IIT Palakkad: The Pursuit of Excellence, In The Lap

of Nature.
by Ankit Singh, Gauri Shankar Prasad and Akshat Choube, TFS IITPKD

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are not to be construed in any manner as
the official views of IIT Palakkad.

There Are 3 Key Ingredients For An Institution: The Students, The Faculty &
The Infrastructure. The Best Of Each Of Them Fuse Together To Form An
Institution As Good As An IIT.
These were the words of the Mentor-Director of IITPKD & the Director of IITM, Dr. Bhaskar
Ramamurthi, when he addressed IIT Palakkad students recently.
In this article, we offer you a virtual tour of our institute and see how it holds up with
respect to each of the three ingredients mentioned above by Prof. Ramamurthi. As a
student, you may find out some things about our institute that you did not know before!

The Academic Building Surrounded By Lush Green Flora.

Infrastructure:
IIT PKD has newly constructed and well-designed infrastructure. Heres a breakdown of each
component:

Campus:
Since IIT Palakkad is in its initial stages, it currently functions in a temporary campus. The
housing campus may be a temporary one for IIT Palakkad, but in reality its a full-fledged
campus for a number of institutions under a banner called Ahalia Group. These
institutions include an Engineering College, a Pharmacy College, a Management School, a
Diabetes Speciality Hospital, an Eye Speciality Hospital and a Women & Children
Speciality Hospital. The grandeur of the housing campus can be thus estimated.
Termed as Ahalia Health and Knowledge Village, the campus is located in an exotic
region of Palakkad at the foot of Western Ghats amid breath-taking valleys, verdant paddy
fields and dense herbal gardens. You can check out their website here.

Ahalia eye speciality hospital and shopping centre

For the adventurous, the campus houses numerous lakes, a boathouse, lots of gardens
and parks, an OAT, playgrounds and courts, couple of restaurants, a shopping centre, half
dozen ATMs, a bank, a spa, an art museum, a small zoo, windmills, hills and a small creek.
Palakkad, a developed city and Coimbatore, a metropolitan one, are just a few miles away
from the campus and thus quality time can be enjoyed there. The institution also provides
weekly shuttle services to the same.

Amorous glimpses of Ahalia campus

Hostels:
The hostels are finely constructed on par with excellent residential ones. Each
student gets a spacious, beautifully floored and painted, well-ventilated and
well-lighted room with attached bathrooms (which BTW, come with CERA
fittings).

Different views of boys and girls hostel

Interiors of the hostel

The hostel premises have heavily guarded separate hostels for boys and girls
with a Mess block which also houses a Gym, Table Tennis tables and TVs
(separate ones for gaming and streaming shows) on different floors. The food
offered is very good and is prepared under the strict guidance of the Student
Mess Committee ensuring that fooding needs of people from all regions is
taken care of. The hostel premises also house a volleyball court and a
basketball court is coming up. Hostels have separate rooms for indoor games
like chess & carom and have a music room.

The mess block with gym facilities and dining premise

Academic Buildings, Laboratories and Other Facilities:

Since IIT Palakkad does not have a large number of students, all the academic
facilities are aggregated in a single block. Having said that, though the scale of
everything is small, the quality isnt; the facilities provided are excellent and
up to date. It has well established Physics, Chemistry and Electronics
Laboratories, Centre for Innovation, Workshop, Auditorium, Computer Lab,
Library, High Tech - Video Conferencing enabled Classrooms, ATM Machine,
Cafeteria and a lot more besides.

Academic block with a Teller Machine and a view of our

library

The Classrooms and Well-Equipped Labs at IITPKD

Faculty:
According to a recent MHRD report, IIT Madras was selected as the best
engineering institution in India and thus, it would not be a stretch to say that the
faculty here are par excellence. A major proportion of the current IITPKD faculty is
composed of some of IITM's best professors as well as eminent faculty from other
well-known and other well-known places like IGCAR, NCBS etc. You can find out
more about the faculty here and their research profiles at this page.
The classes are very lively and practical, as you can see from the photographs
below.

Interactive classes by extra-ordinary faculty

members

Students:
It is known that students who join in here do so by cracking the JEE, so you can
be sure they are a talented, smart bunch of young individuals! Above that, as
the strength of a batch is small, student-student and student-teacher
interactions are more.

Student Activities:
Even though a year has elapsed since the institute got going, various clubs are
already formed and working smoothly. Drama Club, Design Club, Robotics Club,
Aeronautics Club, Astronomy Club, Gaming Club & Photography Club are some of
them.
A few performances by Drama Club on different occasions:
Mime on Republic Day

Ramayana on Diwali

Workshops & Extra-Mural Lectures (EMLs):

A number of workshops, talks and EMLs were conducted in the academic
premises itself to promote co-curricular activities amongst the students and
thus result in their all-round development. They featured prominent names
from the entire country.

GNU/Linux, FOSS, and hardware hacking workshop.

By Mr. Pramode C.E., Recursive Labs.

EML on "Rhythm Appreciation Primer

By Mridangam Guru Shri. T. R. Rajamani and Shri M. Lakshman.

EML on Thought process of an entrepreneur

By Mr. Louis George, Managing Director of Verdant Telemetry & Antenna

Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Talk by Mr. Ramaswamy Krishnan-Chittur, Senior Software Engineer,

Microsoft Corporation, on "Software Design.

Members of Centre for Innovation, IIT Madras interacting with the

students at IIT Palakkad.

 Some pictures of student activities from Outbound Training at LEAD

school of management as a part of Module II, Life Skills.

 Students Teaching at Kozhippara Government School Under NSS

Activity.

Internet:
IIT Palakkad has the same NKN Connection that every IIT in India has. But since
we currently have just one batch of students (107 to be exact), the bandwidth
calculated per head is very good, way better than most IITs. Addition of few
more batches wouldn't affect much. Expect at least 10-20 mbps of download
speed from a good download server. The institute provides open LAN ports in
academic block at Central Library, Cafeteria and a few other places.
The institution also offers BSNL Quad-Gen Wi-Fi to all the students 247 in
the Hostel Premises.

This was all about where IITPKD stands now, but we offer some concluding
comments on its bright future and potential yet to be untapped. Here's what
lies ahead. The land acquisition for the permanent is complete and the
constructional work is about to begin in couple of months. By current pace, the
3rd year Hostels will be in permanent campus itself and the aim is to make the
first batch pass out from the permanent campus itself.
Finally, lets talk about interns and placements. A couple of years ago, we had
the first placement seasons for the newly formed IITs of 2008 batch, which

showed decent results. According to stats, highest package offered at IIT-H was
around 35 LPA and average package was around 8.02 LPA. Thus ensuring that
what actually matters is the IIT tag you carry. IIT Palakkad is going very strong
compared to all those IITs and hence even better placements are expected.
Isn't this wonderful? We hope we have brought you a good understanding of
our institute including some little known facts. It is clear that IIT PKD is an
institution at par with the best in the country thereby doing proper justice to
the IIT tag it carries. Stay tuned to our site to keep updated on all instituterelated news!
Content copyright: The Fleet Street, IIT-Palakkad's Student Media Body.
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