DRDO’s Centre of Excellence inaugurated at IIT Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Industry Academia Centre of Excellence (DIA-CoE), the biggest yet in the country, was inaugurated at the Indian Institutes of Technology Hyderabad (IIT-H) on Sunday.

“DIA CoE IITH is the largest centre among all 15 DIA-CoEs in the country. DRDO team will work with IIT-H to identify the target projects in each of these domains and execute to complete in a period of 3-5 years,” said the chairman of DRDO Dr Samir V Kamat at the inauguration.

The centre will take up futuristic projects towards long-term directed research needed for DRDO.

The research cell, which marked the beginning of the collaboration between DRDO and IITH in 2020 has now been transformed into a Centre of Excellence.

The are seven verticals of technology projects that will be undertaken at DIA-CoE at IITH:

• Ultra-High Temperature materials
• Additive manufacturing,
• Space Technologies,
• AI for defence,
• Image processing,
• Seekers and Homing Technologies,
• Nano-ornithopter Technologies

IITH director, Professor B S Murty said, “This centre is a major step towards Atmabibhar Bharat in the Defence sector. I am looking forward to the faculty of IITH working together with industry on DRDO problems to make India a global leader in each of the verticals assigned to the CoE.”

Further, he said that IITH has a young faculty base with an average age of 38 years, and hence the DRDO projects are a good challenge for them.