The name ‘Indian Institute of Information Technology’ indicates the chain of premier institutions launched by the Government of India to give a fillip to high-end research in information technology, but in Andhra Pradesh, it is often confused with the State-run institutes.
Thanks to the similar nomenclature, the IIIT Chittoor, located at Sri City, is thoroughly confused with the Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT), as they are locally referred to as IIIT Idupulapaya and IIIT Nuzvid. While admission is based on JEE and seat allocation is done through Joint Seat Allocation Authority for the first category, the State institutions take rural students after SSC, as the idea is to tap talent from the countryside. IIIT Sri City often witnesses such ‘cross talk’ enquiries that pose a headache for the administrators here.
Industry interaction
“We get regular calls from parents about admissions for their SSC-passed wards. Our people patiently redirect them to Idupulapaya or Nuzvid,” the IIIT’s Head (Academic affairs) P. Ramachandra Reddy told The Hindu .
“Ours is a research-oriented professional institute and we are getting high preference in admissions. The presence of factories around increases the scope for industry interaction,” he added. One can find students and researchers engrossed in high-end research in well-equipped laboratories even at odd hours.
It may be recalled that the then Union Minister for HRD Smriti Irani had laid the foundation stone for it last year, along with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), both in Tirupati.
This institute, which follows the curriculum of its mentor institute IIIT-Hyderabad, is currently housed in the Institute of Financial Management and Research (IFMR) building, as construction of the permanent campus is under way. Fifteen regular faculty members from IIT-Madras and IIIT, Hyderabad are training the students, besides guest faculty from industries around.
In fact, the IIIT started functioning in 2013 with a mere 30 seats each in CSE and ECE streams as four-year B.Tech programmes, but has now grown in size to offer 130 seats in CSE and 70 in ECE today.
“The boys’ hostel and the mess are ready now and construction of the girls’ hostel is on. We will move to our own campus in the next academic year,” says the Administrative Officer Evani V.S.S.R. Somayajulu, who is also in-charge of admissions. The placement cell formed recently is all set to take up a recruitment drive from next year.
