagon also serves as a central hub for interconnecting the campus-wide LAN. This LAN caters to totally 6000 users across the campus (1600 users at the same time using Wired connection and the remaining users through Wireless) and has a 10 Gbit/s fiber optic backbone.The original facility, opened in 1990, was extended into a second building in 2006; there are plans to further expand the facility in view of the increase in student enrolment. A brand new computer center was inaugurated in the year 2016 which houses more than 300 computers.

Most of the institute's athletic facilities are located in and around the sports centre. The centre includes indoor badminton courts and a fitness centre. Adjoining this building are a 25-metre (82 ft) swimming pool and an outdoor stadium with a 400-metre (1,300 ft) track, which is also used as a cricket field. Other facilities on campus include basketball courts, and indoor table tennis tables in the residential hostels.

Residential facilities are provided on campus for students, faculty and staff of the institute. Most students live on campus in the residential hostels. In all, there are 22 boys' and 5 girls' hostels with a capacity of 4660 students. With the exception of the girls' hostel, all the others are located in the northern side of the campus. Meals are served by two mega messes and two government messes along with a pure vegetarian mess located on campus. There are several cafeterias on campus where food is available for purchase. Other amenities on campus include a guest house, a modern hospital and pharmacy, a post office, a bank, three ATMs (2 State Bank of India and 1 Canara Bank), Cafe Coffee day restaurant, Naturals parlor and two supermarkets. The hospital at the institute has an ambulance and a pharmacy store of Apollo hospital.

The institute has a student activity center (SAC) and is the hub for most of the major extra-curricular activities. The SAC building was inaugurated in the year 2012. The dance, music and the National Cadet Corp groups carry out all their activities at the SAC. It also houses the Cafe Coffee Day restaurant.

Centre for Entrepreneurship Development and Incubation

Centre for Entrepreneurship Development and Incubation (CEDI) is a Section 25 company registered under section 25 of companies Act 1956, located on the third floor of the Central Library, National Institute of Technology, Trichy. CEDI will facilitate the incubatee companies to access NIT Trichy’s common Infrastructure facilities, departmental laboratories and other resources of NIT Trichy for their products development purposes. All the necessary mentoring and support for mobilizing funds, creating access to markets, augmenting managerial skills etc., will be provided by the CEDI centre.

Technological Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE) Project: CEDI has implemented a project - Technological Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE) funded by Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India aims to enable young entrepreneurs to initiate technology start-up companies for commercial exploitation of technologies developed by them in the areas of information and communication technology and electronics.

Partnership with Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) – Ahmedabad: CEDI has implemented faculty and entrepreneurship development programmes for faculty, students and potential and existing entrepreneurs in the Tiruchirappalli region. These programmes are sponsored by Department of Science and Technology through EDII, Ahmedabad.

The Asia Foundation (TAF) Women Entrepreneurship Project: CEDI has implemented a project on business and management capacity development of rural women entrepreneurs of India and Sri Lanka by The Asia Foundation. University of Jaffna and South Eastern University of Sri Lanka are the Sri Lankan partners. Women Entrepreneurs' Association of Tamil Nadu (WEAT) is the network partner.

Academic collaboration

The institute has academic collaboration with the many universities in India and abroad. The collaborative programmes include student and faculty exchange, internship for students and joint research activities. Some of the major universities which have a Memorandum of Understanding with the institute are:

Student life

NITT has over 35 student groups spanning a variety of interests, including cultural, social and professional groups, student publications and recreational groups. Undergraduate students participate in one of three national programmes in their first year: the National Cadet Corps, the National Sports Organisation or the National Service Scheme.

The technical clubs in NIT Trichy include:

These clubs work on projects and have won many accolades at contests across the country.

The performing arts groups at NIT Trichy include:

These groups perform at institute events and have won accolades at contests across the country. The dance troupe combining vibrant colours with meaningful themes in their performances. Amruthavarshini, the Carnatic music group of the college, organises classical music concerts in the institute. In 2007, the group organised Tyagaraja Aradhana in honour of the Carnatic musician Tyagaraja.

