BITSAA Newsletter May 2008
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International
conference on Soft-skills development strategies at BITS-Pilani
BITS-Pilani Languages Group is organizing an international conference on Soft Skills development strategies at BITS-Pilani on 19th – 20th September 2008. The conference would concentrate both on corporate and academia perspectives of this important and usually underestimated skill.
The languages group would really love it if they could receive more sponsorship. If any of you are interested in contributing either directly or indirectly, please contact Prof. Meenakshi Raman. Contact details are as given below.
Prof. Meenakshi Raman Links: Full Story
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BITSians make India's First Humanoid Robot
A group of students from BITS-Pilani have created India's first humanoid robot, ACYUT, which is coming to the USA to participate at RoboGames 2008 in San Francisco, the world's largest open robot competition. The 4-man and 1-woman team representing freshman year through senior year, is being sponsored financially by the alumni of BITS-Pilani. BITSAA in collaboration with TiE is co-hosting a reception on June 17, 2008 where the BITS team will discuss the project and display their creation and its prowess on the soccer field and the dance floor. For registrations to this event, please refer to the BITSAA SVC website.
ACYUT is India's first humanoid Robot conceptualized, fabricated, assembled and programmed by five students from BITS-Pilani. ACYUT has been created on Pilani soil in its very own workshop and labs and is the only entry from India into RoboGames 2008. One of the many videos about this wonderful achievement could be found here.
Kudos to Samay Kohli, Arpit Mohan, Harsh Sinha, Prayag Mukherjee and Sushma Vallabhaneni for the great work and BITSAA wishes them lots of success.
Links: Blog
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A cut above the rest: 1975-80 batch
BITSians have always been known for their passion in whatever they do and certain noble gestures by the BITS Alumni of 1975-80 batch goes to reiterate the same. This batch had their silver jubilee at Pilani in October 2005 and set a new record for the number of alumni who turned up for the same. After that meeting, the positive energy of the initiatives that followed was phenomenal and they have not looked back since. Among other things, a trust called “BITSAA Alumni Trust” was formed as a part of their desire of launching a program called "Giving Back to BITS".
This is the first time this sort of a venture is being tried out. To quote one of the BITSians involved in this “Our desire is to create something which the BITS Alumni across the world, irrespective of their batch, would feel proud of, could contribute (not necessarily only in monetary terms) and would be able to relate to.” Please read the full story for a more detailed look at their activities.
Links: Full story
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BITSian among top 100 in the UPSC exams
Parameswaran Balakrishnan has secured the 94th rank in the UPSC exams, the results of which were published earlier this month. The results can be found at http://www.upsc.gov.in/ . For the record, his Roll number is 001008.
He would be soon joining the training for the Indian Administrative Services. This was his 3rd attempt at the civil services. His perseverance and hard work has paid off. Parameswaran completed his bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Electrical engineering from BITS- Pilani at 2004. Congratulations to him from BITSAA and wishing him all the best!
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“Colleges and Careers 2.0” created by BITSians
After a year of non ending discussions, arguments, canteen sessions and even hiring people, four BITS-Pilani students have launched their dream http://www.imconfuzed.com into the web arena. They brand it saying "colleges and careers 2.0" where students write, find and decide which college and careers they should enter. Kunal Singla, Kartik Gupta, Sahil Chalana and Sankalp Kathuria have already made waves by winning honors in Business Plan competitions held at IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Kolkata, IIT Kharagpur, BITS Pilani and IT BHU.
Links: Full Story
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BITS-Pilani Dubai wins accolades at national level competition
du, the integrated telecom service provider in the UAE and Microsoft, have announced the results of the 'Let your dream mobile application out' Competition that was organized for students of Colleges and Universities in the UAE in Feb 2008. The team from BITS-Pilani Dubai was presented with this year's award in the category of Social Networking, for their winning project, a GPS Enabled Advanced Social Planner. The planner allows all information about an event to be sent along with a map to the person invited, with the option of sending an RSVP as well.
Links: Full Story
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BITSian is first Indian to be awarded the IFST Award by the US Govt.
Naveen Sundar G has been awarded the International Fulbright Science and Technology (IFST) Award by the US Government. This award includes a PhD scholarship.
His area would be Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is the first Indian to have received this award and also the only Indian this year to have received the IFST Award. Naveen is also a GE Scholar for the years 2005 - 2007. He completed his master’s degree in physics and bachelors degree in Electronics and Electrical engineering last year.
Congrats Naveen and BITSAA wishes you all the best!
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BITSians to represent India at Goldman Sachs Global Leadership Institute
Second year students at BITS-Pilani, Srikumar Murthy (2006A3PS235) and Rachit Chandra (2006A7PS012) have been selected to attend the annual Goldman Sachs Global Leadership Institute (GLI) in New York during the summers.
