A former student of the Government Model Engineering College, Thrikkakara, donated Rs 55 lakh to his college for setting up an AICTE-IDEA (Idea Development, Evaluation and Application) Lab.
The fund for the Idea Lab – a project launched by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to equip engineering students with the skills of design thinking, problem solving and a multi-disciplinary approach that enable rapid transformation of ideas into prototypes – has been donated by the California-based Rosh Cherian who hails from Kakkanad in Ernakulam.
“This is the first government college in Kerala selected by the AICTE for the Idea Lab, a dream space for all the engineering students. Now they can come up with an idea and turn it into a complete product. We were selected by the AICTE for the project that costs a total of Rs 1.1 crore in March 2022. The AICTE has approved Rs 55 lakh; we have to mobilise the remaining fund by ourselves. Ever since we were selected, we have been approaching various industrialists and other companies. We also contacted our alumnus. I contacted Rosh Cherian, our 1996-batch student. In a single call itself, he instantly agreed to contribute Rs 55 lakh. We are thankful to him for his gesture,” Dr Jacob Thomas, principal, Government Model Engineering College, Thrikkakara told Onmanorama.
At present, Rosh Cherian is the CTO and co-founder of CogniCor, a company that provides artificial intelligence powered customer support solutions. After securing BTech in biomedical engineering from the Thrikkakara institute, he obtained a master's degree in computer engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology.
The Idea Lab, set up as an exclusive workshop in a 2,000-ft space, will be inaugurated by the AICTE advisor Ramesh Unnikrishnan on July 31 at the campus. The lab facilities including CNC turning center, CMC wood router, solid work station, 3D printing machines and PCB machines.
“The lab will be capable of offering over 30 training programmes for the engineering students from all the colleges. We are also planning to offer training programmes to students from technical institutes and schools in coming days,” added Dr Thomas.