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| Volume 3 No.2 | January 2000 |
News Update
International Collegiate Programming Contest
The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) organized by Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) was conducted at IIT Kanpur during 6-7 December 1999. The contest, a popular event amongst the Computer Science students all over the world, involves regional events conducted at ten different centres the world over and the World Final event. IIT Kanpur hosted one of the Asia Regional events. The Kanpur Site Contest had fifty nine teams from India and the neighbouring countries participating in it. The winning team from Bangla Desh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, will be participating in the World Finals to be held in Orlando during 15-19 March 2000. One of the teams from IIT Kanpur which stood third in the regional event gets the Wild Card entry to the World Finals.
The contest offered a platform for the future programmers, professionals, industry and several government organizations to work together.The Contest Director, Dr Phalguni Gupta, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, attributes the grand success of the event to the enthusiasm and dedication of the entire team working with him for the ACM ICPC Kanpur Site Contest.
IIT Kanpur will again be hosting the ACM ICPC Regional contest next year.
For further information:
Hyperplane Project AVATAR
DRDL has launched a mega-project for development of a hypersonic aerospace vehicle. The project is called AVATAR. DRDL proposes to develop an unmanned as well as a manned vehicle which will fly at hypersonic speeds in the range of 4 to 8 Mach numbers. A team from DRDL will visit IIT Kanpur in near future to present the outline of this project.
23rd Alumni Convention of IIT Kanpur
The Annual Alumni Convention and the Silver Jubilee Reunion of the 1975 batch were held during 22-23 January 2000 at IIT Kanpur. Major highlights of the event included the Kelkar Alumni Lecture by Dr. K. Subrahmanyam, Consulting Editor (Foreign Affairs), The Times of India and The Economic Times, Chairman Kargil Review Panel and Convenor, National Security Advisory Board.
Dr. Subrahmanyam spoke on Indian Nuclear Doctrine.
The Distinguished Alumnus Award for the year 2000 has been conferred on:
Mr. Rakesh Gangwal (B.Tech, 1975);
Dr. Padmanabhan Balram (M.Sc, 1969);
Mr. Som Mittal (B.Tech, 1973) and
Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala (B.Tech, 1975)
Three of the awardees were presented the award during the Convention.
Professor T.K. Chandrashekar of theDepartment of Chemistry has been elected a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.
Professor N. Sathyamurthy of the Department of Chemistry has been made an Honorary Professor of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore for a period of three years.
Professor Ashutosh Sharma of the Department of Chemical Engineering has been appointed member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science.
Professor M.R. Madhav of the Department of Civil Engineering has been selected for the CBIP - Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Research Award.
XXII All India Conference of Linguists
The XXII All India Conference of Linguists was held at IIT Kanpur during 20-22 December 1999. This was the first time that the Linguistic Society of India held its annual conference at an IIT. This was also the first time that a considerable number of scholars from related disciplines, including Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy, participated in the Conference jointly organized by the CIIL Mysore, and the HSS Department and CCWP, IIT Kanpur. Professor K.A. Padmanabhan, Director, IIT Kanpur inaugurated the Conference and Professor O.N.Koul, Director, CIIL Mysore and President, Linguistic Society of India delivered the presidential address.
The focal theme of the Conference was " Linguistics and Language: Future Directions". Two symposia were held during the Conference; an interdisciplinary one on "Technology Support for Indian Languages", in which Linguists and Computer Scientists tried to identify areas where both could cooperate in order to design Indian language-friendly systems, and the other on "Teaching of Linguistics in India", which emphasized the need to make the Linguistics programmes in the country more application-oriented. There were three special lectures: " Linguistics Research in India in Future" ( Speaker: Professor Anjani K Sinha, Delhi University ), "Cultural Issues in Translation: Current Trends and Future Direction" (Speaker: Professor P.P. Sah, IIT Kanpur) and " Is the CHL Linguistically Specific?" (Speaker: Professor Nirmalangshu Mukherji, Delhi University).
About eighty technical papers were presented on a wide variety of areas, such as Phonetics and Phonology, Morphology and Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics and Stylistics, Language and Cognition,Language and Communication, Computational Linguistics and Language Issues and Technology, Language Pedagogy, and Ancient Indian Linguistics.
