The Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur exchanged a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on 22 September 2026 to set up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Artificial Intelligence (AI) on its Howrah campus. The High-Performance Computing Lab of the Electrical Engineering Department will serve as the physical home of the centre. The pact links classroom learning directly with industry needs and supports national missions like Digital India and Viksit Bharat 2047.
What Is IIEST Shibpur?
IIEST Shibpur stands for the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur. It is a public technological university located at Shibpur in Howrah, West Bengal, on a 123 acre campus near the Botanic Garden. IIEST Shibpur is a government institute. It is an Institute of National Importance under the Ministry of Education and is governed under the same legal framework as the National Institutes of Technology.
The institute traces its roots to the Civil Engineering College started on 24 November 1856 at the Writers Building in Calcutta. The college shifted to its present Shibpur campus in 1880 and was called the Government College, Howrah. It became the Bengal Engineering College in 1921, a name that stayed popular for decades. In March 2014, Parliament took over the former Bengal Engineering and Science University and renamed it IIEST Shibpur, making it the first IIEST in India.
IIEST Shibpur now has 16 departments and 8 schools with more than 4,200 students and 261 faculty members in 2025. Admission to its BTech programmes takes place through the Joint Entrance Examination Main (JEE Main) followed by JoSAA and CSAB counselling. The Director of IIEST Shibpur is Prof. V. M. S. R. Murthy (as of September 2026). In the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2024, IIEST Shibpur stood at 49th place in engineering and 4th place in Architecture and Planning.
What Is TCS?
TCS stands for Tata Consultancy Services. It is an Indian multinational company that provides information technology services, consulting and business solutions to large organisations around the world. TCS is a part of the Tata Group, was founded in 1968, and is headquartered in Mumbai. It is listed on the BSE and NSE in India.
TCS works with clients in more than 55 countries through nearly 200 delivery centres and employs over 600,000 consultants worldwide. The company uses a consulting led and software driven model to help clients modernise operations, use data better and adopt cloud and AI tools. Under Chief Executive Officer K. Krithivasan (as of September 2026), TCS has set a goal to become the largest AI led technology services company in the world. Its AI services already cover data analytics, machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision and generative AI products such as TCS AI WisdomNext.
What Is the New AI Centre of Excellence?
The new AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) is a dedicated hub inside IIEST Shibpur where teachers, students and TCS experts will work together on AI training, research and real industry projects. A Centre of Excellence is a shared facility that sets high standards, spreads best practices, supports research and trains people in one focused field. In this case, the field is Artificial Intelligence, which covers systems that learn from data to recognise speech, images and patterns and to help in decision making.
| Detail | Fact |
|---|---|
| Partners | IIEST Shibpur and TCS |
| Agreement | Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for AI CoE |
| MoU exchanged and CoE inaugurated | 22 September 2026 |
| Public announcement | 24 September 2026 by PIB Kolkata |
| Location | High-Performance Computing Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIEST Shibpur |
| TCS role | Knowledge Partner |
The MoU signing took place in the presence of IIEST Director Prof. V. M. S. R. Murthy, Dean of Research and Consultancy Prof. Pratik Datta, Dean of Academics Prof. Arindam Biswas, and Industry Institute Partnership Cell Chairperson Prof. Konika Das Bhattacharya, along with TCS leaders Souvik Das, Anand Singh, Anupam Chakraborty and Tapas Laha. Heads of departments and associate deans also attended. The centre will gather talent from IIEST and other institutes to solve industrial and social problems with AI.
Four Pillars of the IIEST TCS AI Centre
The CoE will work through four connected areas. The first is skill development. Students from different branches will receive industry recognised training, professional certificates, hands on projects and internships. The centre will act as an offsite hub where students can complete TCS internships under the joint guidance of faculty members and industry mentors. This helps students learn tools that companies actually use.
The second area is collaborative research. Teams will focus on applied topics such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), which helps computers understand human language, Computer Vision and Image Processing, which help computers read photos and videos, and Advanced Data Analytics, which finds useful patterns in large data sets. The aim is to move from theory in the classroom to working models that can be tested and used.
The third area is consulting and industrial solutions. The CoE will design custom AI solutions for the daily problems of regional businesses and enterprises. A small factory facing quality defects or a logistics firm facing delays could get practical AI support from the centre. The fourth area is entrepreneurship and ecosystem support. The CoE will host workshops, seminars, hackathons and guest lectures for learners across eastern India and will mentor AI startups and student led ventures.
How Will TCS Support IIEST as Knowledge Partner?
TCS will act as the dedicated Knowledge Partner for the centre. It will help IIEST set clear quality benchmarks and update the academic syllabus to match current industry standards. That means what students study in class will stay close to what companies expect at work.
TCS will also help design technical challenges, hackathons, workshops and skill programmes. It will share industrial tools, working methods and field tested frameworks that students rarely see in textbooks. Senior professionals will mentor young founders directly. This guidance will support emerging AI startups and student teams that want to turn a final year project into a product or a company.
Why This Pact Matters for India’s AI Ecosystem
IIEST Shibpur has stated that the CoE is aligned with Digital India and Viksit Bharat 2047. Digital India is the national programme to expand digital access, digital services and digital skills. Viksit Bharat 2047 is the national goal to make India a developed country by 2047. The new centre tries to close a familiar gap. Colleges often teach AI theory well but students get few chances to work on live industry data, large computing systems and deployment problems. A campus CoE with a global technology partner gives them that bridge.
The pact also fits the larger national push on AI. The Union Government approved the IndiaAI Mission on 7 March 2024 with an outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore for five years. The mission expands access to computing power, data sets, research funding, startup support and safe AI use. Its platform AIKosh hosts thousands of data sets and models, and more than 38,000 graphics processing units have been onboarded for shared compute. The government has also approved 58 AI Centres of Excellence across states and union territories and has set up four dedicated AI CoEs with a total allocation of ₹1,490 crore for health, agriculture, sustainable cities and education. For eastern India, the IIEST TCS centre adds a strong industry linked node that can train skilled graduates, keep research talent in the region and help local firms adopt AI faster.
Key Takeaways
- IIEST Shibpur and TCS exchanged an MoU on 22 September 2026 to set up an AI Centre of Excellence at IIEST Shibpur.
- The CoE is housed in the High-Performance Computing Lab of the Electrical Engineering Department at IIEST Shibpur in Howrah, West Bengal.
- The CoE works on four pillars of skill development, collaborative research, consulting solutions and entrepreneurship support.
- IIEST Shibpur, founded in 1856, became an Institute of National Importance in 2014 under the Ministry of Education.
- TCS, founded in 1968 and part of the Tata Group, acts as the Knowledge Partner for curricula, tools and startup mentorship.
- The pact supports Digital India, Viksit Bharat 2047 and the IndiaAI Mission approved on 7 March 2024 with an outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore.
