The centre, which will soon be transformed into a virtual classroom with help from IT giant IBM, will be linked to other colleges under the varsity, officials said.

The campus will be connected to 12 nodal centres in the state, and each college will be connected to its nearest centre. Scientists and technical experts will visit the centre and interact with students and teachers from colleges across the state, officials said.

“If the plans, including providing virtual classrooms, research centres, organising training programmes for students and teachers, are properly implemented, the varsity could soon challenge the monopoly of the IITs,” said R C Sharma, chairman of the Ramesh Institute of Technology in Greater Noida.

The new centre, which has been built on 52 square metres, will control activities in the nearly 70 engineering and technical education colleges in NCR, officials said.

Close to 70 per cent of colleges under the varsity are located in NCR. What’s more, the varsity has also signed an MoU with computer-chip manufacturing giant Intel to set up a research centre at its Lucknow headquarters.

Sadal Prasad, the Minister for Technical Education (Independent charge) of UP, said, “With an overwhelming rise in the number of students getting enrolled with the university, steps had to be taken to improve quality of education. This is a step in that direction.”

Software giant Microsoft has also agreed to train 12,000 teachers, the first batch of which will have 900 teachers from across the state, officials said.

Nearly 500 students will be taken for on-the-job training every year, and special scholarship programmes have also been proposed, officials said.