The Hindu : Advisory board to help SRM Institute upgrade standard

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 12, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Advisory board to help SRM Institute upgrade standard

CHENNAI, JAN. 11. An international advisory board comprising academics from world-renowned institutions has been constituted by the SRM Institute of Science and Technology (Deemed University) to help upgrade the institution's academic and research activities to global standards.

Briefing newspersons yesterday, the Chancellor, T.R. Pachamuthu, said after being declared a deemed university last year, the institute was making efforts to internationalise its standards. The International Advisory Board (IAB) now had 10 members. "We will include more if required for a balanced representation from different disciplines. Three of the board members, Rohan Abeyaratne, Professor and Head of Department, Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.), Bala Balachandran, J.L. Kellogg, distinguished professor of Accounting Information and Management, Northwestern University (U.S.), and Oliver Linton, Professor of Econometrics, London School of Management, visited the university and interacted with its faculty members.

The Vice-Chancellor, P. Sathya Narayanan, said the IAB would guide the institute in setting strategic priorities and objectives in line with global trends, assist in planning programmes and in designing new courses, to help identify institutions/individuals of academic excellence to work in collaboration with the institute, and to help in student-faculty exchange with leading institutions worldwide.

On Sunday, Dr. Abeyaratne, presented an overview of the undergraduate mechanical engineering programme of the MIT.

He said the undergraduate students had to learn basics of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology, besides eight subjects in humanities. The students had an option to take up research activity, but a thesis presentation at the end of the four-year program was mandatory.

As part of the undergraduate professional opportunities programme, the students interacted with the industry. They also underwent three months of industrial internship in summer.

Dr. Linton made a presentation on `Financial Econometrics' and later explained students the models which are used for forecasting stock and financial market trends.

There was some evidence to suggest that stock prices and returns from stocks could be predicted, he said.

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