| Events |
| The Academy Annual Symposium – November 2011 |
| ‘The Academy’ had a very busy November 2011. It was a time of ‘all hands on deck’ on MV “The Academy’ with Chief Officers Rahul Krishna and Kuheli Banerji, our cadets Rahul Ingle and Bharat Ingle and our new recruit Mamta Bhattacharyya. All under the watchful eye of Capt. Haddock, our very own CEO Prof. Mohan Krishnamoorthy seeing all of us through these rough seas. By end of the third week the Australians had arrived only this time to play on the same side as India. |
| All our events were scheduled in the last week of the month. The programmed schedule being: |
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Students’ Symposium: 26 November (Venue: VMCC ,Time: 1000am until
1530 hrs) |
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Oskar night: 27 November (Venue: The Beatle Hotel, Time: 1900 hrs until
2200 hrs) |
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Annual Thematic Symposium ‘Energy Futures’ : 28 November (Venue: VMCC, Time: 0900 hrs until 1800 hrs) |
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Cross Institutional Colloquium: 30 November (Venue: VMCC, Time: 1500 hrs until 1800 hrs) |
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| Students’ Symposium: Our very own PHD students were presenting 3MTTs which is a three-minute thesis talk. This was very interesting and covered various topics like Human Sentiment Analysis to how fast cargoes can be stowed from the holds of ships to ware-houses through complex computations. |
| Alongside, the posters on display were also being marked and by the end of the evening there was a short-list of names for the best seminar and best posters. There was overall good participation by the students. |
| Oskar night: True to its name, this was a night to remember. It was ‘end-sem’ for most students. With important dignitaries like Dr. Devang Khakar, Dr. Alan Finkel, Dr. Kakodkar, Dr. David Pitt, Ms. Loren Miller, Dr. Sridhar, Dr. Shiv Prasad it was truly a red-carpet evening. With true MGM music back-ground Ms. Loren Miller and Mamta Bhattacharyya played anchor for the evening with a ‘holly-bolly-wood’ style of delivery. |
| Prof. Mohan Krishnamoorthy introduced the guests who were to read out the nominees and the winners. The Oskar awards were presented by our Sponsors of the event...Hirco. The categories were: |
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Best 3MTT: Niraj Dayama Ramesh |
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Best Poster: Jas Vipul Chawla |
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Best Paper: Vikram Vishal |
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Best CPI: Banambar Singh |
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| There was a guest-speaker organized for the evening Mr. Krish Ashok who gave an interesting talk on ‘the five most important things I have learnt from the internet’. This was followed by dinner and some more drinks and I think we saw quite a few satisfied faces as they all departed. |
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| Annual Symposium ‘Energy Futures’: The one-day energy symposium was organized by The Academy. It had speakers from faculty members at IITB and Monash University and also featured several external speakers from the Industry. This again provided a common platform for all concerned (students, professors and industry experts) to exchange knowledge on future energy challenges. The Academy conversation between the speakers carried on over dinner later. |
| Cross-Institutional Colloquium: This was another experiment that worked exceedingly well. Four top academics from both the institutes came together to deliver talks in general areas of ‘bio-sciences’. Opening talk was by Prof. Ed Byrne, President and VC of Monash University. His talk was on ‘Advances in brain medicines and cross historical divide’. |
| Next talk was by Dr. Alan Finkel who is Chancellor of Monash University. He is an engineer, entrepreneur and a philanthropist. His topic was ‘Start-up business models’. |
| Third talk was by Dr. Jayesh Bellare from the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT-B. His topic was ‘Nano bio-engineering for Healthcare’. |
| Finally, the last talk of the day was delivered by Dr. Dulal Panda, Department of Biosciences and Bio-engineering, IIT-Bombay. His topic was ‘Stabilization of micro-tubule dynamics induces defects in cell polarity and inhibits cancer cell migration: Implications in cancer metastases. Prof. Mohan Krishnamoorthy along with Prof. Sanjeev Sabnis respectively introduced the speakers. Prof. Sabnis gave a vote of thanks and commented that we should have many more such colloquia. |
| This concluded the evening and also the week-long events at ‘The Academy’. |
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| The Academy Get-together – December 2011 |
| An afternoon of fun and games was organized on 22 December at our Academy for our students. |
| Although 24 had confirmed, finally 17 attended. |
| First item was the ‘Ice-breaker session’. |
| Two groups were formed and each person was given a pen and a chit of paper on which they had to write down three questions. |
| The question could not be of the obvious kind but something like favorite destination or an event in their life which impacted them. |
| Now, each person had to ask those 3 questions to 3 different people in the group. |
| After they completed this exercise each member from the group came up on the dais and introduced himself to the group. Everyone from the group then spoke about the person from the information they had gathered. It was a fun session. |
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| Second item was a ‘Who am I’ session and was thought-provoking. A question was put to the group. Each one was asked to think for a few minutes and reflect. They had to think of a symbol that they can identify with and explain to the group as to why they think the symbol says who they are. |
| This exercise sort of brought about certain sobriety amongst the students and they came up with their own symbols and very interesting explanations of them. It was an interesting exercise and food-for-thought. |
| The item that followed from this was the famous game of ‘antakshari’ but with a twist. Instead of the usual starting a song with the last letter the team had to pick up a chit on which a word was written and they had to sing a song (bollywood) which would contain that word. Both the teams performed well and it was enjoyed by all. Group singing followed from this which was fun. |
| Finally, Ganesh Soni presented two problems in front of the students and asked them to find a solution. First one was to design a product by which one could apply powder on one’s back and the other one was how to prevent shoes from smelling on a hot and sweaty day. |
| Teams came up with interesting solutions and funny ones like the one on powder was ‘to get a wife ‘and everybody had a laugh. After this snacks were served and everybody went back happy. |
| Overall it was a fun and relaxed after-noon…… |
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Australian Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research,
Kim Carr visits IITB with 5-member delegation |
| The Australian Federal Minister for Innovation Industry Science and Research, Kim Carr, visited IITB in Mumbai on 25 July 2011. He visited the IITB campus with a 5-member delegation and spent an hour and a half here. |
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| Prof Devang Khakhar, Director of IITB welcomed the Minister to IITB. He talked about IITB and talked also about the importance of the IITB-Monash collaboration. This was followed by short talks from our CEO, Prof. Mohan Krishnamoorthy, Prof Subhasis Chaudhuri, Prof Swati Patankar and Prof David Abramson (who was visiting IITB for a few days).
