Research is the secret behind IIT Ropar’s success
Over the past 18 months, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar has made a special effort to focus on the quality of research
With the recently published World University Ranking 2020, all heads have turned to a new entry in the ranking of universities in India.
Indian Institute of Technology(IIT) Ropar has not only made to the list but also topped it.
Now what is in this university for which even the renowned Indian Institute of Science(IISc) has to share its position with it?
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Over the past 18 months, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar has made a special effort to focus on the quality of research, providing researchers with international exposure and funding to allow them deep dives in their fields of work.
The new IIT was shown scoring 100 in the research citation impact—far ahead of many top universities—in the World University Ranking by UK-based Times Higher Education (THE). While IISc's research citation score was 32.4, IIT-Delhi has a score of 49. Research citation score is the number of times a research work is referred to by academics and researchers worldwide.
One of the major reasons for this success is its higher ranking is driven primarily by its research citation impact.
"We have expanded academic activities and created infrastructure in the last few years, brought talents from the entire country and the world, and financed research initiatives. Now the result has started showing," said IIT Ropar director Sarit.K. Das.
"Our recruitment policy also contributed to it. You need to get the best people, give them the best facilities and give them a mandate to do quality research, things will follow automatically."
Das said IIT Ropar has established key areas of research focus, which include water, cancer, environmental issues, electric vehicles, micro-grid technology, artificial intelligence and big data, and the treatment of drug addiction. To be sure, for IIT Ropar to sustain or improve this ranking, it will need to work on other parameters such as teaching quality and international outlook, wherein it has performed poorly. In teaching it has a score of 28 and in international outlook it scored 18.
