Alumni Foundation in US Awards International Internships to IIT-KGP Students

As many as 15 students from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) will now get an opportunity to do an all-expense-paid-for internship at top global universities, courtesy the IITKGP Foundation, founded by the alumni of IIT KGP, US. The students will pursue their summer internship for 2019 starting at some of the top global universities including California Institute of Technology, MIT, University of Illinois-Urbana, Georgia Tech and the University of Michigan in the US, NUS and Nanyang University in Singapore, Darmstadt in Germany and at Lausanne in Switzerland.

The Nebraska-headquartered non-profit organization will offer upto $3000 per student towards airfare, stay and other expenses.

Ron Gupta, president of the IITKGP Foundation said that they are proud to foster a synergy between the excellent education at IITKGP with the research and studies at the world’s other top universities. The IIT KGP Foundation will continue to support initiatives like this to build robust relationships between the students and premier institutions to foster the contributions that these students bring to future technological developments in their fields and beyond.

While emphasizing the need for engagement of the alumni towards the overall development of the Institute, Prof. Subrata Chattopadhyay, dean, alumni affairs at IIT Kharagpur, said that this directly impacts the career development of the students. The IIT KGP Foundation USA has been designing programmes for the alumni to support the future generations of IIT Kharagpur students. Witnessing the enthusiasm of the alumni to mentor the students we have instituted an alumni department engagement program to facilitate students placement, internship, exchange, guest talks, department funding requirements etc.

Interestingly, this year, more than a hundred students with top CGPA applied for these internships, of which 15 were selected to receive the awards. The topics of research covered a wide array of subjects depending on the student and the host institution. Students going to CalTech, USA will research on scientific topics of hydrogen and helium stability; while those going to the National University of Singapore will concentrate on the design of robotics systems and algorithmic game theory. A group of students will work with MIT, USA on potential solutions for urban brownfield site developments.