The Hindu Business Line : Qualcomm Chair at IIT-Madras

RS 80-LAKH GRANT: Mr Kanwalinder Singh (right), President, India and SAARC, Qualcomm and Prof M.S. Ananth, Director, IIT-Madras, at a press conference in Chennai on Wednesday. - Bijoy Ghosh

Chennai , Oct. 4

Qualcomm, a US-based provider of wireless technologies, has established a Qualcomm Chair at IIT, Madras.

This is the first academic donation by the company in India and is endowed with a grant of $175,000 (around Rs 80 lakh).

Announced at Shaastra 2006, IIT Madras's annual technology festival, the grant will fund Qualcomm Chair in the institute's electrical engineering department.

The funding will bring experts in wireless technology from all over the world to IIT Madras and provide engineering students at the institute an opportunity to learn and contribute to wireless innovations, according to a company release.

The Chair would focus on areas such as 3G and CDMA and technologies targeted at Indian market, according to Mr Kanwalinder Singh, President (India and SAARC), Qualcomm.

Through the company's design centres in Hyderabad and Bangalore, and with the Qualcomm Chair, the company continues to increase its R&D presence in the country, he told newspersons.

The Chair is the eighth to be set up in the institute.

The company has educational collaborations with institutes such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, he added.

Prof S. Narayanan, Dean of Academic Research, IIT Madras, said that the funding, which is for five years and extendable, would help the institute attract faculty to work on wireless technologies.

Prof M.S. Ananth, Director of IIT Madras, said that such a tie-up would enrich the educational atmosphere and attract "unlike minds" to bring in new ideas. The Chair is the eighth to be set up in the institute, he added.

Out of the total annual outlay, the institute gets Rs 100 crore from the Centre for plan and non-plan expenditure, around Rs 45 crore from sponsored research and consultancy and Rs 35 crore from fees.

"We have sought more funds from the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development," Prof Ananth said.

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