Kharagpur, July 27 (IANS): The Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur is considering a tie-up with leading bio-medical research institutes abroad as part of its plans to offer medical programmes without changing the IIT Act, its director said here Saturday.

"Medical graduates coming out of the proposed medical school, who will take up different streams of engineering as a part of their curriculum, will be a new breed of doctors," Partha Pratim Chakraborty, newly appointed director of the institute said, soon after his appointment.

The institute hopes to start imparting medical education by 2016, after the 400-bed hospital in the campus is ready.

"We are toying with the idea of offering medical programmes without changing the IIT Act," he told reporters on the sidelines of the annual convocation of the institute.

IIT-KGP had plans to collaborate with Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore and Imperial College, London for biomedical research and medical education, he said.

Chakraborty said research will remain the priority for IIT-Kharagpur, and exuded confidence that it would become a premier research and innovation institution by 2020.

He said the institute was running with only 50 percent of its sanctioned faculty strength at present.

Since January, 70 new offers of appointment have been made. However, he said, while recruiting, extra care was being taken so that the quality of faculty was not compromised.

He said, the IIT also planned to take in more PhD students.

"Now, the number of PhD students is 10 percent of the entire intake. We want to increase it to double the percentage over the next five years and 30 percent in future," he said.