Bhubaneswar, April 22: Ratnam Varada Rajakumar took over as the new IIT Bhubaneswar (IIT-BBSR) director today.

Rajakumar said he would develop strategies to improve the standards of education and ensure that the best of contributions to the society come from the institute. Earlier, he worked as a professor of electronics and electrical communication engineering at IIT Kharagpur.

"We will make IIT-BBSR a world-class institute and try to introduce some courses relating to mining engineering since Odisha is a mineral-rich state. I will also be working on producing more PhD students and good guides," he said.

"My priority is early shifting to the new campus... we will make some changes in the design if required," he said.

A native of Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, he received his engineering degree in electronics and communication from Andhra University before doing his MTech in microwave and radar engineering and PhD in digital signal processing from IIT Kharagpur.

Earlier this month, chief secretary Gokul Chandra Pati had directed the authorities that IIT-BBSR must shift to its new campus by July 2015.

An interim water supply arrangement has been done to facilitate the shifting. The mega water supply project to the IIT, National Institute of Science Education and Research (Niser) and other leading institutions in the area is scheduled to be over by 2018-19.

Pati had also directed the IIT authorities to build rooftop rainwater harvesting structures on the campus to reduce dependence on ground water.