Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) will shortly launch its new ‘research portal’ in the beta version of its official website, an important development going along with its perceived objective of promoting research culture in the university.
The portal, which is expected to provide a common platform for research communication among the university faculty/students and their counterparts elsewhere in the world 24x7 online, will also open up new vistas of research activities. Thereby, the varsity’s connectivity with the global scientific and technological community as well as academicians and educationists will further expand.
When the present Vice-Chancellor H.P. Khincha took over the reins of VTU administration in July 2007, one of his immediate priorities was to increase the fleet of academic and R&D institutions under the wings of the university, which is one of the biggest technological universities in India.
Among the measures he has taken in that direction is the development of the research portal.
Mr. Khincha said that in VTU, with 155 affiliated institutions offering undergraduate programmes in 27 disciplines and postgraduate programmes in 66 disciplines, there was tremendous scope for on-campus research and development activities and thus improve the quality of the engineering/technological education system and make it globally competitive. Over 300 research publications had been already published by its faculty.
The VTU was launching the portal to help students connect with academic researchers to share ideas and resources not easily available in the public domain.
The portal will have vast information, including details of research projects, abstracts of proposed works under the Ph.D. programme registered with the university which will minimise duplication to a great extent, thesis of completed Ph.D. programmes, and publications by faculty.
Workshops
One of the important features of the portal is to conduct online workshops on ‘research methodology’ by eminent faculty. It will also provide information about different funding agencies across the world so that the interested research scholars/faculty could use the facilities to pursue their research/publication works.
The portal will provide information on registering research works under Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). VTU has already provided about Rs. 5 crore for different projects. There were nearly 360 research proposals which needed about Rs. 50 crore.
“I am sure this portal will become a meaningful forum for academic discussion and also help VTU realise the stated objectives of ‘Vision 2020’ of the former President A.P.J. Kalam,” Mr. Khincha said.
