IIT Bombay alumni to fund students’ research projects

“We have launched a programme,‘student achievement in research and scholarship’ (STARS),which will enable an alumnus to assist/support a high achieving student and his research project. Alumni may individually or collectively support and guide any project based on the extent and efforts required. The projects need not be restricted to their courses,” said Bakul Desai,member of the board of directors at IITBAA.

Students will have to submit the proposal and it will be subsequently scrutinised by a faculty advisor. Once it is vetted and okayed by the faculty,the proposal will be put up on the IITBAA website for review by the alumni. The budget estimates and the likely chances of success of the project will also be put up.

“The aim is to tap in on the deep affinity and loyalty that alumni have for their hostels. So a proposal by students of a particular hostel will be put up for fund request before alumni of that hostel,” he said.

While initially,the initiative will deal with individual cases,the long-term objective is to create a corpus or a centralised fund that will be used exclusively to support students’ research projects. Once the central fund is in place,the amount of money to be allocated to a particular project would be decided by the hostel alumni team.

Currently,there exists the ‘hostel alumni team stewardship’ programme at IIT Bombay that is aimed at paying back mess workers (both current and past) and improving infrastructure facilities by alumni of each hostel.