On 27TH June 2023, we the students at Aryaans were honoured to have a wonderful opportunity to interact with Prof. Devang Khakhar, a dynamic personality who has been the director at the renowned IIT Bombay Institute for 2 terms.

He started off by giving us an excellent coverage of the history of IIT through a phenomenal presentation which kept us engaged throughout. He told us how India was in need of high quality engineers after the Second World War and so the first IIT was set up at Kharagpur in 1951, 4 years after India got its independence.

He then shed light on the Sarkar Committee which was set up by the Viceroy’s Academic Council to prepare a blueprint for setting up higher technical institutes. The committee recommendation comprised of points such as the selection of students should be purely on merit and there should be no provincial quotas and education and training should be on modern lines and these institutes should be nothing less than first-class institutions abroad and also IIT emphasized on development of character and mental ability so that he may become a useful citizen. You also enlightened us by sharing a picture of the foundation stone being laid down by the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

He also told us how the institutes followed the blueprint faithfully and how excellent faculty and students joined from the start just as planned.

He also shed light on the early days of Computing and shared some spectacular pictures of the institutes which in every way has boosted our will to study harder in order to enjoy studying at such universities.

He also spoke about Research and Development at IIT and the Research Park where students could go and enjoy learning at the many companies set up on the campus. He also told us how unlike other universities, IIT provides us with flexible new curriculum and credits from any department you want and also how modern manufacturing has been taught extensively.

Further on he also shed light on International relations IIT has and how IIT over time has built strong relations with universities all over the world and come up with projects like the IIT Bombay- Monash University Academy etc.

He also told us about the startup ecosystem at Powai where students can enjoy working on startup projects. He also spoke about the ingredients which make up the exceptional IIT which are faculty, students, autonomy, blueprint, exception of excellence and funding. He also shed light on Chemical Engineering and how it is the body of knowledge useful for designing and operating chemical and biochemical processes for a wide variety of products and also shared facts which proved how versatile and exciting thing chemical engineering is and how widely it has contributed to society.

Lastly he shared his experience as director at IIT for 10 years and how he felt institutes are mainly about people and how you can encourage people to do better and also how his primary responsibility was to think of ways to take the institute to greater heights.

On the behalf of us Aryaanites, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to Prof. Devang Khakhar for this session inspired us and boosted our will in multiple ways and we remain indebted to him for having spared time from his busy schedule and sharing his invaluable experience with us. This session was truly an exciting and enlightening one and we were all inspired by his great words.

I would also like to thank Sir VPD for always keeping us motivated by exposing us to such exceptionally skilled and hardworking people whom we all look up to.