MHRD approved first of its kind 2-year postgraduate programme in India

INAM UL HAQ

Srinagar, Nov 23: To bolster innovation and science-driven technopreneurship in J&K, National Institute of Technology, Srinagar has launched a new postgraduate course in Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurial Dynamics (MSc TIED).

The two-year MSc programme, approved by the Ministry of Education (formerly MHRD) in 2019, is the first of its kind in India. The Board of Governors of NIT Srinagar has also given its endorsement to the programme.

The MSc TIED, which commenced its first batch from Monday, was inaugurated in a function recently held at NIT Srinagar.

“NIT Srinagar is the first NIT in the country to start such a two-year postgraduate course on innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Dr Saad Parvez, who is the course director of the programme.

Parvez, who also heads the Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship Development (IIED) Centre of the NIT Srinagar, said the IIED Center and Department of Humanities and Social Sciences jointly run the course.

He said 11 students from engineering, general sciences and management backgrounds joined the first batch of the programme.

The career prospects for the students joining the course are very bright, said Parvez. “They can be incubation managers in various innovation and incubation centres currently being established in various universities and colleges; work as policymakers and enablers in the field of innovations and entrepreneurship; become themselves technopreneurs and lead startups,” he said.

The course was designed and curated by Dr Saad Parvez and Dr Sheikh Fayaz, who has PhD in innovation studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and is presently working as an innovation researcher with Prof Xiaobo WU at Zhejiang University, China.

“We conceptualised the idea of a full-fledged MSc programme on innovations and technology dynamics at NIT Srinagar in 2016. By 2018, we had curated the course content, methodology, and sample cases. In 2019, MHRD, New Delhi approved the course. And finally, the first session of the course has commenced today,” said Fayaz.

He thanked students, researchers and professors from across the world for assisting and supporting in designing the course.