Institute of Science and Technology(IoST)

A Brief Profile of Institute of Science and Technology, Tribhuvan University

Introduction:

 

Fig.2:Program and Campuses/Colleges/Schools

Fig.1: Location and image of IoST, Kirtipur (Google Map & Google Earth)
The Institute of Science and Technology (IoST) is one of the oldest, largest and pioneering Institutes in Tribhuvan University located at Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal (see Fig. 1 for location map). It was established in January 2, 1989, as an Institute of Science and Technology. IoST have thirteen Central Departments, one School, 24 constituent campuses and 90 affiliated campuses. Thirteen Central Departments run graduate (masters) and post graduate (Ph.D.) in 19 and 13 disciplines, respectively. Out of 24 constituent campuses, 9 campuses run both the undergraduate (bachelor) and graduate (masters) programs. A highlights (collaborations, research grants, publications, program, students and faculties) of IoST, TU in number is given in Fig. 2.

 

Fig. 2: IoST in number – a pictorial profile showing info and achievements

Fig.3 : Number of students, faculties & staffs
In this year (2023-24), 33,419 students at the undergraduate (85%) and 5270 students graduate (15%) levels, are studying. There are 410 candidates doing Ph.D. in science and technology disciplines. Till date 281 Ph.D. has been awarded in 12 disciplines. In the year 2023, 43 Ph.D. has been awarded. The number of full time faculties involved in IoST’s science & technology program is 955. They are involved in teaching as well as research work in their disciplines. The number of female students is only 27% in Science & Technology. Faculty-student ratio is also very high (32.1). We are planning to reduce it by making below 20 in coming 5 years. The number of staff is about 33% of teaching faculties.

 

Vision and Objectives

 

 

Fig. 3: Distribution of constituent campuses of TU where S&T program is running
IoST intends to promote the quality of its Departments and Campuses by setting up well equipped laboratories, libraries/e-libraries, and infrastructures along with by employing skilled human resources and by providing advisory services in close collaboration with national and international agencies.Its effort are to improve teaching learning activities, enhancing research strength of the faculties and students within the institute and make all the Departments as a centre of excellence. Ultimately, it aims at creating a scientific values and culture in society and improving the quality of life of the people.

 

 

Mission& Goals

The mission of the Institute of Science and Technology is to provide quality S&T education and research in the frontier of S&T focusing sustainable development of the nation. Our main goals are as follows:

 

  • Enhance academic excellence in research
  • Perform as think-tank in the field of S&T
  • Establish collaboration with international HEIs
  • Perform as a research leader of the University

 

 

Program Offered

 

 

Table 1 : Academic program offered by IoST, TU

IoST offers 41 academic programs at the undergraduate, graduate and post graduate levels, shown in the Table 1. At the undergraduate level, there are 8 programs: B.Sc. (5 programs), BIT, B. Tech and B.Math.Sc. There are 19 program (second column) at the graduate level. The pass-rate at the undergraduate level is about 50% whereas it is 80% at the graduate level. The enrolment rate is about 85-100%. The number of students at the constituent campuses is 68%. Only 32% students study at the affiliated colleges. Annual intake shows that about 16,000 students appear in the entrance examinations for B.Sc. General, B.Sc. (CSIT), BIT, B.Tech. (Food) and B.Math. Sc. (Actuarial Sci.) every year. At the graduate level (M.Sc., MIT, MDS, etc), about 2500 students appear in the entrance examination.

 

 

Ph.D. Program &Festival

 

IoST’s major strength is Ph.D. program, begun from 1969. The first Ph.D. awardee of IoST is Prof. Shiv Shankar Singh (Zoology). Dr. Singh was the second Ph.D. awarded of Tribhuvan University as a whole. Till date, more than 280 Ph.D. degree has been awarded. In order to celebrate it, IoST has decided to organize Ph.D. festival once in two years. The first Ph.D. festival was organized during 9-10 October 2023, in which more than 280 Ph.D. posters were displayed. A total visit of more than 5000 graduates were recorded. The next Ph.D. festival will be organized during Oct 2025.

