Interaction with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering

There is a close relationship between SIT and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The emphasis in SIT is interdisciplinary with concentration on application. The context of courses in SIT is applications, processes and technologies. The CSE courses generally concentrate on CS fundamentals and systems. The SIT courses emphasize on:

• State-of-art technology and their assimilation in design of application
• Application development processes,
• Project management processes (where the context is group work rather than individual work ), and
• Quality control processes and role of standards.

The School focusses on selected applications areas such as Business Information Systems, Graphics and Multimedia, Embedded Systems, etc.

These goals for the School lead to important differences with those of Computer Science and Engineering. These differences include the technology emphasis, the application focus, nature of technical problems addressed, type of systems to be designed and built, and focus on processes for development, project management, and quality control. Thus, CSE and SIT have distinct areas of study, although both depend on a common subset of technological knowledge. The committee believes that CSE department and SIT complement each other by mutual co-operation.

Interactions with Other Departments

In addition, based on focus areas, the School draws upon the expertise that is available in other departments. Many departments in IIT Bombay carry out R & D in various aspects of IT, including areas like CFD, CAD/CAM, Process Modeling and Simulation, MIS, ERP, and embedded systems. A close interaction with these departments is very important for the School so that it maintains its application focus, and carries out joint educational and research activities with other departments.

The committee however believes that the School must have its own faculty to teach its academic programmes. The faculty members in other departments have their own commitments, and interdisciplinary programmes offered by other departments and centers have faced difficulties.

The committee specifically recommends strong interactions at the project level. The faculty of the School should establish close interaction across departments in carrying out research in selected areas. The faculty from other departments should be invited for seminars, or they can be associated with initial course offerings so that their experience and expertise can be assimilated by the faculty of the School.