Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Monolith Research and Training Labs will soon be launching an advanced diploma program in Virtual Reality, which will be offered in both online and offline mode. The course will be open for anyone with an Engineering background, including students currently pursuing an Engineering degree anywhere in India. Interested candidates can apply from November 2021 and the first batch will commence from January 2022. The course will have an annual intake of 50 students.
An MoU towards this collaboration was signed recently between IIT Madras and Monolith Research and Training Labs, an associate company of Monolith Asia, a Japanese media communication technology company. The MoU was signed by Prof Devendra Jalihal, Chairman, Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) at IIT Madras and Yathirajan Varadharajan, Director of Monolith Research And Training Labs.
The course is being coordinated by IIT Madras' Centre of Excellence on Virtual Reality and Haptics, set up under the ‘Institute of Eminence’ initiative of the Government of India, which is India's first research and product innovation centre for XR and haptics technology, also known as Experiential Technology Innovation Center (XTIC.org). Graduates of this course will have potential job opportunities in sectors such as IT companies, animation industries, architecture and engineering industries to healthcare and media production. This advanced diploma programme shall be available for students/freshers with a bachelor’s degree or for working professionals who are aspiring to upskill in immersive technologies.
Highlighting the unique aspects of the programme, Prof M Manivannan, Department of Applied Mechanics at IIT Madras, said, “Virtual Reality is inherently a practical and an interdisciplinary course. Offering such an experiential and interdisciplinary course online is quite challenging. Both IIT Madras and Monolith have taken this as a challenge to offer this course for the first time in India.” The key objective is to serve the increased need for highly-skilled professionals in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality (XR) and Haptics technology.
“Experiential and immersive technology is rapidly developing and transforming key industries from architecture and engineering to healthcare and media production. Various studies and research papers on immersive technology suggest that it has the potential to boost the global economy by US $1.5 trillion by adding 23 million jobs globally, including new jobs that do not exist now or by enhancing the existing jobs by 2030. This economic growth is being threatened due to the lack of availability of skilled resources for employers across the globe,” Varadharajan said.
More common technologies adapt XR technologies to provide stunning visual experiences to users. Recently, product development, visualisation, learning,and development have seen a major push to advance and enable remote development and visual experience to the user.
