S K Dube, director of IIT-Kgp, said, "It is a donation from Sarin's personal fund and not from his company and he has already paid $250,000, with the rest to be given in future."

He was speaking on the sidelines of the 52nd convocation of IIT-Kgp on July 15.  The metallurgical and material engineering department of IIT-Kgp will receive the money and will use it to set up the Arun Sarin Electronic Research Laboratory.

The laboratory will be aimed at developing electronic materials and research in allied field. "Electronic materials have a very important role to play in technology upgradation," said Sarin.

With money coming in from alumnus like Vinod Gupta and Arun Sarin, IIT-Kgp is gearing up to further increase its research base infrastructure accordingly.

"We are looking at few areas, mainly better infrastructure, research and development and increase student in take," said Dube.

IIT-Kgp increased its student's intake by 34 percent this year and is looking at touching the 10,000 mark by the year 2010.

Setting up of a new multilevel undergraduate lab complex, a multilevel classroom complex, a girls and a boys hostel and new 2000 seating capacity modern convention centre were among the initiatives taken up by the institute.

A total 1,370 students received their degrees at the convocation.  The President of India Gold Medal went to Shambaditya Saha of department of biotechnology while the Prime Ministers Gold Medal went to S Narayanan of department of electronics and electrical communication engineering.

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