IIT Madras marks 10 glorious years of its Heritage Centre

IIT Madras celebrated 10 years existence of the Heritage Centre with a function organised on 3^rd March at the institute. Mr R. Natarajan, who served as the first Registrar of IIT Madras from 1959 to 1965 and was ever popular for his oratory skills, addressed the gathering. Prof. R Nagarajan, Dean of International & Alumni Relations thanked the audience and other alumni who were present for the occasion.

The second Director, Prof. A. Ramachandran on 3^rd March 2006, inaugurated the Heritage Centre. It has an archive of rare photographs and publications from IIT Madras. These were digitised recently and have been made available for viewing through the website, whose soft launch was part of the event. The occasion also marked the inauguration of a two-week exhibition of "WAVE ENERGY PROJECT" at the Heritage Centre.

In 1980s, a wave energy project began at IIT Madras. Research scholars and faculty members from different departments worked together on this project. A power plant-cum-testing facility was established at Vizhinjam, Kerala. This facility was operational for many years, producing drinking water for the local community. At one point, the project put India in the in leading wave energy technology. The project led to the establishment of the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT). Models, posters and a real turbine tested at Vizhinjam were put on display at the exhibition, put up by NIOT.

Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp

Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CSIE), IIT Madras conducted a 3-day Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp from 10^th to 12^th March, 2016 at IIT Madras.

The camp was designed to create awareness among other engineering colleges on how technology and entrepreneurship can be used to solve socially relevant issues.

The programme focused on themes such as introduction to social enterprises; idea generation; innovation and creativity; role of incubators and IP management. It also included the use of entrepreneurial skills to craft innovative responses to social problems in India. The programme was a combination of theory and practice, balancing the deep academic knowledge of the faculty with discussions and insights from expert speakers. There was an industrial visit on the final day.

Prof. Sathyanarayanan Seshadri, from Applied Mechanics handled the first day sessions along with entrepreneurs such as Visakh Kumar, CEO of Pi Beams, Mr. C.Raghunathan, CEO of Ehands Energy, Mr. Arul Dev of People First and Ms. Jaya Umadikar from IITM’s Rural Technology Business Incubator.

International Conference on Financial Markets and Corporate Finance (ICFMCF-2016)

The Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai is organizing the conference in association with Vinod Gupta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and Institute for Financial Management and Research, Chennai.

Financial market microstructure dynamics, technological innovations in processes and financial products, global financial market fragmentation, integration and consolidation, emergence of innovative start-ups and increasing thrust on development finance have raised several challenging issues worthy of research. Aggregation of firm level financial risk, high corporate cash holdings, increasing cross border mergers and acquisitions, policy changes on board composition and governance, crowd funding of projects, issues in valuation of e-commerce start-ups, dividend initiation and risk management and challenges in convergence with international accounting standards and derivatives accounting, lead to interesting researchable issues.

The conference brings together researchers from academia, industry and regulatory organizations to deliberate on theoretical work, empirical findings and policy implications related to financial market microstructure and challenges in corporate finance. The Conference will provide an excellent avenue to get quality feedback and an opportunity for networking among researchers, academicians and industry executives working in finance and allied areas.

iGest wins Nina Saxena Excellence in Technology Award 2015

The Assistive Technology Laboratory at IIT Madras has won the prestigious Nina Saxena Excellence in Technology Award, 2015 for their innovative product iGest (Intelligent Gesture Recognition Device). iGest was honoured under the category of "Application of Technology to underdeveloped areas and causes". The award was conferred to the team comprising Mr. Jayavel D, Dr. Nitin Chandrachoodan, Prof. Anil Prabhakar from IIT Madras, and Mr. T. Pradeep from Enability Foundation, a non-profit company incubated by IIT Madras, with a focus on providing indigenous and affordable assistive technologies solutions.

iGest is a gesture to speech device that identifies the movement of an individual with a predetermined sentence. It has been designed as a communications aid for people with motor impairments. It belongs to the “Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC)” model of devices, which act as a means for independent communication for people with disabilities like Cerebral Palsy. The device captures movement using a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes and sends this information over a bluetooth link to a mobile phone. The phone runs a motion tracking software to identify a particular movement e.g. rotation of the wrist, and then associates the movement with one of the sentences in the library. iGest can thus be used both to “speak” as desired by the individual or be used by an occupational therapist to train a particular movement.

Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award

Connecting vascular tissues is a common Practice In Many Fields Of Surgeries. For the tissue to survive, its donor vessels need to be connected to the corresponding recipient blood vessels. This process is known as Vascular Anastomosis. Anand Parikh of Engineering design won Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award (GYTI-2016) for developing NStomoz - A patented anastomotic assist device to enable surgeons of all specialties to perform anastomosis faster, safer and with an easier learning curve, the three key challenges in vascular Anastomosis. He was guided by Prof Venkatesh Balasubramanian and Dr V B Narayanamurthy.

