Thapar Institute, Virginia Tech to build Center of Excellence

Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology (TIET), Patiala, has entered an agreement with Virginia Tech for a $2 million investment to build a collaborative research center — the Thapar-Virginia Tech Center of Excellence in Frontier Materials.

Virginia Tech President Tim Sands signed a five-year MoU with Gautam Thapar, president of TIET, in this regard recently. 

Through Outreach and International Affairs, the institute will commit $1 million to fund a Thapar Institute Professorship at Virginia Tech. Thapar Institute will dedicate an additional $1 million to build and equip the center on its campus in India, cover the travel and housing expenses of the Thapar Professorship, and fund doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows.

Gautam Thapar said, “The team plans to have the center up and running within three months. This is a big attraction for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in India because there are very few engineering and science institutions that actually are doing this kind of work.”

Roop Mahajan, former director of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech, will serve as the inaugural Thapar Institute Professor, a position designed for a full-time faculty member at Virginia Tech, who will also spend more than three months annually in India.

The center’s work is designed to generate engineering solutions for real-world contemporary research problems, reflective of the commitment in Virginia Tech’s strategic plan to tackle large and complex problems in ways that span a wide range of disciplines to engage research scholars and students. — TNS