IITH, DRDO Inks MoU For DIA - Centre Of Excellence

DRDO Cell was established in IIT Hyderabad (IITH) in 2020-21, which was working as a satellite Centre for the RIC Chennai (IIT Madras Research park). The then Director of the RIC, Dr Natrajan, took the initiative to contact various Defence Laboratories in and around Hyderabad, collate the problem statements and share them among IITH faculty members through the then Dean (R&D) Prof Sumohana, IITH and that's how the ball started rolling in 2019-20. IITH Faculty and several DRDO Scientists put efforts in first drafting the proposals to cater to the exact requirement of the Defense and many proposals in varied areas ranging from Additive manufacturing to sensors design, Artificial intelligence to Space technologies were submitted and 13 proposals worth of several crore were sanctioned at the rocket speed.

Understanding the importance of Additive Manufacturing to the Defence, one Centre for Additive Manufacturing was also proposed where faculty from various departments, from Mechanical to Materials science and Metallurgical Engineering, Biomedical to Electrical Engineering, participated. The currently sanctioned DIA COE will take this initiative to a higher level and enable IITH, DRDO and industry to contribute to nation-building.