Month: December 2021

Meet The Alumni With Over 200 Patents: Mr. Anil Agiwal of Samsung Research

Mr. Anil Agiwal, an alumnus of the Institute’s Computer Science and Engineering Department,
has received his 200th US patent grant in November 2021. He is now on the global list of prolific
inventors that includes individuals who have been granted 200 or more patents in the USA. He is
now on an all-time list of 316 inventors.

The patents include innovations on advanced radio access technologies (such as 4G, 5G, 5G
advanced) for cellular communication. Mr. Agiwal said that “patience and perseverance
combined with an urge to innovate have helped me receive 200+ patent grants (204 as of
today).” He thanked and praised his colleagues and co-inventors for their collaborative efforts
and tireless commitment to achieving this feat.

Mr. Agiwal graduated with an M.Tech in Computer Science & Information Technology in 2001.
He joined Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore (SRI-B) through campus placement from IIT
Kharagpur in 2002. He relocated to Samsung, South Korea in 2013 to work directly with the 5G
communications research lab there. He is a researcher and standardization expert in wireless
communications. Currently, he is working as a Director in the Samsung
Research Center at Samsung Research, Seoul. His current role involves research and
standardization of 5G/5G-advanced radio communication technologies for lower and higher
frequency bands (licensed and unlicensed), which enables enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB),
massive Machine Type Communication (m-MTC), Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency
Communication (URLLC); and support verticals such as Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) and
Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications.

Since his first responsibility to write the start-up code and porting operating system for the
CDMA chipset, he has made significant contributions towards software design, development,
and commercialization of 3G/4G modem protocol stacks and algorithm development. He has
invented and standardized several technologies in the field of cellular communication. He has
also collaborated with Samsung R&D teams in India, the UK, the USA, and Korea for advanced
wireless communication research and standardization. He has actively contributed to various
standard bodies such as 3GPP2, IEEE, and 3GPP for CDMA, Advanced WiMAX, and
LTE/5G-NR standardization respectively. Several of his patents are adopted in the Advanced
WiMAX, 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE), and 5G New Radio (NR) standards.

Anil Agiwal is a recipient of the Samsung Research Innovator Award, Samsung Best Paper
Award, Inventor of the Year Award (for several years), Patent of the Year Award, amongst
several other awards and recognitions at Samsung.

In the course of the interview with the KGP Chronicle, he fondly recalled his RP Hall friends and
batchmates, the late-night discussions, Maggi at Chedis, and the Illumination on Diwali. “The
rigorous and research-oriented master’s program and excellent faculty members at IITKGP have
strengthened my creative thinking“, said Mr. Agiwal. He further said that the attention to detail
and focus on collaboration during the Master’s helped him immensely in innovating new
technologies at Samsung and he is proud to be an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur.

Content Writer:- Arkaprabha Pal, Office of Alumni Affairs & Branding

Email: pal18arkaprabha@gmail.com

REALIZING THE METAVERSE: ‘BETAVERSE’ WINS THE SAMSUNG INNOVATION AWARD 2021

A few weeks prior to Facebook’s Meta announcement plunged the world into a new era of social
media connectedness and metaverses, some of the most brilliant minds of the country were
competing to create metaverse technologies of their own in the 2021 Samsung Innovation Award
Silver Jubilee Edition.

This year’s competition was won by Ojas Deshmukh, a third-year dual degree B.Tech
Biotechnology student at IIT Kharagpur for his Betaverse project. He is also the Managing Head
of Computer Graphics Society and a Head at SWARM Robotics at the institute.

The project intends to act as a platform that users and developers can use to engage or participate
in the metaverse. It attempts to create such a framework that can be leveraged by developers to
publish their works on a single unified free platform, forming a base to build a metaverse. The
platform can host multiple games in the same spot while being flexible enough to allow users to
create their own personalized metaverse without any additional effort on the developer side.

Before diving deeper into the Betaverse, let us briefly familiarize ourselves with the Samsung
Innovation Awards and what exactly is a metaverse.

The Samsung Innovation Award
Since 2011, the Samsung R&D Institute India in Bengaluru has been organizing the Samsung
Innovation Award to encourage research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the student
community. It supports talent who can present an innovative approach and develop solutions,
products that can solve real-time social problems. Students in teams of 3 from the same institute
participate, brainstorm, innovate and present their work. This year teams from approximately 12
IITs participated in the competition.

