Professor Ramesh Kumar Agrawal, Dean of the new School of Engineering, is excited. An alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, Agarwal believes JNU would actually emerge as one of the best engineering colleges in India.

Agarwal has his reasons. "JNU was always ready for this course. Unlike many engineering colleges that have only a handful of permanent faculty members, JNU has a huge pool of specialised teachers on its campus already,” he said. Among others, most of the engineering faculty is from Special Centre for Nanoscience and School of Computer and Systems Sciences.

Though the new school plans to offer five streams in engineering in due course of time, the first batch would choose between computer science and electronics and communication. A total of 50 students would be admitted this year for the five-year dual degree programme. Admissions would be done through Joint Seat Allocation Authority 2018 [JoSAA-2018] based on the ranking in the Joint Entrance Examination (Mains).

Agarwal informed that the course has been designed after a series of consultations with premier engineering colleges across India including several IITs, but has retained "the flavour of JNU".

"It's a combination of technology and social science," said Agarwal. Essentially, the degree awarded would be Bachelors in Technology plus Masters in Technology or Masters in Science, but the students will have the options to study various other subjects as electives such as Korean Studies, Environmental Science, Computational Finance, Computational Linguistics and even humanities courses. "This is something that probably no other university in India is offering," he said.

The new school is a brainchild of vice-chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, who was a professor of electrical engineering at IIT-Delhi before joining JNU in 2016. The idea was conceived last year, and it has taken more than a year to execute.