State set to award dozen centres of excellence to govt engineering colleges

The selection process involves an open challenge, where institutes have been asked to present their case – justifying their demand for CoE along with a plan of action towards materialising the objectives.

The Commissionerate of Technical Education has constituted expert scrutiny committees of two members under seven domains – electronic vehicle, advanced manufacturing technology, semi conductors, artificial intelligence, drone technology, advanced computing and robotics.

Most of the 16 government engineering institutes have already presented their case to the expert committees, which include faculty experts from Indian institute of technologies.

According to education department officials, the CoEs to be sanctioned to engineering colleges would be connected on a hub and spoke model.

“An open challenge has been given to these institutes to compete. The list of institutes that would be awarded CoEs will be announced shortly,” Commissioner (Technical Education) Banchha Nidhi Pani told The Indian Express.

Sources said that a few engineering colleges have demanded CoEs in all the seven domains.

“We have given our presentations twice in all the domains last month and are awaiting results. Industry collaborations with engineering institutes is the requirement of the day,” said Prof Rajul K Gajjar, former principal of L D College of Engineering (LDCE) in Ahmedabad, who is now the Vice-Chancellor of Gujarat Technological University.

While the LDCE already has a CoE in welding and another in automation in collaboration with Siemens, one in IOT (Internet of Things) has been approved six months ago.

The CoE with Siemens was sanctioned in the fields of aerospace and defense, for which a memorandum of understating was signed between Gujarat government and Siemens.