Without much ado, another chapter in the illustrious history of Kerala's top engineering institution, the College of Engineering Trivandrum, was made today with the inauguration of the Trivandrum Engineering Science and Technology (TREST) Park at the College.
TREST will act as a center for Research & Development in fields related to Engineering and Technology by providing research space and supporting facilities and foster active cooperation between academia and industry to foster and incubate new ideas. This facility is being set up along the lines of the first institution-linked R&D park in the World, at Stanford. As far as I know, TREST will be the second one of its kind in South India after the facility at IIT Madras.
TREST has already attracted interest from technology & engineering giants such as Accenture, Infosys and Mahindra & Mahindra. Infosys CMD and one of Trivandrum's proudest sons, Kris Gopalakrishnan, was the guest of honor at the inauguration which was also attended by senior representatives from industry and academia.
TREST will leverage the presence of Technopark, Technocity, IIITM-K, Kerala University, C-DAC and ISRO, all within a few kilometers of the park. There are a dozen or more world-class R&D and educational institutions in and around the city ranging in diverse fields ranging from biotechnology to high performance computing. This is a strategic advantage which is probably pretty unique in India, except maybe for Bangalore. The sheer impact of such a park is best exemplified by the biotech/clean-tech/technology cluster that has grown up around MIT, right outside my window, which is now considered the single most important center of R&D in the whole wide World and has given birth to several Billion-dollar biotech/genetics companies such as Genzyme, AmGen and Biogen.
This new facility has the potential to become one of the most important R&D hubs in India and will help to further consolidate Trivandrum's position as a knowledge center on the global stage. Hopefully, it will follow in the footsteps of Technopark which has emerged as the top technology incubator in the country. TREST will offer R&D facilities including access to CET's sprawling network of lands, incubation space, business-support facilities, office space, food outlets, guest rooms and so much more. Already, a budget of Rs 50 Crores has been allocated to the park, with Rs 10 Crores sanctioned in this budget to kick off operations within the CET campus.
Stay tuned for more, a lot more from TREST in the years to come.
wow, this is super exciting! I never realized this was a project of such magnitude! Great to see CET taking steps in the right direction on the lines of the Ivy League Unis. Way to go!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing Ajay. Proud moment for you too eh, considering you're a distinguished alumni as well ;-)
it is a great initiative. our college should try to promote it self as a green campus. we should have waste to energy and solar PV projects running from our campus which will not only improve our campus but also the invoke the much needed consciousness among the students...
ReplyDeleteWhat happen to this project TREST. No development after the announcement. We need to follow up.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Ajai, please read todays manoramaonline's trivandrum page. It is saying no to IGNOU campus at Vithura.
We should not allow this happen. We need to somehow retain IGNOU here itself.
Ajay, could you give some updates on this one? I hope they are taking this project seriously and putting all efforts to carry it forward. Afterall this is one project which could produce some useful, productive and thinking graduates for the nation rather than the cent-percent mark obsessed brain-dead pass-outs our colleges chuck out now-a-days.
ReplyDelete