Arjun Malhotra sends heart warming message to welcome the new KGPians of Y2024

Esteemed Alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, Mr. Arjun Malhotra who is widely renowned for his instrumental role in co-founding the HCL Group, way back in 1975 and is currently the Chairman of the Advisory Board of Altysys sent a heart-warming message to welcome the Freshers of the Y2024. As a proud Alumnus, he recalls his days in his Alma Mater and shares the anecdotes that will help the new undergrads to have a home away from home. The Institute is indeed overwhelmed for the inspiring words of Mr. Malhotra for our newbies.

 

“”Hello KGPians, this is Arjun Malhotra. I am an Electronics Graduate from 1970.I want to welcome all of you to @IIT Kharagpur. I hope you all see the advantage of being in a small town like Kharagpur away from the metros. The important thing here is, this Institute allows you to make a life for your own. You do not have to rush to the city to enjoy yourself. You enjoy your life, set-up you own life, make friends and do things that you normally may or may not do when you are in a city. When I was there, I played games, acted in plays, was in debates, quizzes etc. both at the institute and at the department level and in the hostels. So make friends, I think this is great opportunity. I will be there in campus on January 2025 around spring festival time. It is a 60th year of joining and over a hundred of my batch mates will be there just to tell you about the bonds that living few years in IIT Kharagpur creates among people. So I just want to say, it is great to have you at Kharagpur, all of you please enjoy your stay…there will be lots of issues but you should have lots of fun and I look forward to meeting many of you then and there in January next year. All the very best.” – From Arjun Malhotra (1970/B.Tech/EC/RP)

Arjun Malhotra has been a prominent figure in the Indian IT entrepreneurial scene. He is widely renowned for his instrumental role in co-founding the HCL Group, way back in 1975. After an illustrious career in HCL, he went on to successfully build and exit companies such as TechSpan and Headstrong. Malhotra’s wisdom has helped in building several organizations worldwide as well as eminent institutions, such as ISB, Hyderabad, and IIT (Kharagpur) Foundation. His contributions to the Indian IT industry were recognized with several distinguished awards, including the Albert Einstein Technology Medal in 2001 and the DQ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Altysys, a data and cloud-first start-up with deep expertise in the healthcare IT consulting and services ecosystem has appointed Arjun Malhotra as the chairman of its advisory board.

“I am extremely excited and honored to have joined Altysys as the chairman of the advisory board. Altysys has the potential for rapid growth and innovation. Together, we shall drive innovation, foster digital solutions, and prioritize data security, all with a steadfast dedication to improving patient outcomes and shaping the future of healthcare,” said Arjun.

Malhotra, acclaimed for his distinctive insights into IT industry, was the first leading Indian entrepreneur to relocate to USA who took over HCL’s US operations (now known as HCL Technologies) in 1989 and grew it to nearly $100 million annual revenues. He has a long string of entrepreneurial successes. He has served as Chairman of Headstrong’s Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of TechSpan. He is on the Board of Governors of ISB, Hyderabad and IIT (Kharagpur) Foundation. Arjun’s contributions to the Indian IT industry were recognized with several distinguished awards, including the Albert Einstein Technology Medal in 2001 and DQ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Arjun is presently an Advisor in a number of start-ups in Education and healthcare verticals.

Reacting to the news, Abhinav Mishra, the CEO of Altysys said, “We are absolutely thrilled that Arjun has agreed to chair our advisory board. His vast expertise will undoubtedly steer Altysys toward unprecedented growth and success. With his guidance, we are poised to revolutionize healthcare technology services and deliver innovative solutions that will transform the industry and positively impact countless lives.”

“Altysys, under the guidance of Malhotra, will be aiming for the next orbit of growth. The company is already growing exponentially as it serves multiple clients from the healthcare and insurance industries to facilitate their data, AI/ML, and cloud initiatives, improving patients’ and HCPs’ outcomes,” he added.

The company founded by executives with several years of experience in technology consulting and services, is a provider of healthcare technology consulting and solutions. Headquartered in Bengaluru the company is a data and cloud-first company with deep expertise in health clouds, data interoperability, data analytics, GenAI, and AI/ML-enabled technology solutions, serving Payers, Providers, Health Techs, and Pharma.

