Year: 2019

Evolution of Office Automation – A Personal Experience

Evolution of Office Automation – A Personal Experience

“I was a naïve, confused 21-year old when I joined IIT Kharagpur in 1982 through an open advertisement. Having appeared for a three-step test which included written, typing and interview, my first posting was at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. By 25, I graduated to the secretarial post from clerical cadre by clearing set of internal examinations. It was the time when predecessors of computers ruled office work. What am I talking of? Typewriters. Typewriters manufactured by companies like Remington, Godrej, Halda and Facit , were mostly used in this Institute for preparing a typed document. Carbon papers…
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Driving force

Driving force

Recruiting, encouraging and retaining talent becomes imperative for the success of an educational institution of the stature of IIT Kharagpur, recognized already as an Institution of Eminence. Chair Professorships are critical to this exercise. Institute Chairs, Faculty Excellence awards and alumni-funded Chairs all contribute to creating an ecosystem that nurtures creativity, rewards excellence and provides an incentive for hard work. It is a privilege for IIT Kharagpur that its alumni understand this connection. Over the years, several Chairs have been created by the alumni to encourage excellence. Alumni-endowed Chairs are, in fact, increasingly driving research in critical and challenging areas…
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IIT KGP’s Clean Energy Dialogue

IIT KGP’s Clean Energy Dialogue

Business Standard       Devdiscourse     UNIIndia PK Sinha Center for Bioenergy and Renewables at IIT Kharagpur has organized the DBT National Workshop on Bioenergy (DNWB 2019) in Kolkata on October 17-18, 2019. Funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, this workshop aims to bring together bioenergy scientists from around the country to promote a national conversation on and solve technological challenges towards achieving the national mission of deploying clean energy to fight climate change. The workshop provides a rare opportunity to DBT's five Bioenergy Centers, namely, the DBT-Pan IIT Center for Bioenergy, the DBT-ICGEB Center…
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IIT Kharagpur’s Young Innovators Program Sails High across Asia

IIT Kharagpur’s Young Innovators Program Sails High across Asia

India Today     Careers360 IIT Kharagpur is all set to welcome close to one hundred finalists from across Asia for the grand finale of the Young Innovators Program scheduled on November 8-10, 2019. This international science and technology competition witnessed a participation of close to 2500 students in class VIII-X in the previous rounds from an initial outreach of more than 4500 schools globally. Apart from various regions in India, students from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, UAE, Saudi Arabia participated in the event. The one-of-a-kind competition has been highly appreciated across secondary educational fraternity and corporate R&D leaders as a…
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Taking charge

Taking charge

The International Conference on Advances in Polymer Science and Rubber Technology (APSRT) at IIT Kharagpur, organized by the Rubber Technology Centre from September 24-27, discussed what should be the future agenda for the world threatened by Climate Change. Plastics naturally figured prominently in the conference that mulled over how polymer science and the rubber industry had to focus intensively on driving innovation within the broad sustainability framework through waste prevention, re-use, repair, remanufacture and recycling. Prof. Thomas Kurian of the Cochin University of Science and Technology, for example, explained chemical recycling of PET bottles by a route based in aminolysis.…
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Water, Water Everywhere!

Water, Water Everywhere!

The water babies of IIT Kharagpur dived in and swam out with medals, leaving Dhanbad and Roorkee behind them. With tough competition from their Madras and Bombay counterparts, the swimmers gave their best performance, proving their nerves of steel, during tense moments. The inclusion of sports has always been considered to be one of the pillars in the all-round development in the Indian Academic system. The IITs, where the academic acceptance rate is less than 1%, and where students are evaluated on the basis of their studies, the sporting culture has always taken a backseat.  However, a little over three…
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Towards a Greener, Cleaner World

Towards a Greener, Cleaner World

Sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ; Sarve santu nirāmayāḥ Sarve bhadrāṇi paśyantu; Mā kashchit duḥkha bhāgbhavet ‘May all be prosperous and happy, May all be free from illness, May all see what is spiritually uplifting, May no one suffer. A 16-YO global icon of climate activism, Ms Greta Thunberg took on national and international leaders with her speech at the United Nations Climate Summit on 23rd September 2019. Closer home, Vision Prabaho, a team of green evangelists of IIT Kharagpur, is making an effort in their little way to promote climate consciousness in and around the campus. The team, under the aegis of…
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Every Frame Has a Story

Every Frame Has a Story

The office door creaked open and in walked a gentleman in a pink-purple striped shirt and grey trousers, with his laptop bag hung from over his right shoulder. It was 6:05 pm by the clock. Shyamal Biswas – the name was synonymous with photography, in the campus. He is an ace photographer with credits from the National Geographic. “My passion for photography goes back a long way. It accelerated after coming to IIT. I remember I just passed out of my 10th standard, and was awarded a national scholarship of Rs 300. I spent 150 rupees to buy a Snapper…
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Agenda for the future

Agenda for the future

Natural biopolymers made from silk, chitosan, collagen, gelan gum are now not only used to make scaffolds for tissue engineering, but they can also be used to create a “3D cell culture microenviroment” to investigate the proliferation and migration of cancer cells. The information was given to the audience by Dr Subhas C. Kundu of the University of Minho, Portugal at the International Conference on Advances in Polymer Science and Rubber Technology (APSRT) at IIT Kharagpur held from September 24-27. At another session at the same conference, Prof. Sanjib K. Patra of the Department of Chemistry of IIT Kharagpur explained…
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Facebook Awards IIT KGP’s AI Research

Facebook Awards IIT KGP’s AI Research

Indian Express       Financial Express        The Week        Times Now           Hindustan Times         NDTV           Business Standard Animesh Mukherjee, Associate Professor at the Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur has been selected for the Ethics in AI Research Award in the ‘operationalizing ethics’ category for his project “Targeted Bias in Indian Media Outlets”.  The Award is part of Facebook’s initiative to encourage research on AI ethics and address intricate challenges and complex ethical questions in the AI domain. The award-winning project is part of…
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