Prof Damodar Acharya, Director of IIT Kharagpur and Prof M Chakraborty, Deputy Director IIT Kharagpur were in Europe  to visit various universities and other  organizations. As part of their itinerary they were Kind enough to spend an afternoon with us over lunch on Saturday 19th April, 2008.

The lunch was a delicious spread of Indian dishes  and  reminded  our visitors that although we were far away from ‘home’ we still could enjoy our desi food.

Professor Acharya spoke about the recent developments at IIT Kharagpur and about IIT’s in general. He said that there was enormous pressure on all IIT’s to expand and he shared some of the expansion plans of Kharagpur with those present. He said that IIT Kgp was planning to expand its student capacity from 7200 to 21000 students over the next few years. The investment planned was over £ 1 billion in Kharagpur itself.

Prof Chakraborty recounted how the IIT alumni has been successful in promoting IIT’s in the USA and how they got very good media coverage thanks to the CBS 60 minutes program on television. He also wished that the IITians in Europe also try to increase awareness of IIT’s in a similar way. He said that he had noticed a change over the last few months in this regard and encouraged alumni in Europe to help celebrate the Diamond jubilee celebrations of IITs planned for 2011 both in India and also in Europe. Prof Acharya also informed the gathering that there was going to be an event in Germany later this year when all the IIT Directors were due to attend. He was asked for more details by Shyamal Desai.

Shyamal Desai, ( Chairman IITLC ) thanked the visitors for meeting members of IIT-LC and informed the gathering that IITLC has been gradually changing its emphasis from just social events to branding IIT’s through conferences and other events. He also mentioned that our web site has been a help and we are getting 85,000 hits a month. He announced the plans for two seminars on clean energy, and climate change followed by a conference in November on Future Technology. He requested Professor Acharaya to attend the conference.

B K Gurtu (Past Chairman IITLC) informed the gathering about how our corporate membership has progressed.  Imperial College has become our second corporate member after KPMG and we are in talks with other organizations like the Royal Academy of Engineering