Media Courtesy:
https://startup.outlookindia.com/sector/saas/altysys-appoints-arjun-malhotra-as-new-chairman-of-advisory-board-news-9454

By : Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007

Follow us on: Facebook – IIT Kharagpur; Twitter – @IITKgp;  Instagram – @iit.kgp; LinkedIn – Indian Institute of Technology
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International Workshop on Biodiversity & Climate Change

We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and we are the last generation that can do something about it. We only get one home, one planet, there is no plan B. The climate has changed, we have changed, our tolerance and habits have changed. Biodiversity is our most valuable asset but least appreciated resource. Despite our many advances, our environment is still threatened by a range of problems including global climate change, energy dependency on unsustainable fossil fuels and loss of biodiversity. Therefore, there is a need to create an awareness about  maintaining ecology among the masses and address the graving concerns that pose a threat to the natural habit of human beings.

 

On the lines of creating awareness about biodiversity and climate change, the 3rd International Workshop on Biodiversity and Climate Change (BDCC-2023) was organized by the Centre for Ocean, River, Atmosphere, and Land Sciences (CORAL) at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur on the rising diminishment over ecological disruptions. The four-day programme including field trips to Sundarbans and Similipal Biosphere Reserve was attended by over 230 participants who arrived at the IIT Kharagpur campus on 15th February. The Inaugural session was organized at Kalidas Auditorium on 17th February 2023 in the august presence by eminent Professors and Scientists comprising of Dr. M Mohapatra, Director General of Meteorology, IMD; Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur; Prof. V P Singh, Texas A&M University, USA; Dr. S Behera, Director of Application Laboratory, JAMSTEC, Japan; Prof. B Pani, Dean of Colleges, University of Delhi;  Dr. T Meloth, Director, NCPOR, MoES; Prof. S K Dube, Former Director, IIT Kharagpur; Prof. K Kumar, Chairman CORAL and Prof. M D Behera, Organizing Secretary BDCC – 2023.

Prof. K Kumar, Chairman of BDCC-2023 welcomed the delegates on the dias, followed by lighting of the auspicious lamp by Dr. M Mohapatra and Prof V K Tewari in the presence of other dignitaries followed by a recitation of national anthem by a few students from Kendriya Vidyalaya, IIT Kharagpur. Dr. M D Behera, the Organizing Secretary provided an overview of the event with connection to the past two BDCC workshops and highlighted on the GOI Net Zero targets and nature-based climate solutions.

Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur remarked, “If we look at the nature closely, every species is a masterpiece, exquisitely adapted to the particular environment in which it has has survived. I feel honored and proud to witness the 3rd International Workshop on Biodiversity and Climate Change (BDCC-2023) organized by CORAL at IIT Kharagpur. Biodiversity forms the backbone of any Nation’s prosperity and development. India is bestowed with immense biological wealth in its different habitats and they provide various ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, food provision etc. However, with climate change crisis exacerbating biodiversity losses and shifts in ecosystems dynamics, it is the need of the hour to adopt multifaceted mitigation and adaptation measures for ecosystem restoration and sustainable development.”

Prof. S K Dube deliberated on the genesis of CORAL and its journey in the frontier era of climate change education and research. Prof. B Pani explained the compliance of the National Education Policy with climate studies, while Dr. T Meloth appraised on climate change footprints on the 3rd pole. Dr. S Behera emphasized on the prediction of monsoon and its impact on the economy in terms of crop yield and diseases like malaria. Prof. V P Singh highlighted the importance of water resources and its conservation in the era of changing climate. A pheno-meteorological observation tower installed in Similipal Biosphere Reserve was e-inaugurated by Dr. M Mohapatra in presence of Prof. V K Tewari; Dr. B K Bhattacharya and Dr. C P Singh, Scientists from Space Application Centre (SAC-ISRO), Ahmedabad.

