INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras belongs to the genre of new generation Institutes of national importance in higher education in the field of Technology and Science.  The Institute has grown from strength to strength ever since it obtained its charter from the Parliament of India in 1961 and has established itself as a premier center of research, consultancy and technological/scientific development.  It all began in the year 1956 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, then Prime Minister of India, was on an official visit to West Germany and was offered assistance by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, to set up a higher technological institute in India.  This resulted in the signing of the first Indo-German Agreement in Bonn in 1958, for the establishment of an Indian Institute of Technology Madras, with assistance from Germany in terms of faculty, technical staff and equipment.
The Institute has several departments, which offer undergraduate and post-graduate courses in various disciplines of engineering and pure sciences.  The Central Library and Computer Center of the Institute are well equipped to fulfill the needs of the faculty and students.  There are many advanced research centers in the Institute having excellent facilities for carrying out research in frontier areas of science and technology. The Institute has about 350 faculty, 4000 students and 900 administrative and support staff.
The Institute with a self contained beautiful campus spanning 630 acres is located in South Chennai, on Sardar Patel Road at a distance of about 3 kilo meters from the Bay of Bengal.  It is flanked by Adyar, Taramani and Velachery Villages.  It is at a distance of about 14 kilometers from the Central Railway Station and is well connected with buses to the city. 
The campus is residential, with 17 student hostels (Two hostels exclusively for girl students) and quarters for the families of faculty and staff.  The general facilities for the residents of the campus include two schools (one Kendriya Vidyalaya and another with IIT Management), Banks (SBI, Canara Bank and ICICI Bank), Post Office, Shopping Complex, Hospital, and an Open Air Theatre where movies are screened every Saturday evening.  The campus houses a natural forest, which is a haven for spotted deer and black buck.  Several student amenities such as Swimming Pool, Gymnasium, Canteens and Play grounds are available. Apart from buses, electrically powered vans also ply within the campus.

Master of Science Programmes
Indian Institute of Technology Madras offers two-year M.Sc. programmes in Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics.  The M.Sc. programme has a credit based curriculum.  Besides a common core programme, students have opportunity to register for a number of elective courses to match their interests.  The evaluation is based on continuous assessment through quizzes, assignments and tests.

Fees* and Payment:

Tuition fee of Rs.3,000/- per semester is exempted for SC/ST students

*Subject to change.

Scholarships:
Merit scholarship: On the basis of the performance at the end of the 1st semester, 25% of the students admitted or 25% of the sanctioned strength whichever is less will be awarded merit scholarship for the first two semesters of the programme and renewal for III and IV semesters will be based on the performance in the II and III semesters, at the rate approved by the GoI from time to time. These students are exempted from payment of tuition fees.

Freeship:  In addition, 10% of the students admitted or 10% of the sanctioned strength whichever is less are exempted from payment of tuition fees for the first two semesters of the programme and renewal will be based on the performance in the II and III semesters.

50% freeship:  Out of the remaining students who may secure not less than 6.5% CGPA and whose parental income is less than Rs.2 lakhs per annum will be awarded 50% tuition fee waiver.

Department of Chemistry
The Department of Chemistry has 31 faculty with specialization in diverse fields of chemistry to fulfill the needs of students who are expected to compete at the International level.  There are 18 technical and supporting staff members.
The department has about 124 students enrolled in the Ph.D. programme and 60 in the M.Sc. programme.
The common core courses in the M.Sc. programme are offered in the first three semesters.  In the fourth semester, the students have the option to choose 4 elective courses of highly specialized subjects.  The core courses are carefully planned to cover the basic and advanced concepts of all the branches of chemistry with exposure to the latest developments in the field of chemistry.
In the first three semesters the M.Sc. students have laboratory courses in Organic, Inorganic and Physical Chemistry.  The practicals are aimed to train the students for working in any advanced laboratory with modern facilities and sophisticated instruments.  The department offers a unique computational chemistry programme, which makes the students familiar with applications of software related to chemistry.
In second year, a seminar is mandatory for all M.Sc. students. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are trained to search the ocean of chemistry literature using Scifinder, a software provided by American Chemical Society.  Our central library has vast and valuable collection of text books and journals.  In the second year, the students will do research in the area of their choice under the supervision of one of the faculty members.  The project, which is expected to be an original piece of research, will prepare the students to take-up Ph.D. programme or jobs in established national and multinational laboratories.
The Department has excellent instrumentation facilities like FTIR, U.V-Vis, Electrospray-ionization mass spectrometer, MALDI Mass Spectrometer, N.M.R. Single crystal XRD and a CHN analyzer.  With the funding of MHRD and DST, more sophisticated equipments are being added to make the department one of the best in the country and comparable to top ranking universities abroad.

