Alumni gift foreign internships to IIT KGP students

Kharagpur (West Bengal), March 29 (IANS) The US-based IIT KGP Alumni Foundation has announced internship scholarships for 14 students who received internship offers for 2018 at top global universities, it announced in a statement on Thursday.

The students from various disciplines and at different levels of study at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur have been awarded the scholarships to pursue research or internships at renowned academic institutions abroad.

The grants were made available as part of the IIT KGP Foundation's "Award Program for International Internships", which was launched earlier this month.

Under the scheme, IITKGPF, a non-profit organisation headquartered at Nebraska, offers up to $3,000 as monetary support to exceedingly meritorious students who wish to pursue high quality international research and professional internships.

The scholarship is disbursed through direct payments for eligible expenses like airfare and stay. Partially funded students are also eligible for the scholarship.

Students of IIT Kharagpur have welcomed the initiative. 

Kaustav Brahma, B.Tech student at the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering, who has received the scholarship for his internship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) this year, says: "Internships are expensive and stipends given by foreign laboratories or universities are often not enough to cover living and travel costs. 

"Many are unable to pursue internships not because their projects are not good, but because there are so few grants available and the competition for them is intense."

All the applications for the programme were received and screened by the IIT KGP Office of International Relations. A committee constituted of five IIT KGP deans together with the President of the Foundation, makes the final awards.

The selection process takes into account the reputation of the host institution, the quality of the proposed research or professional internship and the academic standing of the candidate.

Among the institutions where the IIT KGP students have received invitation to pursue their internships this year are the University of Cambridge, UK; University of Columbia; MIT; Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany; Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg, Germany; Carnegie-Mellon; University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology.