The Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, will institute a distinguished alumnus award to raise funds for infrastructure development during its global alumni convention in February.

The funds will also be used to create a corpus for endowment on chair professorship on the lines of the IITs.

So far, the institute has been able to tap small-scale grants from the alumni, institute director Parthasarathi Chakrabarti said. “We are a central academic institute but a fledgling one and lots of resources are needed. We want to reach out to our former students so that we can meet the crunch. We want to emulate IIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur so that we can scale up the scope of endowment and donation. We want generous funding from our former students.”

The Shibpur institution will hold its annual convocation on January 31. IIEST is trying to introduce the distinguished alumnus award at the global alumni convention on February 1, an official said.

At IIT Delhi, the endowment fund, launched by the President on November 1, has been started with a donation of Rs 255 crore. The IIT has set a target of $1 billion by 2025.

Vinod Gupta, an India-born US businessman, investor, and philanthropist, has been donating over millions to IIT Kharagpur since 1993 to establish the Vinod Gupta School of Management, law school and endowment for the AS Davis Chair Professorship.

Metro recently reported about US-based alumnus Mukund Padmanabhan donating Rs 52 lakh to IIT Kharagpur’s Academy of Classical and Folk Arts, an offbeat field in an institute recognised for its technological and scientific pursuit.

The class of 1992 at the Shibpur institute had in 2017 gifted its alma mater a bronze sculpture to commemorate the 25th year of the batch’s graduation. Last month, an alumnus had contributed Rs 5 lakh to redesign the institute’s website, which will have a portal for the alumni to enrol and students to register for semester exams.

“In August, we had set up an alumni cell to raise funds. We are looking forward to the convention to tap big-time contributors,” an institute official said.

Such has been the resource crunch that IIEST authorities last month had sought “generous funding” from the Centre to renovate several buildings on the 160-year-old campus.