IIITM-K to have new campus at Technopark

The Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K), will set up a new campus at Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram for conducting various courses, including M Phil in Ecological Informatics, with the recognition of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The State Government, which owns the IIITM-K, has identified one acre of land at Technopark, which has been leased for 99 years, for the development of the campus.

The government has set aside Rs 6 crore for setting up the campus.

The IIITM-K has inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the UNESCO in the first week of June for starting M Phil course in Ecological Informatics on the new campus as well as for academic collaboration.

Information Technology Secretary Ajay Kumar, who is also a member of the director board of the IIITM-K, told Express that the master plan and the design works of the project had been completed. He said that tenders would be called in this month.

“The construction is expected to be completed within a year”, Ajay Kumar said.

In the first phase of the project, a 13,000-sqft building will be constructed, for which Habitat Technology Group is the consultant and architect. CSP Iyer, a faculty at the institute, said that M Phil in Ecological Informatics, MSc in Information Technology and PG diploma in e-governance are the major courses which will be offered at the new campus, apart from various MTech courses.

PG diploma course in e-governance will be conducted in collaboration with the Institute of Management in Government(IMG).

“Experts from the UNESCO will visit the campus and conduct various programmes here. The students will also get opportunity to take part in various programmes across the world. In future, we can also expect the UNESCO’s financial support”, Iyer said.

As part of the collaboration, the IIITM-K has already signed an MoU with certain European universities and the University of Stuttgart, Germany.

Now, the students of the institute are doing projects in various European universities.

Iyer said that it was the first time that a course like Ecological Informatics is being introduced in India with UNESCO recognition. The new campus will have state-of-the- art facilities for multimedia presentation and digital library system .

Infosys CEO and MD Kris Gopalakrishnan is the chairman of the IIITM-K director board, former chief secretary and former vice-chairman of the State Planning Board V Ramachandran, IT Secretary Ajay Kumar, IITMadras director Ananth and Higher Education Secretary Kuruvilla John are also members of the director board