The theme for the 2021 edition was the ‘Metaverse’. Students were asked to explore the
intersection of physical, augmented, and virtual reality. They were asked to present working
prototypes and demonstrations on their ideas on AR / VR, Vision, Multimedia & Graphics, Photo
Realistic Rendering, 3D Spaces and Reconstruction, Immersive Multimodal Interaction Systems,
and other enabling technologies like Communications, Sensor Networks and Common Interfaces
The scope included experiences in gaming, art, entertainment, live events, tourism, health,
education, marketing, digital payments, etc.

A Little More On The Metaverse
The metaverse is essentially any virtual reality space on the internet that is accessible through
PCs, virtual and augmented reality headsets, and on select gaming and chat platforms. The term
was coined and popularized through the 1992 dystopian sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson, Snow
Crash.

Presently, the metaverse addresses technological limitations through virtual and augmented
reality equipment. It is also centered on the expansion of metaverse spaces to education, retail,
entertainment, business, and research.

The Betaverse

The beta for any application is a preview build that adapts and changes based on the users. In
simple words a testing ground for a product before it is launched. The open-world scene in the
project allows users to customize and personalize their “virtual worlds” in the form of asset
bundles, thereby creating a unique Betaverse experience for themselves.

Moderators can create a world by requesting a build token that gives them authority to create
positions for developers, who can share Asset Bundles on any third-party site, which will be
downloadable and used on the user’s end during runtime. The project will not control the
Content Delivery Network or the Asset Bundles that are used. Developers can create their own
ecosystem within the Betaverse and build many worlds in it.

The Betaverse is built using the Unity Game Engine, taking inspiration from games and
simulators like Kerbal Space Program, where “mods” can be added simply by placing packages
in folders; it can accept all forms of Asset Bundles from third party websites. It will eventually
be made open-source.

The prototype was demonstrated by including a multitude of subsystems, essentially becoming a
testament to the versatility of this framework. Mirror was used to enable a large client-server
connection and support traffic for the multi-player system. GPU rendering was used to get better
framerates and support particle effects. Compressed height, albedo, and normal maps are used to
optimize the experience. Ads were inserted by merging textures and searching a list for
keywords, which has the option to be replaced by NLP and Google Speech API. Further builds
can easily be used for VR by adding a VR-Plugin using the server-side asset update ability.

The fact that Asset Bundles are imported implies that multiple devices can be used without
changing a single line of code in this build, essentially enabling cross compatibility as a side
effect of the Betaverse.

The Road Ahead
The metaverse is like the Wild West, with a technological Gold Rush just upon us. Ojas believes
that it has a huge potential to create dynamic virtual reality user-interaction spaces in the years to
come. Having worked on the tech development side of the project, he realized that the metaverse
in the future must be democratic. Developers must have the freedom to navigate, experiment,
and innovate. They must have control over their metaverse. Any particular organization or a
group of organizations having a monopoly or oligopoly over the space would forfeit the very
purpose of the metaverse. The maintenance of data privacy is also crucial in this regard.

The metaverse is the new age of social media. It will become an integral part of daily lives in the
near future. Young and brilliant minds like Ojas, who are highly motivated by cutting-edge
technologies of the future, are the torchbearers who will lead us into the new future.

Content Writer:- Arkaprabha Pal, Office of Alumni Affairs & Branding

Email: pal18arkaprabha@gmail.com

Photo credits: Ojas Deshmukh

IITKGP Entry, CodAR, Wins The Serious Games Showcase and Challenge (SGS&C)-2021

IIT Kharagpur’s entry to The Serious Games Showcase and Challenge (SGS&C)-2021, Cod AR,
has won this year’s challenge in the Innovation category.
The Serious Games Showcase and Challenge is a premier destination for recognition of
excellence in the field of Serious Games development. This year, awards were presented in the
following categories – Best Government Game, Best Student Developed Game, Best Business Developed Game, and Best XR Game.

