Amjad Husain has been working as the Chief Innovation Officer of National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, Karnataka. He has done Masters in Engineering and Bachelors of Engineering as part of his academics. And he has a wonderful work experience of more than 30 years.

The National Institute of Engineering

Being a Chief Innovation Officer at The National Institute of Engineering, what are your responsibilities towards the students?

"To facilitate best ambiance, amenities, trainings and internships to students"

Being the CIO at NIE, I am responsible basically to bring the best opportunities for students, be it in terms of research projects, programs or training. We have an inhouse incubation start-up centre to inculcate Entrepreneurship skills in students to make them job givers instead of job seekers. Also, we all are aware that the Central Ministry and our honorable Prime Minister’s are putting in a lot of effort to make an Atma-Nirbhar Bharat with initiatives like vocal for local, Make in India and self sustainable strategies. So the whole idea of establishing an Incubation Cell at NIE is to promote these initiatives. We want that if a student has some innovative product idea, we will help them turn that dream into reality. During the initial 2 years, we provide facilities such as office space, internet, power, furniture, maker space, computers, office support, library along with counseling sessions in the areas of entrepreneurship development, intellectual property rights and financial management. 

How do you establish healthy relations with the students and fellow faculty?

"By empathically listening to their queries and issues and giving their resolution on time"

I truly believe that building good relationships is very important for a person for his/her own personal development. So, it's very important for one to have a cordial relation with his colleagues, students, bosses, supervisors and subordinates. Hence, I listen to others emphatically while interacting with them and try to understand their requirements, issues and queries so that I can resolve them on time. Basically, a helping approach combined with the right choice of words, open and respectful communicative environment is very mandatory to have a healthy relationship with fellow faculty and students. 

How do you introduce a practical and industry oriented approach towards subjects?

"By conducting more research experiments, giving apprenticeship to students and implementing NEP"

We emphasize much on practical and experiments, as theory alone is not enough to make students knowledgeable and skillful. And to do so, we have established a strong connection between academics and industry. Hence, we have collaborated with many industries to provide better internships and training programs to students and we are also working rigorously to implement the National Education Policy (NEP). This also helps students to understand industry requirements when they get a chance to interact with working professional and industry experts. I am very happy to say that our students have done extremely well during training and apprenticeship programs and the industry is very happy about their performance in terms of the technological aspects, deliverables, approach and their communication skills etc.

Which best practices are offered by your department to the students to help them gain necessary skills? 

"Rigorous experiments on a particular subject combined with mini-major projects in each semester"

We give a lot of attention to labs and experiments so that our students can fully understand various concepts by carrying out practicals on their own or with the support of lab assistants. And different kinds of mini and major projects have been made compulsory for students to finish in each semester. Because our main objective is to give such a kind of ambiance to students where they can come and put forward their innovative ideas, develop products and solutions for real world issues. 

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What challenges are you facing to uplift the education quality of your department? 

"To make students understand that other fields of Engineering too have good job scope is a hurdle for us"

Today the general feeling among the parents of students is that only the Computer Engineering and IT world have good job opportunities, but this is not the case, other fields Mechanical, Electrical and Civil Engineering too offer tremendous job opportunities if you are skilled enough. Also after Pandemic, students are opting more for CS subjects because they prefered to work from home. When weI call somebody an Engineer, we expect them to have a basic understanding of Engineering and its subjects. Hence retaining student’s focus to opt for other engineering disciplines is quite a challenging task for us.

What do you see as the college’s greatest strengths and how it can be enhanced?

"Our legacy, values, education system and programs makes us resilient"

NIE , which is actually a blend of traditional heritage and modern outlook, is the second oldest college in the state, so our legacy itself is our first strength. Sir M. Visvesvaraya was instrumental in inspiring our founders Sri Ramaswamy, Sri Narasimha Rao & Sri Rama Rao to lay the foundation of this great institute in the year 1946. Over the period, our college has produced many eminent personalities like Sri.N.R.Narayan Murthy and Sri. Kumar Malavalli of Brocade Communications who have brought revolutions in the field of Computer Science, Software and communications is a living example of this. So in my view, all these things when combined together make us unique and strong at the same time.

Any valuable advice which you would like to give to the students to have a prosperous career ahead? 

"Keep chasing your goals and keep updating knowledge yourself"

I would like to advise students to follow their passion, because if one does something by full dedication, the end results will definitely be amazing. And when passion is supplemented with discipline and hard work, you will excel in every field. Keep exploring opportunities and new fields and keep upgrading your skills to enhance your knowledge. If you see the Maslow’s Hierarchy, which is the combination of need hierarchy, apart from shelter and food, even mobility has become important. While we should restrict our imports like oil to save precious foreign exchange, and we should explore renewable energy resources.

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What are your views upon the placement of students of your institute?

"We are doing great and our students are placed in good companies"

In our field of engineering, we have observed the general trend of students to seek good jobs in a reputed firm after completing their graduation, and no doubt majority of them get placements in top notch companies. And to make this happen, we have a well-established placement cell with highly qualified officers to orient our students on required industry skill sets as our main motto is giving our students a great place to work.