Department of Mathematics
The Department of Mathematics is engaged in teaching and research in many areas of Pure, Applied and Computational Mathematics.  The department offers  M.Sc. (two-year programme) and Ph.D. Degree programmes in Mathematics, and a two-year M.Tech Degree programme in Industrial Mathematics and Scientific Computing.  The out going students of the department are recruited by leading industries through the Institute Placement Office.  They hold high positions in reputed Institutes, Universities and Companies around the globe.
The core courses for the M.Sc. programme are offered in the first three semesters.  These courses include subjects such as Algebra, Discrete Mathematics, Linear Algebra, Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations, Calculus of Variations, Mechanics, Continuum Mechanics, Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, Functional Analysis, Topology, Measure and Integration, Probability Theory, Principles of Computing and Numerical Analysis.  In the final semester the students can choose electives from a rich menu of subject as such as Computational Fluid Dynamics, Combinatorial Optimization, Fuzzy Sets, Operator Theory, Graph Theory, Stochastic Processes and Operations Research.  The students will also do a project, which will introduce them to advanced topics and research methodologies.  Seminar and via-voce are also part of the programme.
The department has twenty five faculty members.  In addition to teaching and research, they are actively engaged in continuing education and consultancy.  Many of them coordinate important projects funded by national agencies/organizations like CSIR, DST, ISRO, DRDO, DAE and NBHM.  Their research areas include Real and Complex Analysis, Functional Analysis, Operator Theory, Harmonic Analysis and Wavelet Theory, Applied Algebra, Commutative Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, Algebraic Topology, Numerical Analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Optimization Theory, Differential equations, Inverse and Ill-Posed Problems, Mathematical Physics, Fluid Mechanics, Applied Probability and Stochastic Processes, Graph Theory,  Mathematical Logic and Theoretical Computer Science.
The department is well-equipped with two computer laboratories meant for research scholars and master’s students.  Each laboratory has about 30 systems, high end servers and workstations.  All the machines are connected under the Institute network system.  The department has a separate library to cater to the needs of our students and faculty.
The department conducts weekly seminars and invited lectures addressed by visiting mathematicians and faculties from IIT and other Institutes. The department arranges two annual events, namely, the National symposium on Mathematical Methods and Applications held on 22nd December commemorating the Indian Mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan and FORAYS – a mathfest conducted by students.  The faculty members organize National/International Conferences /Workshops periodically.

Department of Physics
The Department of Physics currently has 33 faculty members and 30 technical and supporting staff members.  It offers B.Tech (Engineering Physics),  M.Sc. (two-year programme) and Ph.D. degree in Physics and a M.Tech. (two-year programme) in Solid State Technology.
The core courses offered in the department include Classical Mechanics,  Mathematical Physics,  Statistical Physics,  Quantum Mechanics,  Electromagnetic Theory,  Condensed Matter Physics,  Electronics, Atomic and Molecular Physics.  Elective courses are offered in the areas such as Solid State Physics, Lasers, Modern Optics, Digital Electronics, Cryogenics, Physics of Nanomaterials and Theoretical Physics.  The students will also do a project, which will introduce them to advanced measuring techniques and research methodologies in physics.  A seminar and short courses on machine shop practice and technical drawing,  are additional requirements of the M.Sc. programme.
The research and development activities of the department encompass different areas of condensed matter physics, lasers, photonics and theoretical physics.  Some of these areas are:  Low Temperature Physics, Superconductivity,  Thin Films,  Microwave Materials,  Magnetic Materials and Magnetic Resonance,  Ultrafast Phenomena, Holography, Imaging and Photonic Materials,  Photonics and Laser Physics, Semiconductor,  Transport and Dielectric Properties of materials, Solid State Ionics, Physics and Preparation of Nanomaterials, Atomic and Molecular Physics,  Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos,  Classical and Quantum Field Theory,  Quantum Computing and Quantum Information Theory, String Theory, Laser Cooling and Trapping of Atoms, Saturation Absorption Spectroscopy etc.
The department is equipped with several major facilities in its laboratories.  These include  nitrogen liquefiers, thin-film coating units,  ESR and NMR spectrometer,  He-Ne lasers,  argon ion laser,  excimer laser, ruby laser, ND-Yag laser, X-ray diffractometer UV-Visible Raman Spectroscope, TGA and DSC impedance spectroscopy etc. and a modern applied optics laboratory.  In addition, the department has two workstations and several PCs to adequately meet the computational needs of students.  The mainframe computer system on campus can also be accessed by the faculty and students of the department.