IISc’s second campus to focus on new areas

IISc’s second campus to focus on new areas


Hemanth C S
First Published : 20 Oct 2008 09:49:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 20 Oct 2008 12:06:43 PM IST

BANGALORE: Constrained for space at its current 374-acre campus, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has begun scouting for land to set up its second campus around Bangalore. Officials from the IISc have been holding consultations with the State Government and the choice has now narrowed down to Bidadi and Devanahalli.

The proposed second campus of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) will focus on newer areas of science and engineering, and will not reproduce anything that is being done on its 100-year-old existing campus, IISc director P Balaram said.

“The second campus will be almost autonomous and focus on new things.We will look at the possibility of expanding bio-medical research and set up advanced technical labs where we could collaborate with the industry to bring back interest in engineering research,” the director told this website's newspaper.

Addressing a Court meeting last year, Balaram had said: “It will not be a campus which will do what this campus does.” Though the institute has taken up expansion activities on the existing campus, it wants to minimise the environmental damage.

“The consultants who came in for the purpose of campus development have identified new possible areas for development where there would be minimum damage to our environment...

We also had a committee which looked at campus biodiversity, produced a report and then identified those areas of our campus which must remain untouched,” Balaram told the Court.

NEW CENTRE AT IISC: IISc will set up a Centre for Neuroscience to build a strong programme of teaching and research in the area.

The proposed Centre would focus on basic and experimental neurobiological researches; cognitive and behavioural neurobiology research; computational and neural network imaging research and translational biology research. The Centre would develop strong links with institutions such as NIMHANS and develop core and multidisciplinary research programmes in both basic and translational biology.