The workshop started with four tutorials including (i) Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) using Machine Learning (ML), (ii) Soft Techniques in Environmental Geochemistry and Sediment Analysis, (iii) Geomatics and Data Analytics using Open Source – Google Earth Engine (GEE), and (iv) A Hierarchy of Glacier Models on 16th February with hands-on training by the Research Scholars of CORAL. Participants including students and young scientists from various international, national, and state institutes also attended the tutorials.

India is a very committed towards tackling the effects of climate change and has promoted and enacted various initiatives. India has tapped the potential of nature-based solutions to achieve net zero targets and uphold its commitment to the Paris Agreement. India’s commitment towards achieving Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents through additional forest and tree cover, Mission LiFE, Honourable Prime Minister’s ‘Panchamrit’ or five-fold declarations project our stance for circular and sustainable economic development,” remarked Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur.

The workshop accommodated seven technical sessions such as  Biodiversity and Land Cover Dynamics; Geomatics and Data Analytics; Forest and Agricultural Resource & Biotechnology; Extreme Weather Events and Natural Hazards; Global Cryosphere and The Himalayas; Biogeochemistry- Terrestrial and Marine; Nature-based Solution and Net-Zero Targets. The technical sessions were conducted in parallel in three halls with three keynote talks in each technical session by eminent scientists, who also co-chaired the sessions.

The first plenary session was chaired by Prof V P Singh, wherein Dr. M Mohapatra, Mr. D Ray, PCCF and CWLW, WB state and Dr. S Behera talked on ‘Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events’, ‘Climate threats to Sunderbans Mangroves’ and ‘Monsoon Climate and Food Security’ respectively. The plenary session-II was chaired by Prof B Pani, wherein Dr. E Sharma, Ex-DDG, ICIMOD and Dr. T Meloth and Dr. C Biradar, Country Director, CIFOR-ICRAF, Delhi talked on ‘Himalayan responses to changing climate’, ‘Climatic responses of polar regions’, and ‘Agroforestry interventions towards food security in the warming world’. The plenary session-III was chaired by Prof. S K Dube, wherein Dr. S Nayak, Former Secretary MOES, GOI); Dr. A Orr, British Antarctic Survey, UK; Dr. D H Bromwich, Ohio State University, USA and Dr. Kyle Clem, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ, deliberated on a wide range of topics with respect to climate actions in different spheres.

“All these key policy decisions and initiatives clearly demonstrate  that our efforts for climate change mitigation should begin at the grassroot level starting from an individual and become unified as a massive wave for the common goal of preserving our planet. Being blessed with lush green campus, our staff and students of IIT Kharagpur have a plethora of opportunities to create a better world. We are proud to have undertaken different projects to enhance and maintain IIT-KGP campus a green campus. With our vision being – Dedicated to the service of the Nation, we seek to impart value based knowledge in addition to academic curriculum to our students in order to transform them into future leaders of tomorrow. This International workshop is a critical step in that direction which combines both traditional as well as modern fields of science. I congratulate Dr. Mukunda Dev Behera and the entire team for organizing this great event. I strongly encourage the researchers  and participants to take full advantage of this workshop,”

 

stated Prof. V K Tewari.

The keynote talks of each technical session were oriented towards sustainable development perspectives. The participants presented their works in terms of rapid-oral and standard-oral as per specific format and allotted time. A few awards were adjudged from each session by the session co-chairs and the awardees were given a certificate and momento in the Valedictory session on 18th Feb 2023. Field trips to Sunderbans and Siilipal Biosphere Reserve on 19th and 20th February. Several deliberations in the event have led to better understanding of how can we better understand feedbacks between climate change and biodiversity, how do we maintain a balance between bioresource management and socio-economic development, how do cryospheric changes in polar regions and high mountains affect biodiversity, water cycle and global climate etc. Forecasting and preparing for natural hazards and extreme weather events, understanding the intricacies between terrestrial and marine bio-geochemical cycles, geomatics perspective on spatial biodiversity and ways to achieve the net-zero targets through nature-based solutions were among the other topics of discussion.