CodAR, developed by Mr. Vandit Sharma, a 2021 graduate from the Department of
Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering, under the supervision of Dr. Kaushal
Kumar Bhagat, Assistant Professor in the Advanced Technology Development Centre, is an
Augmented Reality based serious game that teaches computer programming skills and introduces
basic concepts of computer programming such as sequence, functions, and iterative codes
(loops).

Developed on the Unity Game Engine and playable on Android OS – 7 (Nougat) and above, the
goal of the game is to help the primary character (a bunny) to collect all the carrots in a particular
level by logically arranging playing cards in a sequence to control the bunny’s movement. The
whole process mimics the development of actual code snippets enabling learners to learn coding
by winning the game. The game has been designed for 12-year-olds ( Grade 5 and 6). It uses
Game Learning analytics to measure a player’s learning outcome. The analytics include the
highest game level unlocked, number of attempts in each level, progress, and time to complete.
Players also receive feedback while playing the game.

To learn more about the game, click:  https://youtu.be/AiwC79WfGZE

In a conversation with The KGP Chronicle, Dr. Bhagat stated that gamification is the future of
learning. Edutainment products like CodAR are crucial in imparting knowledge to the new
generations of learners. He further said that“Learning needs to be more interactive, joyful,
engaging and effective through AR and VR”. Many countries across Europe, North America,
and East Asia have introduced learning through AR in schools and received very encouraging
feedback from students.

Even though India lags behind in the research, acceptance, and implementation of AR
technology, Prof. Bhagat believes that it has an immense potential to develop frugal, scalable and
portable products and become a multi-million dollar research and production hub in the near
future.

Content Writer:- Arkaprabha Pal, Office of Alumni Affairs & Branding

Email: pal18arkaprabha@gmail.com

IIT Kharagpur celebrates its 67th Convocation in the august presence of Minister of Education Shri Dharmendra Pradhan

Creating a historic benchmark by crossing 1600 plus offers in the Phase I of placement season 2021, IIT Kharagpur celebrated its 67th Convocation on December 18, 2021. Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Honourable Minister of Education and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India graced the occasion as the Chief Guest. Shri Sanjiv Goenka, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Kharagpur honoured us with his virtual presence. With prolific advancements towards engaging new advents in technological pursuits and branching out to diverse fields of medical, law, management and entrepreneurship, for the first time IIT Kharagpur is proud to bestow a Lifetime Achievement Award to Prof. M A Ramlu who served as the founder Head of the Department of Mining Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and retired as an Officiating Director of IIT Kharagpur. Along with Prof Ramlu, five awardees including Prof. Sadhan Kumar De, Prof. Biswa Nath Chatterji, Puran Chand Dang, Shri Gopal Rajgarhia and Dr. Asoke Kumar Deysarkar were conferred the Life Fellow Awards of IIT Kharagpur 2021. 5 pioneers comprising of Prof. Suresh Chandra Mishra, Commander VK Jaitly, Dr. Mohan Rao, Krishan Mohan Khanna and Dr. Mukund Padmanabhan were also honoured with the Distinguished Alumnus Awards. This year IIT Kharagpur conferred the Doctor of Sciences (Honoris Causa) to 3 eminent personalities namely Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, Dr. Tessy Thomas and Professor Harish Chandra Verma.

Today we are felicitating 1573 UG, 1253 PG, 34 MS, 333 Research Scholars along with 333 Ph.D (i.e., 302 Ph.D + 1 Joint MS- Ph.D + 12 Joint M. Tech/MCP- Ph.D + 18 Joint M.Sc- Ph. D), 34 MS, 918 M. Tech, 47 MCP, 120 MBA, 28 EMBA, 3 MMST, 20 MHRM, 17 LLM, 39 LLB, 61 PGDBA (a tri-institute programme with IIM Kolkata and ISI Kolkata), 557 Dual Degree, 450 B.Tech (Hons), 38 B.Arch (Hons), 4 six-year integrated M.Sc and M.Tech, 217 five-year integrated M.Sc, 7 three-year M.Sc and 300 two-year M.Sc degrees.

