Research
For doing research, you need students, grants, library and equipment. The procedure for buying equipment is discussed under financial procedures under rules and regulations. The rest are discussed here.
Procedure followed for selecting students
The following degree programmes are offered by the Institute
i. ME/M Tech Degree (2 year programme – 64 credits) (Post BE)
ii. M Des Degree (2 year programme – 64 credits) (Post BE)
iii. Integrated Ph D programme (post B.Sc)
iv. M Sc (Engg) programme (post BE)
v. Ph.D programme (post M.Sc/BE)
M Des program is offered only the CPDM department.
The admission to ME is based on GATE only. The cutoff percentile is usually 99 and above i.e., only the top 1 percentile are admitted to the ME program. The admission to M.Tech is based on a shortlisting based on GATE and followed by interview. Only a few departments offer M.Tech; many departments offer only the ME program. All M.E. students do 64 credits of work, of which a minimum is 32 credits of course work. This means that the M.E student completes the course work in the first year and nearly one year is alloted for the project. There are usually 1 to 2 M.E students admitted per faculty in every department. Therefore, you may able to get 1 to 2 M.E students to work with you every year.
The admission to Integrated Ph.D program is restricted to the science departments. The admission is through the IISc entrance exam. The students take 2 years of course work. After one more year of project, the student can graduate with a M.S. and quit the program or continue to do the project and get a Ph.D. Thus the normal period for graduation for a student is 3 years for M.S and 6.5 years for a Ph.D. Normally 100 students are called for the interview in each discipline and there are only 12 to 15 seats in each discipline (Maths/physics/chemistry/biology).
The admission to M Sc(Engg) program is restricted to engineering departments. The admission is through GATE followed by an interview. The cutoff percentile for the interview call is lesser than that of ME and varies from department to department and is usually around 90 percentile in some departments. The students have to take 12 credits only and the rest of the time is spent in research. The normal period of this program is 2 to 2.5 years and thus student spend at least 18 months doing research. The number of students admitted to this program varies from department to department.
The admission to Ph.D program is open to all departments. For the science departments, the candidate should have qualified in one of the four exams: GATE/CSIR/IISc entrance exam or one of the specialized exams like JEST. Students with B.E/M.Sc background have to 12 credits of course work. For the engineering departments, some departments require that the candidate be qualified in GATE but most departments will interview any student with a B.E/M.Sc/ME/M.Tech. Students with M.E/M.Tech qualification have to take 6 credits of course work. Students with B.E qualification have to 18 credits of course work. Students typically take 5 years in engineering departments and 5.5 years in science departments to graduate. The Institute has an overall limit on enrolled students of 2.5 students (relaxed to 3.5 in recent years) per faculty in engineering and 5 students per faculty in sciences. Thus, if you are an engineering department of 20 faculty, you may have only 50 students on roll. Therefore, you may expect to get 1 Ph.D to work with you every year.
The allotment of students to a faculty varies widely from department to department and no general guidelines can be given. Some departments allot the student to the faculty at the time of the interview, some departments ask the students to submit a preference of three to five faculty and then allot, some departments classify the students into various groups of theory, experiment and then allow. The institute has a guideline that each faculty may not advise more than 8 research students.
Library facilities
Effective 2010, the library has done away with hard copies of most journals. Soft copies of most of the subscribed journals and many other e-journals can be accessed on the internet. IISc spends around Rs. 12 crores per year on subscribing to around 5000 journals. It is also a part of the INDEST consortium.
If you need a journal that you require on daily basis for your research, which is not subscribed by the IISc library, you need to write a letter to the librarian through the chairman of your department (format: DOC | PDF)
Grants and funding agencies
Funding in India for research is quite good. Most of the agencies give funding of Rs. 35 lakhs per project. Higher levels of funding can also be obtained in some cases. The time for processing the grants varies from 3 months to 9 months, depending on the agency and the particular committee in the agency. The Institute faculty receive research funding from various government agencies and a representative list is given below. The research projects are handled through the Center for Sponsored Schemes and Projects (CSSP).
10% - 20% of the project cost is paid to IISc depending on the funding agency and scheme, subject to a maximum of Rs. 5 lakhs. For grants obtained from government sources, the faculty can not charge for consultancy. Typical Government funding cycle (from the application to receiving the money) could be anywhere between 6 months to 3 years, so plan ahead and submit accordingly.
Consultancy and industry projects
Faculty can interact with industries and undertake consultancy work. In the public sector, the "trinity" of space, defence and nuclear sectors provide a good source of funding for consultancy activities. Moreover the projects are most often of a challenging nature. In the private sector, there are several multinational and local companies that seek consultancies. A representative list of companies with which IISc faculty have research interaction include Boeing, Cadila Pharmceuticals, Daimler Chrysler, General Electric, General Motors, Hindustan Lever Limited, Indian Immunologies, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Nortel, Pratt & Whitney, Sir Dorabji Tata Centre, Texas Instruments etc. The research projects and the consultancy projects from these organizations are handled either by the Center for Scientific and Industrial Consultancy (CSIC) or the Society for Innovation and Development (SID).
Simple testing, short term ( less than 1 year) projects, all consultancy projects can be taken up by the faculty through CSIC.
Long term projects, projects offered by industries in the industrial park, can be taken up by the faculty through SID.
In all cases, the overheads of 40% from the consultancy fees is paid to IISc.
Funding Agencies