 

Admission Policy: Entrance Examination

 

At all levels, IoST offers Central Entrance Examination (CEE) run by the Dean Office annually as follows:

  • Fig.6 :MIT & M.Sc. (MMS) program launched in the year 2023. 2023
    B. Sc. (CSIT)
  • B. Sc. (General)
  • BIT
  • B. Tech. (Food)
  • M.Sc. (19 Programs) / MIT
  • Ph.D.

 

Fig. 4: Ph.D. Festival 2023

These examinations are 2 hours long having MCQ questions. The application can be done through online. Except Ph.D., all entrance exams are decentralized. Applicants are admitted as per his/her rank in the merit list.result as per merit list.

 

 

 


Organizational Chart

Evaluation System

 

    • B.Sc. (Annual System): Yearly Examination from the office of the controller of Examination (Theory + Practical), almost 50% practical in each year.
    • Bachelor Level (Semester System): 40% internal evaluation + 60% external exam by the Dean’s Office / GPA grading system
    • Master Level (Semester System): 40% internal evaluation + 60% external exam by the Dean’s Office / GPA grading system
    • M. Phil (Semester System): 40% internal evaluation + 60% external exam by the  Dean’s Office / GPA grading system

    • Fig. 5 : Organization chart of IoST, TU
      PhD Level (Semester System):Evaluation by the faculty / results in grade sheet, biannual evaluation of research progress and pre viva bythe CDRC, submission of thesis, evaluation of thesis by three external examiners, Viva voce exam by Dean Office.

Note:Internal exams for all levels are based on: Attendance /Assignment work / Oral test / Class test / Presentation / Class seminar / Project work/ Term exam etc.

Research at IoST

 

S&T Central Departments located at Kirtipur are actually a model of Centre-of-excellence in the Tribhuvan University (see Figure 8). There are several research laboratories, high speed computing resources, supercomputer, and dedicated research faculties. IoST faculties gabbed about 60% grant (8 crore) from UGC as collaborative innovation grant for various research proposals and 58% policy research grant (about 7 crore) from Research Division, TU. In addition, IoST made 210 mutual collaborations with foreign institutions for the research and Ph.D. work in several ways.In the year 2021-23, ten faculties received an amount of Rs. 9,70,000 each. UGC provided research grants to faculty appointed through research excellence based open competition under the Higher Education Reforms Project (HERP DLI-7B).The objectives of the project are systemic/institutional reforms; improving quality, relevance and efficiency of higher education; supporting underprivileged students for equitable access; and promoting research, innovation and academic excellence.

FCE Program

 

IoST’s proposal to organize Faculty Capacity Enhancement program has been accepted by the NEHEP, UGC. Under this program, about 200 S&T faculties of our constituent and community colleges will take part. The major objective of this program is to develop professionalism of our faculties by providing opportunity to learn Learning Management System (LMS), Artificial Intelligence (AI) in learning and Machine Learning (ML) in research. In addition, a project work will be done by the participants on curriculum in the line of world of work. The first cohort has already been completed at Bhedetar, Dhankuta.

 

Fig. 6 :Faculty Capacity Enhancement (FCE) 2024 program

 

Achievements

IoST has given high priority to collaborative exchange programs for strengthening capacity of the faculty, researcher, student and staff. For this purpose, IoST and the Central Departments have established linkage and coordination with different ministries, national and international organizations and academic institutions. IoST itself has more than 41 MoUs with different institutions and universities. Till date,IoST has produced more than 280 PhDs in different areas of science and technology. Also, it has provided facilities to many faculties for doing PhD and Post Docs going abroad. IoST has begun to develop digital resources of our strength and success story. Faculty Capacity Enhancement (FCE) program is going to be launched from this year. Under this scheme, about 185 IoST full-time faculties of 13 Central Departments and 24 constituent campuses will involve in taking 11 Credit Hour course for their professional development. These courses include research in the content, pedagogy with ICT skill and research capacity development. IoST made plagiarism checking compulsory to both masters’ and bachelors’ research documents from this year.

