The Strategic Vision of School of Technology (SOT)

In today’s digital age, careers across industries are going through a transformation. As the world evolves, the job trends are also changing. Skills of the future include automation, entrepreneurship, digital marketing, social media management and data sciences. Emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics are entering every emerging profession. The School of Technology (SOT) has now embarked on this journey and has taken a number of key initiatives to bring its academics all the core and contemporary requirement of industries and society. This need-based approach has already been put up in The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by NITI Aayog in 2015 (https://niti.gov.in/verticals/sustainable-dev-goals). In order to comply with them, SOT takes up unique steps over its curricula to map them with the societal needs of energy and environment. Therefore the programs at SOT will impart knowledge in the technologies of the future through a cutting edge curriculum. The curriculum is planned with the right mix of research and industry-relevant subjects taught predominantly through project-based learning.

KEY INITIATIVES BY SOT

Academic strategy as well as planning & a quality assurance strategy are the focal point and they are being aligned with the overall PDEU strategy plan. The curriculum of each program is being redesigned in such a way that the foundation and core courses will be taught in the initial years and value added input focusing on thrust area will be developed & delivered during the tenure of course term. This strategy promulgates student outcome based learning into:

Enhanced Employability (80% of the batch)

Entrepreneurship (10% of the batch)

Society high quality research (10% of the batch)

SOT has identified following thrust areas to be deliberated in the redesigned curricula of various programs in undergraduate and post-graduate levels:

Thrust Area I: Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is defined as digitization of the manufacturing sector, with embedded sensors in virtually all product components and manufacturing equipment, ubiquitous cyber-physical systems, and analysis of all relevant data.

‘Factories of The Future’ need knowledge of Internet of Things (IoT), Physical Internet, Internet of Services, and Cyber-Physical Systems, to achieve a high degree of flexibility in production, higher productivity rates through real-time monitoring and diagnosis, and a lower wastage rate of material in production.

Many industrialized countries, including some corporates in India have already begun with adapting their industrial infrastructure to meet the requirements of the Industry 4.0 vision. An important part of the task in the preparation for Industry 4.0 is the adaption of the higher education to the requirements of this vision, in particular to the engineering education.

• First pillar is the implementation of the Industry 4.0 concept in the curriculum of undergraduate and post graduate programs across all engineering and science departments.
• Second is the establishment of laboratories, where the students can work on the concepts of Industry 4.0.
• Last but not least establishment of a student clubs, where the students work on different aspects of Industry 4.0.

Thrust Area II: Circular (Green) Economy

A greener economy means; eco-design, eco-innovation, waste prevention and the reuse of raw materials. It will bring new growth & job opportunities. It also benefits the environment and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

The concepts of Circular Economy, Green Economy and Bio economy are joined by the common ideal to reconcile economic, environmental and social goals. The three concepts are currently mainstream in academia and policy making as key sustainability avenues

Thrust Area –III: Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation (DT) can be defined as “The acceleration of business activities, processes, competencies and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies and their impact in a strategic and prioritized way.”

A growing number of organizations/ industrial sectors are adopting DT to achieve competitive advantage of its latest technologies, including IoT, Cloud Computing, Data Science, Data Analytics, Cyber Security and Machine Learning (ML).

The DT has revolutionized almost all sectors and it is rising rapidly.

Relevance of above thrust areas with regards to different departments in SOT is visualized as under:

Branch/ Discipline	Thrust area under which its curriculum is centered
Mechanical Engineering	Industry 4.0
Chemical Engineering	Circular (Green) Economy
Civil Engineering	Digital Transformation & Circular (Green) Economy
Computer Engineering Information and Communication Technology	Digital Transformation
	Digital Transformation

However, it is pertinent to note the above thrust areas are interdisciplinary when it comes to applying to various engineering solutions in the industry.

Thrust Area IV: Entrepreneurship Empowerment: Offering alternative opportunity to job through design mode.

There is an imperative need to prepare a generic road map to adapt engineering education to the requirements of the above suggested thrust areas by specifying needed changes to the curriculum, laboratories and student club activities including students’ research project for SOT.