Let us build a World Class Research Institution

 We all dream of building and living in developed India. Where there will be no poverty and hunger. Where our cities will be clean and beautiful. A country where we will not have to depend on imported technology. Such a country can not happen by magic or accident. We all have to work hard and think scientifically for it. And we believe to build such a country, science and technology is key. And to become good in science and engineering we need to have institutions that excel in science and engineering.

That is the effort we are undertaking – to build a place where best minds from all over the world come together and solve some of the toughest problems faced by humanity and not just of our country. At a time when humanity is confronted with complex issues like rapidly changing climate, pollution, energy crisis, increasing automation threatening jobs and very fabric of human society, we believe we have to put a concerted effort to address these challenges. We can not solve these problems just with one project or just by efforts of one individual. We need new types of institutions specially designed to address these challenges.

And this is the type of institution we want to build. An institution, where scientists and researchers are not burdened by unnecessary rules and regulations. We want to build an institution from where people will boldly go to places where no human has gone before. We want to build an institution where the best qualities of humanity come together – creativity, quest for truth, love, free thinking, and engineering to solve problems that we are facing as a species. We want to build an institution that will take our civilization to the next level.

We call it School of Mechanics.

Organization structure of Proposed School of Mechanics: 

School of Mechanics will be a private institution established as not-for-profit organization. We will be based out of Bangalore. Apart from research and academics, we will also undertake special research and engineering projects to address challenges faced by humanity.

Our Team:

Our founding team includes Mahesha Hiremath, Prof Jayant Murthy, Prof Sreepathi, Prof CR Pradeep, and Dr. Amit Vutha. Mahesha Hiremath takes care of organization building effort of School of Mechanics. Prof Jayant Murthy is an established astronomer and works at a reputed research institution. Prof LK Sreepathi is a mechanical engineer and is an expert in renewable energy resources. Prof CR Pradeep is a mathematician and he is experimenting with low-energy life style in his farm while teaching at an engineering college. Dr Amit Vutha is a researcher in mathematical biology.

Activities we want to start with:

Our first task is to officially register the institution. Once we register, we’ll have to set-up basic infrastructure needed for the institution. Once this is ready, these are the activities we’re planning:

1. SMIRIP – School of Mechanics Industry Researchers Interaction Platform: This is a platform we already have built to connect researchers/students and businesses. Businesses face technology challenges but may not be ready to invest time in research. Researchers and students are looking for a real world challenge. In our platform, we connect these two communities which helps both. We want to bring in more companies and grow our community with many more students and researchers. And we also want to improve the platform with better technology and infrastructure. With this platform itself we believe we can solve many of the problems we are facing by turning them into public challenges and providing platform for brilliant students and researchers to solve these problems.

2. Research mentoring and workshops: Many of our bright students in colleges and universities are not exposed to importance and methods of high quality professional research, which results in lack of innovation. Our aim is to take research techniques to undergraduate students so that they get interested in research and use the techniques in both academic and professional life.

3. Urban Transportation: Another area of our focus will be urban transportation. The vehicle technology we see today is mostly from 19th and 20th century. They are not designed for population and challenges of 21st century. For this century, we need a whole new set of transportation technologies. Our efforts will be to build transportation systems of 21st century.

4. Vehicle Safety: Despite advancement in so many technologies, we still have hundreds of thousands of people dying and injuring every year all over the world. Our efforts will be to reduce the risks and build technologies that save lives. One of our focus areas will be developing tools for simulating vehicle crash test. Crash testing is very costly, and doesn’t allow us to conduct lot of experiments. With simulation technology, we can experiment with new ideas at low cost. We would like to build models and simulations that help us make vehicles safer.

Organization structure we want to build in the long term: 

Academics Division:

The Academics Division will be responsible for all the activities related to academics-admission, designing and validating courses, conducting classes, evaluation,student welfare, and other activities related to academics. In the initial stages The School will offer only mentoring programs and certificate programs. We’ll offer degrees at a later stage.

Research Division:

A separate division called Research Division will be responsible for conceiving and executing research projects. Research Division will pursue both science and engineering research projects.

Special Research Division:

Many a times, ideas are not supported if it is not ‘mainstream’ idea, thus suppressing original ideas. To ensure that fresh ideas are supported, we’ll create a special research division, where radically new ideas are supported. This division will also investigate ideas from common people, who may not be scientists or engineers thus opening gates of scientific research to common people.

Explorers Group:

A special group called “Explorers” will be formed whose only task will be to reach to places where no human has gone before. Explorers group will bring individual explorers outside the institution together to learn, provide support, and do research on human survival in extreme places and situations.

Extreme Machines Group:

This group has one goal: To build machines that are fastest, biggest, strongest, and most powerful. Extreme Projects Group builds machines that are most advanced in terms of primary abilities such as power, speed, size, and precision etc. The purpose is to push engineering capability of our species.•

Public Science Education Division:

A society cannot advance if we only have islands of excellence and scientific thinking. We need to take scientific thinking and knowledge to public. Public Science Education division works on educating public in matters of science and critical thinking. This group will also work on creating science related movies, documentaries etc, which will educate people and can also be a source revenue for the institution.

Administration and Support:

The administration and support division will be there as a facilitator and not as a bureaucracy that curtails the freedom.

We have shared our dream with you. Because it is not just our dream. You are part of it. Let’s join hands and build a world class institution that we all be proud of.   

Please note that we are accepting donation only from Indians in Indian Rupees. 

Our Expenditure Estimation for first year

Item Estimation in Rupees

1 Registration and Other Legal expenses 70,000

2 Advance for Office Space 2,00,000

3 Monthly Rent for 1 year – 20,000x12 2,40,000

4 Electricity bill for 1 year -- 6,000x12 72,000

5 Internet bill for 1 year -- 8,000x12 96,000

6 SMIRP Platform – Development 2,00,000

7 Server and Infrastructure – 12x8,000 96,000

8 Furniture – tables, chairs, and others 40,000

7 Admnistrator Salary - 12x25,000 3,00,000

8 Marketing Person Salary – 12x20,000 2,40,000

9 Interns stipend – 12x30,000 ( divided among all interns) 3,60,000

10 Projector 5,000

11 Computers 2,50,000

12 Events and Workshops 12x5,000 (5000 per month) 60,000

13 Incidental and Emergency Funds 3,00,000

14 Basic hardware for prototyping and experimentation 3,00,000

 Total Estimation 28,29,000

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