Healthy ecosystems constitute healthy planet. In this connection, ecosystem restoration is a win-win strategy that is crucial to attain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate targets of the Paris Agreement. The on-going climate change is unequivocally anthropogenic and together with other stressors like deforestation, land degradation, biological invasion, etc. has resulted in species losses and shifts in landscape dynamics. The carbon cycle and the water cycle, arguably the two most important large-scale processes for life on Earth, depend on biodiversity at genetic, species, and ecosystem levels and can yield feedbacks to climate change.

Inputs by: Prof. M D Behera, CORAL, IIT Kharagpur
Email: mdbehera@coral.iitkgp.ac.in

Edited by : Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007

Follow us on: Facebook – IIT Kharagpur; Twitter – @IITKgp;  Instagram – @iit.kgp; LinkedIn – Indian Institute of Technology
For news visit: https://kgpchronicle.iitkgp.ac.in/ 

Lessons from Day 3

Beating all conventional logic, which would expect the number of placements to go down steadily with each passing day, the figures at IIT Kharagpur show a consistently upward trend. From 170 placements offered on Day 1, the figure went up to 250 on Day 2. A total of 162 were placed on Day 3, with the top recruiters of the day being Honeywell, Axis Bank, ANI Technologies (OLA) with 34, 12 and 10 offers respectively.

Perhaps the faces said it all. Although still clad in their crisp white shirt and dark trousers and coat, many of those assembling in Nalanda bore little or no mark of the tension that had surfaced on faces on Day 1. Some of them who had been placed were still gambolling around Nalanda, if only to pep up their friends.

Amul Patwa from the Mathematics Department had got his placement in AppDynamics – an application performance management and IT operations analytics company based in San Francisco – on Day 1 itself but was still hanging around in Nalanda to cheer up his friends. So was Soumoshree Saha from the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, who had got placed in Flipkart on Day 2.

“All things seemed to be going wrong on the first day for me, but things went smoothly on Day 2 and I got my placement by forenoon itself,” said Soumoshree.

Software was still dominating the offers, said an official from the Career Development Centre of IIT Kharagpur, but offers were robust from the core, analytics and financial and consulting sectors as well. In fact, there have been a substantial number of placements in the banking industry. The number of offers from public sector units had also gone up by three-fourths.

The biggest surprise of this year’s placements has been the number of offers from international firms, with the Japanese companies dominating the show with as many as 24 offers so far.

“What is undoubted is the preference for coding skills. In today’s world, the mantra is coding, so if students are well-equipped in coding, they have an obvious advantage,” said Prof. G.P. Raja Sekhar, Chairman, Career Development Centre, IIT Kharagpur and Chairman, All India Placement Committee.

The fact that stood out as the most obvious conclusion during the placement rounds at Nalanda was that irrespective of the department one belonged to, anyone with a good CGPA had a good chance of securing a placement. This is a fact that IIT Kharagpur has always tried to impress upon JEE qualified students during counselling, when the choice of department becomes an enormous dilemma for both students and their families.

The other fact was the skills that students need to pick up before they face placement. Take the case of Ashutosh Bhaskar from the Geology and Geophysics Department. Ashutosh has got his placement at Tiger Analytics, an advanced analytics and AI consulting company. “I not only cleared several certification courses in analytics, but also sought out internships in places where I could use and improve my analytics skills,” said Ashutosh. “Yes, the booming thing today is data analytics,” concurred Soumoshree. So did Manpreet Gulia from Chemical Engineering, who had secured her placement with Barclays.

Sometimes the curriculum itself at IIT Kharagpur prepares the student for the required skills. Soumoshree said, “My curriculum at the Industrial and System Engineering was diverse and I picked up the necessary skills in data and optimization analytics as also in supply chain management.” The student can also opt to pick up these skills through the curriculum. Take Krutarth Satoskar, who while doing his graduation in Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering also did his minor in Financial Engineering. Not surprisingly, Krutarth has secured his placement in JP Morgan.

Together with the technical skills, the soft skills are as important. Parimal Pratyush of the Industrial and Systems Engineering reminded his interviewer of their significance while hurrying for his session on Day 2 of the placement. He recalled that both the Students’ Welfare Group, a student body operating under the Dean, Student Affairs, and Communiqué, the ‘Official Soft Skills Society’ of IIT Kharagpur have run exclusive sessions to groom students for the placement season. Communiqué, which started in 2006, with the aim to provide students a strong platform to improve their soft skills and personality, conducted a bootcamp and language improvement workshops this year. The society also launched ‘Finshots’ or newsletters they sent out to students in association with ‘Finception’, an IIM-A alumni Startup, to cover important financial and business news.

