Welcome to the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at IIT Kanpur. The EE department is one of the oldest departments at IIT Kanpur. It was one of the first five departments with which IIT Kanpur started in 1960. Subsequently, the Advanced Centre for Electronics Systems (ACES) came into existence in early 1970 by a grant from the Ministry of Defence to undertake manpower training and to carry out research and development related to defense. Subsequently, several sponsored projects in many subject areas with large interdisciplinary content were handled through ACES. ACES is now an integral part of the EE department and houses the majority of EE laboratories and facilities. The department is currently the largest multidisciplinary department at IIT Kanpur. It covers practically all sub-disciplines in Electrical and Communication Engineering including Power Systems, Power Electronics, Microwaves, RF techniques, Microelectronics, VLSI, Photonics, Control Systems, Robotics, Speech, and Audio Processing, Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Wireless Communication, Computer Networks, Future wireless networks like 5G/6G, Wireless sensor networks, and IoT networks.

The vision of the EE department is to create talented and socially responsible engineers to make a better India and, in turn, a better world. It will strive to become a hub of research excellence in cutting edge, state of the art, and contemporary areas of national and international relevance. The department also envisions itself as a center of excellence in teaching to create a well-educated, technically competent, and socially responsible workforce for meaningful, inclusive, and overall societal development of India and the world.

The department’s mission is to impart world-class training to its undergraduate and postgraduate students. It plans to create an excellent national workforce by imparting students a high-quality education, cutting-edge research exposure, and a world-class innovation ecosystem. Additionally, it plans to formulate and implement novel teaching mechanisms to provide its students a holistic exposure to a world-class education. The department plans to hire faculty, augment its teaching and research infrastructure, increase its industrial and research collaboration, and adopt modern methodologies for training students and staff to realize its stated mission objectives.

The department offers B.Tech, M.Tech, M.S (by research), and Ph.D. Programs in Electrical Engineering. The current sanctioned strength of B.Tech and M.Tech student intake during the first semester, are approximately 136 and 150, respectively. At present, 241 Ph.D., 260 MTech., 60 M.S (by research), and 620 BTech students are registered in the department, against the sanctioned intake. It may be noted that the number of postgraduate (MTech, M.S (R), and Ph.D.) students has nearly doubled in the last five years.

The department has a total faculty strength of 50, 3 research engineers, 26 technical staff, 7 ministerial staff, and a large number of research project employees.

The EE department of IIT Kanpur has always been well recognized for its excellent teaching standards in India and abroad. Several faculties of the department have also won teaching excellence awards like the Gopal Das Bhandari award multiple times. Over the years, the department has had beacons of teaching excellence such as R.N Biswas, K.R Sarma, R. Sharan, S.S Prabhu, and MA Pai.

Prof Russel Hsing, who is a pioneer in 6G communication, and Fog computing, is a visiting faculty with the department for two years. Prof. Hsing, is a Fellow of the IEEE, the British Computer Society (BCS) in the UK, and the SPIE. Currently, he is Chair Professor with the National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan), Adjunct Professor and Member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Institute of Network Coding at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, and Member of Advisory Council at Harvard Business Review. Prof. Hsing is helping EE at IIT Kanpur develop a 6G and Fog computing research ecosystem. Plans to conduct the next IEEE 6G and fog computing summer/Fall school are also being developed. Currently, EE has 1 adjunct faculty and 1 visiting faculty. Dr. Anirudh Gautam from RDSO is an adjunct faculty in EE and collaborates with several faculty to develop and execute high net worth projects for Indian railways.

The EE department is one of the largest R and D fund generators for IIT Kanpur. Several small, medium and large R and D projects have been sanctioned to EE faculty in the last five years. This has led to the development of several large research facilities like Real-Time Digital Simulator, Smart Grid, 5G Test Bed have been set up as a result of these large projects. Faculty from EE have also been largely involved in setting up the Samtelcentre for display technologies, and the National flexible electronics centre. Several faculty in EE are also involved in industrial consultancy projects with private industrial giants like Qualcomm, LG India, Samsung India, and GE India apart from state and central government agencies like BSNL, Power Grid Corporation, CPRI.

EE has been a leader in the Institute in terms of offering outreach and continuing education programs (CEP). Several faculty have offered classroom, online, and MooCs in cutting edge areas like AI, ML, 5G communications, Future wireless networks, Microwave and RFID technologies, state of the art EMI/EMC techniques. The EE department has offered the largest number of CEPs in the last 2 years from the centre of continuing education. Additionally, several MDPs have been offered by the smart grid facility to officers from electricity regulators.

EE faculty have been traditionally contributing to administrative activities both within and outside the Institute. Currently, there are 3 faculty who are serving as Directors/Vice-chancellors at various other IIT/NIT/Universities. Several faculty from EE are currently serving as Deans, Associate Deans, and Centre Heads within the Institute.

Several EE alumni have made IIT Kanpur proud. EE Alumni have made excellent contributions in various fields like entrepreneurship, industry, and academics. A few illustrious alumni (both new and old) who have distinguished themselves are N. R. Narayana Murthy (Infosys), Prof. K. Subramanian (CEA to GoI), Dr. Ajay Kumar (DefenceSecretray, GoI), Dr.Arvind Krishna (CEO, IBM), Dr. Lalit Jalan (Director, Reliance), Prof. Anurag Kumar (Director, IISc.), Prof. UB Desai (Director IIT Hyderabad), Prof. Abhay Karandikar (Director, IIT Kanpur), Varun Khaitan (Co-founder, Urban Clap), Bhaskar Pramanik (Chairman, Microsoft), Mr. Avanish K. Awasthi (Principal Secretary UP Govt.), Prof. A. K. Chaturvedi (Director, IIT Roorkee), and Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey (Finance Secretary, GoI).

If you have any questions, queries, suggestions, and proposals, please feel free to contact me.

Prof. R. M. Hegde, Head EE This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.