Goldman Sachs Foundation conducts the Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program with the motive to train and develop tomorrow's educators, policy makers, business leaders, research scientists, social entrepreneurs, and other professionals and to create an international network through which they can share ideas, work collaboratively, and begin to change the world, together. In this regard, the Institute of International Education (IIE), in partnership with educational organizations in selected countries, conducted an annual international competition at 100 top-ranked universities in about 19 countries.
Initially, the foundation named 150 Goldman Sachs Global Leaders from all over the world. Apart from Srikumar and Rachit, two global leaders were also named from BITS Pilani. Anantha Padmanabhan and M Harsha Vardhan were the other two Global Leaders. Srikumar is currently enrolled in the bachelors of Electrical and Electronics engineering program while Rachit is enrolled in the bachelors of engineering in Computer Science program at BITS-Pilani.
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BITSian becomes a Professor at Harvard Business School
Suraj Srinivasan, currently an Assistant Professor of accounting at the University of Chicago, Graduate Business School recently became one among the very distinguished list of faculty at the Harvard Business School. We got to know about his pretty quickly and the HBS site has not yet been updated with his details. Congratulations on the achievement! He was a senior executive and part of the founding team of Subhiksha Trading Services, one of India's largest chains of supermarkets and pharmacies, before joining the GSB faculty. He was also an assistant vice president of Viswapriya Financial Services Limited in India and an assistant manager of investment banking at the State Bank of India Capital Markets Limited.Suraj earned a bachelor's degree Electrical and Electronics engineering and a master’s degree in physics from BITS in 1991 prior to earning an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in 1993. Suraj also received a doctorate degree in business administration from Harvard Business School in 2004, where he earned the George S. Dively Award for outstanding thesis research.
Links: Current Professional Page
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BITSian trying to make a difference in biometrics
Arun Abraham Ross, a computer science graduate (1992-96) from BITS-Pilani is currently engaged in excellent research in the new and fast spreading area of Biometrics. His departments work was covered in CNN a while ago.
He is presently an assistant professor at the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the West Virginia University.
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BITSian author of a global book
The Internet has made it possible to co-author a book along with several authors from other countries. Dr Nilay Yajnik, a Professor of Information Systems at the School of Business Management - NMIMS University (Mumbai) has co-authored the book "Alleviating Poverty through Business Strategy" along with authors from USA, Mexico, Turkey, Canada and India whose world-wide release happened on March 4th, 2008.
Libraries from all over the world have already procured this book for their library. In fact one can see details of this book in the on-line catalog of the largest library in the world - The Library of Congress in Washington DC. Dr.Yajnik has a Ph.D. in Management Studies from NMIMS (University of Mumbai) and has also obtained a Master of Science (Technology) from BITS-Pilani.
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Yet another high-tech BITSian founded company in the news
TAGNOS, a California based company specializing in providing intelligent RFID and ultra sound tracking solutions for use in the health care industry was recently in the news. Their system is now adopted all over the USA and is taking great strides forwards. The company was founded by Neeraj Bhavani. He has earned a masters degree in Computer Science from BITS-Pilani and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA with emphasis in Finance and Entrepreneurship.
Links: Full Story
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Counter argument for alleged false press claim
Dean “Nattu” BR Natarajan who has been unfailingly updating the www with regular PR updates about BITS-Pilani had something to say on World Press Freedom Day. Recently a rather negative story about the child sex ratio at Vidya Vihar, Pilani has been making its rounds.
He questioned the authenticity of that article and as a result made some rather interesting reading. Freedom of expression rocks eh!
Links: Full Story
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This might already be stale news to you as it has been making its rounds for a while. But in case you didn’t know Emerging Media, owners of the Jaipur IPL franchise Rajasthan Royals announced a first of its kind global fan alliance by signing an exclusive relationship with BITSAA. This deal came to BITSAA through Dreamcricket.com (founded by BITSian Venu Palaparthi from the 1987 batch). As part of this deal BITSians around the world can avail the following benefits: · 50% discount on all season tickets for all home games (played at Jaipur) · 20% discount on purchase of 10 or more tickets for specific games (i.e not season tickets) · Free tickets for home games that BITSAA will raffle to its members for specific promotions · 50% discount to BITSians who may want to purchase a VIP box for the season · Special tickets to RR away games like the ones in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata · Discounts on RR merchandise · Articles from Shane Warne and other Rajasthan Royals players for the Alumni Magazine, Sandpaper 2.0 Not bad at all eh… ;)
Links: Blog, Full Story
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