Teachers say the collaboration will open NIF lab to engineering students to further develop grassroots innovations

The Gujarat Technological University (GTU) is going beyond its current focus of becoming more industry-oriented by tying up with the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), an effort both the faculty and the students hope will offer students first-hand knowledge of the social sector and rural needs.

For over six months now, GTU has tied up with industry clusters across the state, sending its students into the clusters to find out what the industries need, what their problems are, and taking up these as projects — a move hailed as “novel” to offer students better industry experience.

The final-year students have to earn a certain amount of credits by doing a project on identifying and solving an Industry Defined Problem (IDP).

Now, they can also take up grassroots innovations or rural technologies instead of IDPs.

During a seminar at L D Engineering College early this week, NIF head Prof Anil Gupta and GTU Vice-Chancellor Prof Akshai Aggarwal addressed students from various institutes on the way grassroots innovations and rural technologies are born and how they work.

A presentation was also made by Hiranmay Mahanta, head of Techpedia, an organisation of techies that has helped GTU design the industry-academia collaboration since the beginning.

NIF officials said the collaboration would open the NIF Fab-Lab to the GTU students, who would also work with the staff to try and further develop the grassroots innovations (engineering innovations, specifically) that make up the NIF’s database. Shehzad Karkhanawala, a final-year student at L D Engineering College and a student coordinator, said the opportunity of working with grassroots and rural innovators “is very close to our heart. We always wanted to work closer with the social sector”.