Hyderabad: Starting this academic year, engineering students, particularly those from conventional branches of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University-Hyderabad (JNTU-H) will be allowed to do Honours and Minor programmes in emerging technologies like Data Science and Artificial Intelligence among other areas.

In tune with industry requirements and to increase the employability quotient of students, the varsity is offering BTech Honours and Minor degree programmes in emerging technologies/multidisciplinary areas from this year. The duration of all such programmes is four years.

As part of the new initiative, engineering students can take up 18-20 additional credits within the same branch or from other departments and get a degree with honours or a minor programme. Students going in for additional credits within the same branch will be awarded BTech honours degree. By taking up additional papers or credits, students can gain in-depth knowledge in the opted areas. Students in regular stream are allowed to opt for BTech honours, provided they have a CGPA of 8 up to the end of fourth semester without any arrears.

“On successful completion of additional credits or papers within the same domain, students will be awarded BTech Honours degree instead of the regular BTech degree,” said Prof. Manzoor Hussain, registrar, JNTU-H.

On the other hand, students who wish to pursue a Minor programme from other departments will be given BTech degree of the domain concerned along with the Minor programme. For instance, a student from the Mechanical Engineering department can opt for Artificial Intelligence as a Minor programme from the Computer Science and Engineering department. Upon completion of the programme, the student will be awarded BTech degree of Mechanical Engineering (Major) with a Minor in Artificial Intelligence. Such a degree will come in handy if a student wishes to pursue a career in Artificial Intelligence later.

Students in their BTech second year first semester can register for the honours/minor programme in parallel with the regular curriculum from this academic year. Also, students will be given a choice of withdrawing from all courses registered and or credits earned for honours or minor courses or degree. In that case, students will be awarded only B.Tech degree in the specialisation concerned on earning the required credits of 160 in a specified duration.

For registering into honours/minor programmes, students should not have any backlogs by the end of second year. The departments with NBA accreditation and MTech programmes in the subject concerned can only offer such programmes.