COIMBATORE: Engineering students should look for research and high-end jobs, Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay, has said.

“There is a lot of scope in research-oriented jobs as Indian companies are engaged in indigenising production technology. And also because multi-national companies have set up research and development labs,” he said on Thursday at the institute day celebrations at Coimbatore Institute of Technology and CIT Sandwich Polytechnic College here.

Hitherto companies here used borrowed technology to improve production and quality.

Now that had started changing. Companies wanted to cut cost and improve efficiency for which they were adopting newer technologies, most of which were being developed here.

Opportunity

Students should capitalise on the opportunity and take up research jobs. Another reason for going in for such jobs was that 300 of the Fortune 500 companies had set up R&D labs in India.

The move should be seen as a recognition of the quality of manpower in research available here, he said and told the students that gone were the days when R&D was confined just to quality control.

They could look at pharmaceutical, speciality chemicals, power development and also climate change for a career as they were fast-developing fields. The country not only required more power but also clean, green production methods to go with it.

And therein engineers had an important role to play.

Similarly, in climate change, there was a need to come out with clean production methodology, in which again engineers would play a major role.

He referred to the Prime Minister's statement on the need for clean, green energy to underscore his point. And, if students were to aspire for such jobs a bachelor's degree would not suffice. They should pursue master's and also take up research.

S.R.K. Prasad, correspondent of the CIT, said the institution was not interested in testing students' memory but helping unleash their creative potential. “Your [students'] innovative ideas are more important because this will be a century of innovation.” The college was working on signing MoUs with a number of foreign institutions and a team had been set up to exclusively deal with European Union as it had ample funds at its disposal for promoting research and development.

Students' association representative R. Deepak spoke on the activities of various clubs in the academic year.

Principal V. Selladurai welcomed the gathering.

Courtesy - Hindu