Alumni of the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela (NIT-R) have mobilised ` one crore and created ‘Prof Ajaya Kumar Mohanty Endowed Chair Professorship’ to promote academic and industrial research in electrical sciences.
Amid degrading research quality and professors remaining overloaded with additional work, a group of alumni felt the need to create a specific post to assist research activities with required fund. Prof LN Bhuyan, currently Professor at University of California Riverside, USA and representing the NIT-R Overseas Alumni Association (NITROAA) along with former Director of IIT Kharagpur Prof D Acharya, former Managing Director of IISCO, SAIL, SP Rao – both representing NIT-R Alumni Association (NITRAA) – recently signed an MoU with NIT-R in this connection. An initial corpus fund of `85 lakh has been set aside.