IIT Kanpur inaugurates DRDO-Industry-Academia Centre of Excellence

Sanjay Tandon, former director of Institute of Technology Management at Mussoorie, serves as the Director of DIA CoE at IIT Kanpur, overseeing its strategic initiative and collaborative endeavours.

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), in collaboration with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has established a DRDO-Industry-Academia Centre of Excellence (DIA CoE) on its campus for interdisciplinary research in next-generation defense technologies.

This is in line with the DIA CoE's set up by DRDO in key academic institutions in India through which it is building an ecosystem to facilitate technology development in the academic environment through experienced faculty and bright scholars, in conjunction with the efforts of the different scientists from DRDO laboratories.

The new centre will spearhead focused research initially in identified research and development verticals, including Printing on Flexible Substrates to build devices and systems based on thin films for strategic applications; Advanced Nanomaterials to provide fundamental contribution to material selection and design; Accelerated Material Design and Development to reduce the number of actual trial experiments while reaching optimal solutions via high throughput experiments; High Energy Materials to focus on the modelling of high-performance explosives and performance prediction of metalized explosives; and Bio-Engineering to develop technologies for applications ranging from sensing hazardous agents to wound healing.

ALSO READ | IIT Madras launches Shell IITM Centre for Energy Research  

Sanjay Tandon, former director of Institute of Technology Management at Mussoorie, serves as the Director of DIA CoE at IIT Kanpur, overseeing its strategic initiative and collaborative endeavours.

DRDO will fund the projects and establish key technical facilities and modern infrastructure required to enable and boost R&D programs under identified verticals.

The journey of establishment of DIA CoE at IIT Kanpur started in 2022 through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed during Def-Expo-2022 at Gandhinagar.

ALSO READ | IIT Madras-backed startup launches India's first indigenously designed microcontroller chip