Punjab Engineering College (PEC) has its roots in Lahore as Mugalpura Engineering College since 1921. It moved to its present campus in Chandigarh in the year 1953 as an engineering college affiliated to Panjab University. The institute received the status of Deemed-to-be-university in 2003 through an MHRD notification and was rechristened as PEC University of Technology in 2009. In 2017, it reverted back to its previous name, Punjab Engineering College.

It is a grant-in-aid institution under administration of the Union Territory of Chandigarh. The institute has a 146 acres sprawling campus, with similar academic and administrative processes as the Indian Institutes of Technology. The institute is governed by a Board of Governors, chaired by a renowned industrialist (presently Sh. Rajinder Gupta). The institute’s present Director is Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi, on deputation from IIT Kanpur.

The institute offers 8 Undergraduate B.E. Programmes and 13 Post graduate M.E. Programmes in various disciplines of engineering and technology. After getting the status of a university, the institute has also started PhD programmes in various disciplines of engineering, science, management, humanities and social sciences. The admission to UG and PG programmes are made through national level examinations, namely JEE (Mains) and GATE, respectively. Besides the nine academic departments, there are two Centers of Excellence (CoE), namely Centre of Excellence in Industrial and Product Design and Cyber Security Research Centre.

Governance, Faculty & Research:

The Institute follows a governance model similar to that followed by IITs and NITs. It is a Board run Institute, with the Chairman being a distinguished person from the industry. The Director has always been appointed on deputation from one of the IITs to bring in the best practices. The board meetings are held regularly where strategies for excellence besides the routine administrative matters are on the agenda.

The faculty of academic departments and CoE is involved in cutting edge research in collaboration with multiple research organisations, industries, and academic institutions both in India and abroad.. PEC provides various facilities like Medical Facility, Computer Center, residential hostels, library, residential facilities for faculty staff, Research Project Awards for faculty and Young Fellowship Awards for the Students.The institute has also put an all year round rolling advertisement in place for recruiting extraordinary talent as faculty from its own funds.

The faculty is engaged in several externally funded research projects from the DST, DRDO, DEITY, ADA, ARB, MHRD other line ministries. Centre of Excellence in Industrial and Product Design was set up in 2013 by NPIU, under TEQIP Phase – II with an initial funding of Rs 5 cr. with the mission to encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary research leading to products & solutions that address the needs of industry and healthcare providers. The Cyber Security Research Centre has been established at PEC in collaboration with Chandigarh Administration and NASSCOM, with an initial funding of Rs 3 cr., with the primary focus of conducting applied Research & Development on cyber threats and countermeasures, secure multi-level information sharing, resilient command and control network architectures, social media and data analytics. It is also the coordinating agency under the Cyber Security (CS) Research of Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems, to the tune of INR 9.0 cr., ICPS, DST, GoI and coordinating 20 Institutions including several IITs/NITs/CDAC/IISc.

The Indian Railways has established a Chair (with an endowment of INR 10 Crores) in the thematic area of geospatial technology. The institute is also acting as a spoke with a funding of INR 1.5 Crores to the Design Innovation Centre established by MHRD at Panjab University. PEC is participating in TEQIP (Phase III), where PEC has been allocated a fund of 7.5 crore, and has been designated as the mentoring institute for Jawaharlal Nehru Government Engineering College (JNGEC), Sundernagar, Himachal Pradesh through twinning arrangement. The institute is executing several projects of societal importance for Chandigarh Administration, partnering with the Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC) (with PEC Director as the Vice President), and spearheading the promotion of higher education and research in the region.

The institute curriculum is industry oriented and follows a choice based credit system. The curriculum encourages tie-ups and interactions with the latest industry practices by setting aside a week every semester for interactions with speakers invited from industry and R&D laboratories. Undergraduate students are encouraged to do an exchange semester in other institutes of the country (with transfer of credits) in addition to a mandatory internship semester to be spent in industry or research labs. On the other hand, PG students are allowed to take up industry projects for up to two semesters.

Infrastructure :

The institute has a newly upgraded, air-conditioned library with adequate books, e-journals and access to several electronic libraries like ACM and IEEE. The library is automated in terms of RFID tags which allow students to borrow and return books on their own, with self help kiosks facilities while keeping the security of the library assets.

The entire campus is WiFi enabled with unlimited access provided to the students and staff. There is a 1Gbps Internet link from NKN which is deemed to be adequate for the present needs. Besides a super computing facility (upto 1 Petaflops), a cluster of 100 computers has been installed in the Computer Centre for students.

A new academic block with several new labs, new air-conditioned classrooms and new offices was inaugurated recently. In order to facilitate the teaching processes, all classrooms in the institute have been equipped with LCD projectors, green and white boards. The institute has further converted 12 class rooms as smart class rooms to further augment the facilities available on campus.

The institute has a well-equipped gymnasium with state–of-the-art equipment, swimming pool, facilities for the indoor games like badminton, table tennis, and well-maintained sports grounds/courts for the outdoor games like cricket, volleyball, football, hockey and lawn tennis basket all and a synthetic track for running in the pipeline. Many of the sports facilities have flood lights ensuring 24 hour access to the students.

Placements :

The Institute provides active support for placement, internships and career counselling through its Career Development and Guidance Centre (CDGC). A large number of companies come to the campus offering both internships and full time jobs. The CDGC also provides holistic guidance to students depending on whether they wish to join industry, prepare for national level tests for admission to higher studies or prepare for civil services examination.

As a result more than 90% of the graduating students get placed every year, with the highest CTCs being offered seeing a 14% year on year rise in the last three years. Major recruiters include Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, Arcesium, Salesforce, ExxonMobil, JP Morgan, SanDisk, Texas, Maruti, Honda etc.

Alumni

With a history of 98 years, the institute has a large alumni base in different fields residing both in India and abroad. The Alumni associations contribute significantly to the development of the institute through financial and non-financial means. In the past, they have provided several lab equipment, besides funding scholarships and awards for students. The alumni has representation in the institute’s Board of Governance and have several chapters across the globe. The Alumni Association has also setup a think tank for actively giving inputs to the Institute.

Student Centric Services & Activities:

The Institute has all important cells like anti-ragging cell, sexual harassment cell, SC/ST liaison office, international students’ office, where students can seek help or seek redressal of their complaints. Students participate actively in decision making in many important committees, and multiple student clubs and technical societies are completely managed by students. Besides many technical societies like ASCE, IEEE, Robotics, ACM CSS, ASME, PEC has a popular culture for various clubs such as the music club, dramatics club, debating club, photography club, etc. Students participate in large number of national and international level competitions in multiple cultural and technical areas with the institute’s active support. PEC also has active chapters of both the National Service Scheme and the National Cadet Corps.

The Institute has a large financial assistance program and about 20 percent of the students get financial assistance in terms of tuition waiver or scholarships, besides many who get such help from various government schemes and from alumni associations.