Annual events

Three of the institute's official annual events – Festember, Nittfest and Pragyan – are organised by the students themselves. These are also the largest and most-awaited events every year.

Festember

Festember is the annual national-level cultural festival of the institute. Held every year since 1975 during the month of September, this event encompasses music, dance and literary competitions, with thousands of participants from colleges all over the country vying for the trophy. The event has seen performances by Indian musicians including Karthik, Srinivas, Naresh Iyer, Kadri Gopalnath and Sivamani as well as bands like Indian Ocean, Euphoria and Silk Route. One of the major highlights of Festember has been the pro-nites which have seen celebrity bands come down and rock the campus alive with their foot tapping and soul swaying music. Also on the agenda are the various literary competitions split up between English, Hindi and Tamil, along with the cultural and arts events. Festember derives its name from the phrase, "A Fest to Remember" and not from "A Fest in September" as is popularly believed due to its falling in the month of September every year.

Pragyan

Pragyan, the ISO 9001 & 20121 certified annual international techno-management organization of the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, ever since its inception in 2005, has served as a golden platform that attracts brilliant and innovative minds every year from nearly 100 colleges across the country to come and showcase their technical and managerial prowess. Since then it has broadened its horizon and forayed into the international arena by bagging the credit of being the first student run organization in the world to get an ISO 20121:2012 Certification for Sustainable Event Management and also by organizing online programming contests that attracts participation from 60 countries. It has 47 events spanning across eight genres. The guest lecture series, every year, sees eminent and famous intellectuals from all walks of life ranging from the Studio Architect of “Burj Khalifa” Marshall Strabala to Tessy Thomas aka “The Missile Woman of India” to Jeff Lieberman (host of the show Time Warp on Discovery Channel) to Jimmy Wales (The Co-Founder of Wikipedia).

Crossfire, the annual panel discussion provides a global platform where the academia, industry and government interact with the student fraternity. Pragyan organizes workshops ranging from advanced robotics to aero modeling to fabrication to ethical hacking to rocket science to animations. It also organizes an array of exhibitions every year. NASA moon rock sample, human brain controlled helicopter, 3-D printer, vintage Cars, Indian Missiles were just few examples from the previous editions of Pragyan.

Sangam is an inter-departmental technical contest, where the engineering and architecture departments show their mettle through the innovative display of models and solutions. It is one of the most important part of Pragyan and people used to display their projects of which RMI's projects are highly appreciated. EXOS, a robotic exoskeleton was considered to be one of their best presentations in recent years. A miscellany of entertainment and fun-filled events under Infotainment is aimed at blurring the boundary between technology and entertainment with shows stretching across all genres be it acrobatics, freestyle dance, beatboxing, illusion, light shows or comedy night-outs.The annual budget of Pragyan is around ₹1 crore.

Nittfest

Nittfest is the annual inter-departmental cultural competition of the institute. It is usually conducted in March or generally after Pragyan. During Nittfest, departments square off against each other over four days to battle over various events like quizzes, debates, music, dance, drama and etc. The Computer Science and Engineering and Electronics and Communication Engineering departments are considered to be the successful groups in this competition.

Sports Fete

Sports Fete is the annual inter-departmental sports competition of the institute. It is usually conducted in February. The competition is among the departments competing in various indoor and outdoor sports. The department with the highest total points wins the Sports Fete trophy. The Mechanical Engineering Department has won the most titles, beating the Computer Science Department by a marginal difference.

Department festivals

Every academic department of NIT Trichy conduct a symposium every year which is a kind of technical festival. Spread over two days, the symposiums usually include paper presentations, guest lectures, workshops and various other events pertaining to the central theme each department has decided on for the year.

The following are the symposiums conducted by the various academic departments:

Notable alumni