IIT-Hyderabad Should Break Out of Silos: Ram Nath Kovind

Hyderabad: IIT Hyderabad should remain relevant to the fourth industrial revolution which will "write the script of the 21st century", President Ram Nath Kovind said today.

Addressing the seventh convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT-H) at nearby Kandi, he urged the institute to break out of silos and encourage others to do the same.

The president said India would judge the success of IIT-H by the vitality and output it can ensure for not just itself, but the entire Hyderabad's knowledge ecosystem.

"As a second generation IIT, it is important that IIT Hyderabad borrows from as well as learns from the models of the past. Conditions are different from the 1950s and 1960s. India has changed. Technology and the very discipline of engineering has evolved. Our aspirations are no longer limited to the heavy industrial base that we created six decades ago," he said.

"Rather, IIT Hyderabad has to remain relevant to the fourth industrial revolution that will write the script of the 21st century," he emphasised.

Kovind said the best scientific universities and institutions of learning were not just 'teaching shops' or 'degree factories'.

"Increasingly, they are sources of innovation and incubators of technology and technology-driven start-ups," he said. "The knowledge ecosystem of public investments in science, academic institutions and universities, research laboratories, commercial applications and private enterprise has an almost magical potential. Its best example is, of course, Silicon Valley in the United States," the president said.

IIT Hyderabad has been set up in a city and a metropolitan area where several elements for such an ecosystem already exist. The city has a long tradition of scientific discovery and application, he said.

Kovind noted that there were as many as 19 research facilities and laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology, the Department of Atomic Energy, Defence Research and Development Organisation and Indian Space Research Organisation in Hyderabad.

The president said many of these entities were doing excellent work.

"But there is need for cross-pollination. IIT Hyderabad is not envisaged as just an add-on to this ecosystem. Rather, it needs to be the hub of this ecosystem. It must be the connecting tissue and the catalyst for a greater synergy," he said.

A total of 566 students (435 boys & 131 girls) graduated at the function.

Governor of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, E S L Narasimhan, Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mohammad Mahmood Ali were among the dignitaries present at the event. (PTI)

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