This year the President of India Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the outgoing B. Tech. (Hons.) and B. Arch. (Hons.) students was awarded to Mr. Gurjot Singh Suri, Department of Computer Science and Engineering who hails from Assam. A district topper in high school, he was awarded scholarship by the Government of Assam on being selected for IIT Kharagpur. He is currently working as a Software Engineer in Uber India. ThePresident of India Gold Medalfor the best all-round performance among the B. Tech. (Hons.) and B. Arch. (Hons.) outgoing students is awarded to Mr. Manthan Patel, Department of Mechanical Engineering. An avid robotics enthusiast from Ahmedabad, he represented the institute multiple times at various International and Inter-IIT Tech competitions. He is a recipient of the DAAD-WISE Research Scholarship (Completed at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany) as well as the OP Jindal Engineering and Management Scholarship. He is currently pursuing M Sc in robotics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The Prime Minster of India Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the Dual Degree and Integrated M Sc. Outgoing students is awarded to Mr. Omar Eqbal, Department of Computer Science and Engineering. A topper, a NTSE scholar, selected for KVPY fellowship from Patna, Omar Eqbal is currently working as a software engineer at Nutanix.

The Dr. Jnan Chandra Ghosh Memorial Gold Medal for the best all-round performance among the Dual Degree and Integrated M.Sc. outgoing students is being given to Harsh Maheshwari from the Department of Electrical Engineering. Among the others are Chirag Arora of the Department of Chemistry, who is awarded the Professor Jagadish Chandra Bose Memorial Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the outgoing students of all 2-year M. Sc. courses in the Science disciplines, Arshdeep Singh of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering is awarded the Director’s Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the students completing M. Tech. and MCP courses and Jaskaran Singh of Reliability Engineering is awarded the Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold Medal for the best all-round performance among the M. Tech. and MCP outgoing students. The Chairman, Board of Governor’s Gold Medal for PG category is awarded to Naveen Narasimhachar Joshi and for UG category to Buddhadeb Mondal.

Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Education Minister, Govt. of India in his address said that it is a privilege to enter into the ecosystem of IIT Kharagpur which was chosen as the first Centre of Excellence in the country after independence. He said that the Indian Knowledge system has been established on the grounds of Hijli Detention Camp which enriches the historic culture of IIT Kharagpur and is recognized as the post-independence temple of learning. He added that IIT Kharagpur will be the epicentre of change that traverses around the world in the coming years as it has a heritage and sacraments of sacrifice. He added that today we need new ideas to originate from India in the global scenario and India will be the fastest growing economy in the coming years.  He also said that achieving  successful 100 crore vaccinations was possible because of the IITs and NITs of this country. In the 21st century, the economy of the world will be run by those who have the market, the qualitative low cost workforce and the critical minds. He added that India can produce clean energy at one fourth of the cost compared to European countries which would be made possible by the IITians that is already proven in many verticals. He also added that India needs to build a low cost energy attracting manufacturing units of the world which will lead to economic empowerment of the country. He said that IIT Kharagpur should become the epicentre of major research initiatives that can make India a global power like America, and that IIT Kharagpur should innovate ways for incorporating MSMEs and implement alternate energy into a localized funded grid. He also informed about the leadership role IIT Kharagpur has taken in the area of VLSI chip design. He concluded saying that there should be “Purva Uday” (Rise of Eastern India) leading to investments in innovation for community welfare.

Prof V. K Tewari, Director IIT Kharagpur said that the institute hopes to bring life back to normal by calling back all students by next session notwithstanding the next variant OMICRON. He said that IIT KGP was successful in incorporating the provisions of NEP 2020 by revising its curriculum in UG/PG level be it credit bank or seamless movements of students in any discipline. He also said that the faculties as well as the students have dedicatedly designed and developed several equipment related to healthcare including COVIRAP, Painless needle, telemedicine, social distancing device etc. Expanding its horizons in Medical Sciences and Medical Engineering, the new Super-Speciality Hospital in the name of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee has started its OPD with 14 visiting specialist with 250 beds. He added that in the coming years, his mission is to take this institute to top 10 universities of the world for which seven niche areas comprising Advanced Manufacturing Systems for Industry 4.0, Safety Engineering & Analytics, Quality & Reliability, Healthcare, Precision Agriculture & Food Nutrition, Smart Infrastructure and Advanced Transportation are identified. He concluded that IIT KGP has made history by getting the highest placement offers among all IITs and aims to become the global benchmark in education.

Content Writer:- Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)

Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282004