This was followed by a response from Senator Kim Carr in which he said he appreciated what he had heard. He said he was happy to see the Academy's progress. He also indicated that international collaborations were strong on his Government's agenda and that he had heard the funding message loud and clear from all the speakers! Three Academy students (Amrita Poyekar, Jas Chawla and Akshaya Kumar Swain) also spoke about their work. Senator Carr was, we believe, pleased with what he had heard.
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| Subsequent to his visit, we had an "innovation session" -- The Marico-Academy Innovation event. This went off successfully too. We had nearly 100 people in attendance. At least 50% of the audience (by our estimation) were IITB students/staff. The event featured speakers from Reliance, Goonj, DNA, Innovation-Alchemy and Prof. Mohan Krishnamoorthy. |
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| IITB-Monash Research Academy Annual Symposium |
| IITB-Monash Research Academy hosted its Annual Symposium between 17 February 2011 and 19 February 2011. The Symposium enabled the sharing, reviewing and exchange of ideas between researchers from IIT Bombay, Monash University and industry partners. |
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| The Symposium was based on three themes: Water, Nanotechnology and The Digital Divide. |
| The three-day symposium presented talks by 27 speakers from industry, 31 from IIT Bombay and 28 from Monash University. Click here to view the abstracts of the speakers. |
| The Academy Annual Symposium focused on developing common research programmes of interest to society, government and industry. The symposium presented a platform for the stakeholders of The Academy – students, supervisors and industry partners – to share views and to address the needs, goals and challenges facing society today. |
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| The symposium addressed key challenges that research and industry communities need to address in the context of the innovation eco system in India. |
| Some of the key participants from Industry were: F.C.Kohli (Former Deputy Chairman, TCS), Aravind Sitaraman (MD-CISCO), Subrahmanyam Gopparaju (Senior VP and Head SET Labs-Infosys), Manish Gupta (Director, IBM India Research Laboratory), Adil Dhalla (Director of GE Singapore Water Technology Centre), Surendra Kulkarni (Senior Director R&D and CTO, Dow Chemicals, India), Amit Biswas (Head Technology Services and Emerging Technologies, Reliance Technology Group), Peeyush Ranjan (Director and Country Head, Google India R&D), Ajit Balakrishnan (Founder and CEO of Rediff.Com), Murali Shastri (Chief Scientific Officer, TATA Chemicals Innovation Centre), Swapan Ghosh (Director of Green Coat Chemicals Pvt. Ltd), Anant Chilkunda (CTO, Technology, Media and Telecom Business-Wipro). |
| Prof. Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay said that innovation through cross-disciplinary research is a key to success in today’s world. Professor Khakhar said, "The IITB-Monash Research Academy is already engaging strongly with industry in Australia and India and we expect this to increase in the coming years. As a result, it will intensify the innovation ecosystem that IITB exists in, whereby industry-driven innovation is carried through cross-disciplinary teams that includes talented students along with industry." |
| Commenting on the strength of the joint research program, Prof. Ed Byrne, President and Vice-Chancellor of Monash University said, “IIT Bombay and Monash University have together worked hard to develop a vibrant research joint-venture that will focus on grand challenge research in 6 key themes that are of critical importance to both India and Australia. With 60 PhD students in the program and a growing publications list, I look forward to The Research Academy creating significant scientific impact in both India and Australia.” |
| During the three days of the symposium, a poster session was organized by The Academy, where 25 PhD students from The Academy talked about their research to date in various inter-disciplinary fields. |
| The Annual Dinner included the inaugural Academy Awards ceremony. The awards, known as Oskars were presented for Best Poster, Best Paper, Best CPI (2009, 2010) and Best Seminar (2009, 2010). The posters and papers were judged by a special jury comprising academics from IIT Bombay and Monash University. The winners received a trophy, a cash prize and a certificate. |
| The Annual Awards Oskar Dinner was held on 19 February in the Emerald Room, Ramada Hotel, Powai. The Annual Awards event was sponsored by HIRCO and Google India. Mr. Anniruddh Joshi and Mr. Suresh from HIRCO presented the awards to the winners. |
| Overall, the 3-day Annual Symposium was a success. It got several academics and industry partners together to discuss their research and will be the first of many such events. Prof Mohan Krishnamoorthy, CEO of The Academy said, “Events like this are crucial to the progress of The Academy’s collaborative research program. We believe this will be the first of many events that bring together academics, students and Industry.”
Click here to view the abstracts of the speakers.
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