Technology park set to come up in Anna Varsity

With an aim to enhance the university’s research output and increase industry interaction with faculty & students, Anna University has planned to set up a technology park soon. This tech park, ‘International centre for research, training and facilitation’, could possibly be the first such park among the State government run universities in Tamil Nadu.

Authorities from the university headed by its vice-chancellor Prof. M Rajaram had recently visited IIT research park and held discussions with various officials including the IIT-Madras director Prof.Bhaskar Ramamurthi for setting up the International centre for research. Speaking to DT Next on Thursday, Anna University registrar Prof. S Ganesan said that the university has submitted a proposal to the state government for setting up the technology park in the Anna University campus in Chennai.

“The proposal for the techpark, envisaged by our VC, includes funding for multi-disciplinary training and research for faculty & students also. We will identify a group of faculty who will work in the research park guiding students. The idea of the technology park is to promote innovation by faculty, researchers and young students into a commercially possible venture,” he said.

Providing more details, Prof. J Kumar, director for Centre for Technology Development & Transfer (CTDT) at Anna University, said that students can come stay, associate with researchers at the techpark for sometime and evolve their idea into a prototype.

“We will also have facilities like world class labs for departments, including mechanical, electronics, nano-technology, material sciences and bio technology, besides testing and evaluation facilities,” he said.

The university also plans to rope in the private sector in the techpark. “Private companies can house their equipment in the park and make it available for training or value addition for our researchers to do a product,” he said.