MNNIT to start inter-disciplinary BTech course from 2022-23
The Prayagraj institute will be the first among all 31 NITs of India to have UG course in engineering and computational mechanics
State’s lone NIT—Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), Allahabad—is gearing up start a new course in BTech (engineering and computational mechanics) from next academic session.
This course will be started under the new National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 under which a student would be able to earn a BTech degree in three years and drop out or complete the full course and earn a “BTech with Research” degree in four years, say MNNIT officials.
MNNIT Senate—the top decision-making body of the institute for all academic affairs—has in principle approved the course and a dedicated committee of senior faculty members has been set up to look into all its aspects, they add.
“The syllabus has already been designed. The course would start at the applied mechanics department from academic session 2022-23 with a total of 30 seats. Our applied mechanics department presently offers just PG courses,” said MNNIT director prof Rajeev Tripathi.
After the Senate’s in-principle approval to the course, the proposal would soon also be put before the Board of Governors, the apex decision-making body of the institute, after the panel set up for it submits its report and then the Union ministry of education would be duly apprised. After their go ahead, admissions would be taken, he added. MNNIT director said the institute will be the first among all 31 nation institutes of technology (NITs) of India to have UG course in engineering and computational mechanics.
He said over the years, most of the undergraduate engineering programmes had become broad-based and had not been able to address the emerging inter-disciplinary areas. “The emphasis will be on providing a strong grounding in fundamentals of engineering mechanics along with tools needed to address the needs of emerging areas such as biomechanics, nano-mechanics, constitutive modelling at multiple length and time scales, parallel processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence in mechanics etc,” said prof Tripathi.
“The primary goal will be to cultivate in the young minds the art and science of engineering mechanics to analyse complex interdisciplinary phenomena relevant to problems in industry and cutting-edge research through experimentation, analysis and computation. A strong grounding in engineering fundamentals will enable students to appreciate emerging trends and equip them with the tools to spearhead new areas of research,” he added.