The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards 2016

DeTect Technologies, an IIT Madras incubated company, came 2nd in India out of 100 start-ups nationwide. Daniel Raj David, IITM Dual Degree student & co-founder of Detect, won cash reward of INR 25,000.

The Energy & Environmental Science Oral Presentation Prize

Pratibha Biswal, Ph.D. Research Scholar (CH11D037), Department of Chemical Engineering has been awarded the Energy & Environmental Science Oral presentation Prize for her paper entitled ‘Investigation of Thermal Efficiency via Entropy Generation within Cavities with Curved Walls subjected to Differential/Rayleigh Benard Heating’ at the 5th International Conference on Advances in Energy Research (ICAER 2015) held at IIT Bombay during December 15-17, 2015. The Prize, in addition to a certificate carries a cash prize of 100 British Pounds. She is guided by Prof. Tanmay Basak.

Lockheed Martin RO/RO Challenge: IITM Team wins the top slot

IIT Madras team competing in the Lockheed Martin's C130 RO/RO Payload Design Challenge has been short-listed for the next phase of the competition. IITM team was the top team among the five participating universities (IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, DTU, UPES and BITS Pilani- Goa campus.) The team had presented a high level design and analysis of their concepts on 7th March, at FICCI Federation House, Delhi in front of an esteemed panel of judges from Lockheed Martin, TATA Advanced Systems, DRDO and US Air Force.

The team has been awarded a funding of $ 60,000 for the next phase to develop the prototype and a business transition plan along with TATA Advanced Systems as the local industrial partner.

The IITM team had a unique combination of B.Tech/DD students, M.Tech. students, and research scholars (MS/Ph.D) from various departments. (Anupam Chandra-ED12B008 Team Leader , Deeban babu-CE14M107, Dhiraj Jamdade-CE14M068, Avinash Arya -EE15M025, Narasimha Murthy-ED13B023, Amique Ukani-AE13M002, Mohan Das-CH14S006, Nitesh Kumar-ME15S020, Vaibhav Patharkar-CE15M115, Subarna S-AE13B033, T V Raviteja-ME15D008, Saikat Jana-EE14S011, Utsav Bhardwaj-ME14S085, Srikanth Kotra-EE13D212, Yash Sukhatme-EE15S068, Y A P Ram Shankar-EE15S001, K Nikhil-EE13S044, Pruthvi Chaithanya-EE15D017).

Best B-school Project

Balaji Venkatesh, an MBA student received the Business Standard rolling trophy awarded to DoMS, IIT Madras for first prize in Business Standard Best B-school Project in the presence of Mr. Jayaram, Regional Head of Business Standard, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras, Prof. T.J. Kamalanabhan, HOD (DoMS) and Prof. Thenmozhi, DoMS.

Eminent Engineer Award 2016

Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Department of Electrical Engineering has been chosen for conferment of the Eminent Engineer Award 2016 under the Research and Consultancy category by the Engineering Council of India.

Best Start-up of the Year Award

K. Sakthivel, MS (Entrepreneurship) Research Scholar (MS12S015), Department of Management Studies has won the Best Start-up of the Year Award in Agro Industry at the CII Startupreneurs 2016 held on February 10, 2016, for his product feature and Business model of 'Soil Moisture Scanner'.

Best Student Award

Beesetti P S Swarna Latha, Research Scholar (BT11D010), Department of Biotechnology has won the Best Student Award for her presentation entitled ‘To Identify the Human Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated and Rad3 Related (ATR) Core Promoter Sequence Crucial for transcriptional Regulation by P21 Activated Kinase1 (Pak1) in Cancer Cells’ at the TIIKM'S 1st International Conference on Bioscience and Biotechnology (BioTech 2016) held at Sri Lanka from January 12-13, 2016. She is guided by Dr. Rayala Suresh Kumar.

Best Poster Presentation Award

Arijita Ghosh, PhD Research Scholar (BT12D052), Department of Biotechnology has been awarded the Best Poster Presentation Award for her poster entitled ‘Modulation of ER calcium by Leucine-rich repeat-containing protein 8B (LRRC8B)’ at the Annual meeting of the Indian Biophysical Society held in Bangalore from February 8-10, 2016. She is guided by Dr. Amal Kanti Bera.

Oral Presentation Award

Arnab Dey (CY14D001) has won the Best Student Oral Presentation Award for his presentation entitled ‘ODNP enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging at 0.35 T’ at the 22nd Conference of the National Magnetic Resonance Society, India held at IIT Kharagpur during February 18-21, 2016. He is guided by Prof. N. Chandrakumar.