New Faculty at IIT Kanpur
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. A.K. Ghosh, Assistant Professor; Specialization: Flight Mechanics and Parameter Estimation from Flight Data
Department of Civil Engineering
Dr. Animesh Das; Assistant Professor; Specialization: Pavement Design and Pavement Materials
Department of Chemical Engineering
Dr. Avijit Bhowal, Visiting Faculty; Specialization: Mass Transfer
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Dr. Amitabha Mukerjee, Associate Professor; Specialization: CAD/CAM, Robotics, AI, Geometric Modelling
Department of Electrical Engineering
Dr. A.K. Chaturvedi, Assistant Professor; Specialization: Communication Systems and Digital Signal Processing
Dr. K.S. Venkatesh, Assistant Professor; Specialization: System Theory, Signal Processing
Department of Industrial and Management Engineering
Dr. Veena Bansal; Lecturer; Specialization: Image
and Document Processing, Software Engineering and Information
Technology
Dr. Sanjeev Swamy, Assistant Professor; Marketing Commerce and
Business Administration
Department of Mathematics
Dr. S. Ghorai, Lecturer; Specialization: Mathematical Biology, CFD
Dr. Rama Rawat, Lecturer; Specialization:Harmonic Analysis
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Vijay B. Shenoy, Assistant Professor; Specialization: Solid Mechanics
Dr. P.C. Pandey, Visiting Faculty; Specialization: Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems
Department of Physics
Dr. Sreerup Ray Chaudhuri, Assistant Professor; Specialization: High Energy Physics
Dr. Sudipta Mukherjee, Assistant Professor; Specialization: High Energy Physics
Dr. S.B. Santra, Visiting Faculty; Specialization: Solid State-Statistical Physics
Techkriti Millennium: Engineering the Future
(2-5 March 2000)
Techkriti, the annual technology festival of the Students Gymkhana, IIT Kanpur is being held during 2-5 March 2000. Comprising a series of lectures, symposia, technology related competitions, design contests and workshops which span over four days, Techkriti is an IITian's favourite haunt for technological innovation and excellence. In addition to students from IIT Kanpur, students from the other IITs, sister institutions like the RECs and the premier research institutions like IISc and TIFR participate in the festival. Over the years, various corporate groups have also become a part of Techkriti. These groups participate by way of putting up exhibitions or by organizing events.
With Engineering the Future as its theme, Techkriti Millennium aims at strengthening the interface between society, technology and commerce, guided as it is, by commitment to "need-oriented technology, entrepreneurship and vision", as the students themselves put it.
The major events at the festival this year include Endeavour, Interface, Ingenuity, Megabucks, Cosmos, Four and a half Wheels, Milliwhat, Software and Tech Talk. Behind this nomenclature lies a colossal effort at organization and team work that brings the IIT Kanpur student face to face with his/her creativity.
Endeavour, the Functional Model Contest, provides a platform for the display of technical skills of budding engineers from all over the country. In the past, we have had students come up with fantastic innovations such as e-notebooks, solar-powered bicycle, handheld printers, microprocessor based drilling machines and beam robots. Some of these were eventually chosen by industry representatives for potential patents. Interface, the Lecture Series and Panel Discussion, focuses upon technology in the present and future scenarios and examines its social and economic impact. Ingenuity, the Pre-defined Design Problem Contest, invites functional models for design problems. Megabucks, the Venture Capital Show, is a one of its kind competition targeting budding entrepreneurs to bring out their grasp of business scenarios and strategies. Sponsored and conducted by the Pioneer Batch (Batch of 1965) of IIT Kanpur, this event is based on the concept of venture capital and asks for an in depth understanding of the same. Cosmos, the Star Show, involves a lecture series aimed at unraveling the cosmic mysteries and in addition, the Astrophotography Contest. Four and a half Wheels, the Automobile Forum targeted for the automobile enthusiast includes a workshop, a cutaway display of a major automotive system and the quiz. Software targeted for the computer wizard, involves a series of online programming contests, open software contests, on the spot contests and so on. Tech Talk hosts workshops on Virtual Reality and E-commerce.
All these events - and much more - truly symbolize the irrepressible creative impulse of many young men and women striving to engineer the future at IIT Kanpur.
For details, please visit:
http://www.iitk.ac.in/techkriti
Or, contact:
Festival Coordinator
Techkriti Secretariat, Room No. 401, ACES
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur 208 016
Phone: (0512) 597070
e-mail: rbhat@iitk.ac.in ; tkriti@iitk.ac.in