 

Publication

 

 

Fig. 7:Bird’s Eye View of 12 Central Departments of S&T at University Campus, Kirtipur.

Faculties and students of IoST have published more than 1000 research articles in the Journals during 2022-2023. Out of these about 40% articles are published in the SCImago listed journals (Table 2). Institute of Science and

 

Table 2 :Disciplinary Distribution of published articles by IoST family during 2022-2023.

 

Technology publishes a peer reviewed multidisciplinary science journal “Journal of Institute of Science and Technology (JIST)” biannually. This journal is indexed in Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL), which provides online publication. JIST obtained two stars. Till date, it has published 28 volumes. IoST Journal articles are cited by more than 2100 authors in their articles. In the year 2020-21 (Covid-19), JIST articles are cited by more than 500 authors. Since then, its citation has been increased significantly in the year 2021 and 2022. The current issue is Vol. 28, No. 2 (2023). Current issue can be found herehttps://www.nepjol.info/index.php/jist/index. IoST central departments also publishes Journals. Five Journals of various Central Departments are awarded double star by NepJOL.

 

 

 

Table 3 :Research projects and grants running at various campuses and central departments of IoST, TU. Most of the projects are collaborative in nature.

 

Research Grants

 

 

At present, there are 54 research grants running at the central departments and campuses of TU (Table 3). These grants are of more than 3 million NRs. As listed, total amounts of grants is more than NRs. 26 crore. There are 18 International Projects running. Dean office form ‘project management committee’ for each projects. Dean office also call proposal for mini research grants. Last year, 15 faculties received this grant. In our Central Departments, there are 31 research based focused labs. In these labs, faculties, M.Sc. and Ph.D. students work. Students and faculties also receive grants from other sources (UGC, Research Division, TU, Provincial and local governments, etc.). There are 56 full professors and 49 associate professors working at the Central Departments (Table 4).  In addition, a very active group of 75 assistant professors are in the Central Departments. These human resources are actually a backbone of Tribhuvan University.

 

 

Table 4 :Number of faculties at 12 Central Departments. About 98% Professors and Associate Professors are Ph.D. holders.

New Programs& Future Projections:

 

Academic Council of Tribhuvan University has already approved some new degree/program/course to run under Institute of Science and Technology. The status of such programs isshown in Table 5.

The future prospectus and projections of IoST are as follows:

  • Deploying semester system to B.Sc.

(appliedscience) program

  • Establishing a Central Reference Lab.
  • Expansion of IT related program and

make it ‘learning by earning’.

  • Table 5 : List of new program to be launched in the future.
    Establishing Incubation Center
  • Controlling and regulating quality of academic program
  • Reviseexisting curriculum in line of the labor market as per UN’s SDG goal.

 

Academic Calendar

Since last 5 years, IoST has been publishing academic calendar every semester. Last year, a unified calendar for all undergraduate and graduate program has been published (Table 6) and strictly maintained. This academic calendar is well aligned with the reference calendar suggested by UGC, Nepal to all Universities. The average duration of result publication rate of IoST are as follows: 41 days for M.Sc. (semester) program and 83 days for B.Sc. CSIT & BIT programs.IoST is commited to maintain the academic calendar. It is therefore, the enrollment at the masters’ and bachelors levels are increased by 13% and 17% in this year (2023).

Table6: Academic Calendar of IoST, TU for the year BS 2080-2084 (AD 2024-2027)

 

 

Prof. BinilAryal, Ph.D.

Dean

Institute of Science and Technology, TU, Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal

Phone : 4330844, 4331755, 4330120 (Exam)

Email:info@iost.tu.edu.np/ gunaso@iost.tu.edu.np / exam@iost.tu.edu.np / Website: www.iost.tu.edu.n