IITs creating 'tinkering labs' to bake ideas into products
In 2011, when Siddartha Khastgir, a student at IIT Kharagpur, set out to build a formula-modelled racing car to enter a competition in the UK, IIT gave him 9.5 lakh to fund it, but only an old, abandoned shed to build it in. "I wish we had proper labs for such work then," recalls Khastgir, who now works as a project engineer at automotive firm FEV GmbH in Germany.
That's precisely the kind of 'tinkering labs' that many IITs at Kharagpur, Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai etc are now creating or have just created.
"A tinkering laboratory is a platform for creative minds to come out of their 'think space' to a more hands-on 'tinker space', to transform their ideas into real-time engineering objects, and eventually to products and patents," says Sameer Khandekar, associate professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. "IIT students are good at theoretical knowledge but need more hands-on experience," adds Khastgir.
The labs many IITs are now building are at least partly inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) 'Fab labs'. MIT started its first such lab in 2001 and now runs 134 labs in 34 countries.
The lab at IIT Kanpur was started a couple of years ago. The class of 1986 initiated the project and created a corpus of 70 lakh, which was matched with an equal contribution by the institute. In January 2013, the class of 1976 pitched in with a 50 lakh contribution.
IITs at Bombay and Madras are setting up similar tinkering labs. They are roping in alumni for technical and financial support. In fact, IIT Bombay started a separate tinkering lab for its mechanical engineering department this year. Its electronics department already had one.
"Students need a dedicated facility, run by them and not one that has to be shared with other streams for research work," says Devang Khakhar, director of IIT Bombay. "Alumni have been roped in for fundingand the college too will chip in," says Khakhar.
That's precisely the kind of 'tinkering labs' that many IITs at Kharagpur, Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai etc are now creating or have just created.
"A tinkering laboratory is a platform for creative minds to come out of their 'think space' to a more hands-on 'tinker space', to transform their ideas into real-time engineering objects, and eventually to products and patents," says Sameer Khandekar, associate professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. "IIT students are good at theoretical knowledge but need more hands-on experience," adds Khastgir.
The labs many IITs are now building are at least partly inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) 'Fab labs'. MIT started its first such lab in 2001 and now runs 134 labs in 34 countries.
The lab at IIT Kanpur was started a couple of years ago. The class of 1986 initiated the project and created a corpus of 70 lakh, which was matched with an equal contribution by the institute. In January 2013, the class of 1976 pitched in with a 50 lakh contribution.
IITs at Bombay and Madras are setting up similar tinkering labs. They are roping in alumni for technical and financial support. In fact, IIT Bombay started a separate tinkering lab for its mechanical engineering department this year. Its electronics department already had one.
"Students need a dedicated facility, run by them and not one that has to be shared with other streams for research work," says Devang Khakhar, director of IIT Bombay. "Alumni have been roped in for fundingand the college too will chip in," says Khakhar.
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