IIT Mandi aims to host 2500 students by 2021

Having started its journey in 2009 with 510 acres of grassland on the banks of river Uhl in the village Kamand of Himachal Pradesh, 460 km away from New Delhi, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi has made rapid strides towards creating a remarkable and unique campus in the challenging yet serene Himalayan setup.

The Institute now has a state-of-the-art infrastructure with a built-up area of 1.15 lakh sq.mt comprising of housing for 1,300 students, 112 faculty and 61 staff members, cutting-edge laboratories, libraries, sports facilities, spaces for other extra and co-curricular activities. The Institute is on track towards completing 2.16 lakh sq.mt of construction by the year 2021 to provide for 2,580 students and 270 faculty and staff members, said a press release.

Highlighting the state-of-the-art infrastructure on campus, Prof. SC Jain, Dean (Infrastructure and Services), IIT Mandi said, “We are on our way towards creating one of the most beautiful campuses in the country. The rivers, mountains and the warmth of people, tempered with the best of residential, academic, and institutional infrastructure, has set IIT Mandi on its path towards emerging as a place of attraction for the best minds across the world.”

Technology-enhanced services at IIT Mandi

The Construction and Maintenance Wing of IIT Mandi uses a web-based project management tool developed in-house by students with an open source platform to monitor the progress of construction. It also uses an online Ticketing System to manage maintenance services. The Institute has established an advanced IT infrastructure including high-speed links of 1 GBPS capacity based on an optical backbone and more than 200 Wi-Fi access points. The Institute has also established a High-Performance Computing Cluster with 160 nodes based on 3000 cores (CPU+GPU) and this continues to grow steadily.

Future plans include establishing the Eduroam services (a global service that enables students, researchers and staff from participating institutions to obtain internet connectivity across campus when visiting other participating institutions), Unified Threat Management infrastructure and to extend the backbone infrastructure to 10 GBPS besides developing a disaster recovery site.

IIT Mandi has established National Knowledge Network Facilities including Virtual classrooms of 100 plus capacity and Conference Halls in all academic blocks. The academic blocks have spacious classrooms with a capacity ranging from 30 to 300. The institute houses a Main library with a collection of 18,948 books and a fully automated and Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) enabled Satellite library with 20,000 online resources for students, faculty and staf. Future plans include creating a virtual classroom of 250 capacity and professional Recording Studio besides three conference rooms.

Green activities at IIT Mandi

Efficient waste-management practices are held in high priority for the campus. The waste generated at each source is segregated through the active participation of residents. A Biogas Generator of 150 kg feed capacity has been installed for the digestion of biodegradable wastes. Sewage Treatment Plants have been set up to ensure that all waste-water generated in the campus gets suitably treated before discharge and reuse. Special efforts have also been put towards the identification of local flora and fauna, and in ensuring that the campus growth continues to be in harmony with them. Future plans include reuse of treated waste-water, development of plant nursery, better segregation and in-house composting.