(After three days of placement, a total of 877 students have been placed including PPOs)

Photography: Suman Sutradhar

That’s what friends are for

While inaugurating the Nagpur Alumni chapter in March, Dean, Alumni Affairs, Prof. Subrata Chattopadhyay, talked about the hub-and-spoke model of Alumni connectivity. “If the two major Alumni foundations (of India and USA) form the hub of the connectivity efforts, the chapters are the spokes. The chapters channelize our efforts to reach out to the Alumni in every nook and corner of the country.”

The Technology Alumni Association Bangalore (TAAB) of IIT Kharagpur has been doing this for years, and now more proactively. Its assistance in facilitating summer internships this year is a prime example of this.

Each year, students – across departments and levels of study – reach out to the organization for its support and assistance in facilitating their summer internship. Having received around 12 requests this year, TAAB got to work.

TAAB President, Dipankar Khasnabish, says, “We collated the basic details – like name, year, departments, areas of interest, location preference if any – of the students. The preference was strongly for data analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.” That done, they began to look for ways to make the connections.

Khasnabish says, “Anjan Datta, our senior alumni, looked into his chapter database and identified alumni across the country who would be able to help in this regard. We connected with alumni who are founders of companies as also leaders and members or corporate organizations.”

Focussed communication was sent to around 250 people and quite a few dialogues started. Some of the respondents came back for CVs, some for clarifications. There were some who said they have no projects but can connect with other companies. In one case, a corporate house had something definite to offer, and it was connected to the placement cell of IIT Kharagpur. Khasnabish says, “Having made the initial contact, we connected the people either to the students directly or to the Institute.”

The initiative of the TAAB has generated a lot of goodwill. The effort has been appreciated by students and alumni alike for being unique and helpful. However, Khasnabish says, “The program has to be more structured in order to be effective. Besides, so far we have no infrastructure to cater to the needs of more than a handful of students.”

The other area where the Institute has received support from TAAB is in the run-up to the launch of the six month program in AI and ML by the Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence. TAAB also played a part through the interactions of Capillary Technologies, which seed-funded the CoE for AI with the Institute, as well the team which is spearheading the efforts.

In October last year, TAAB, in association with the IIT Alumni Centre Bangalore, organized a panel discussion of IIT KGP faculty and alumni and experts in various AI domains to discuss state-of-the-art AI research and applications. The chief guest was IIT KGP Director, Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti. The experts were Subodh Kumar, Co-founder of liv.ai, Dr Sameep Mehta, Senior Researcher, STSM, IBM Research India, Dr Subrat Panda, Head, AI and Data Sciences at Capillary Technologies, and Dr Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Co-founder, SigTuple. The forum was widely appreciated by the speakers and the participants as one of the best they have attended.

Prof. Chakrabarti commented on the occasion (Oct 7, 2018) – a “very productive morning session in Bangalore starting with a meeting of IIT Kharagpur Alumni Foundation India…. What could be more satisfying for a teacher than to listen to the success of your students, especially work done in India and for India – three of the four outstanding speakers are my ex-students. Made a clarion call on AI for India. Received overwhelming support.”

TAAB has also hosted the interaction with the interns at Capillary Technologies. It organized a couple of speaker meetings – including one at Affine Analytics where Mr. Manas Agarwal, the Co-founder, was the speaker.

On the corporate connect front, TAAB facilitated the Institute’s discussions with Wells Fargo for a course in data analytics. TAAB hopes to redouble its efforts along these lines in the coming days.

 

Banner design: Suman Sutradhar

The Industrial and Systems Engineering Department gets a slew of new facilities and laboratories

New facilities and laboratories at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering will promote teaching, research and industry collaboration

Professor Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur inaugurated a number of teaching and research laboratories and other infrastructure facilities on October 27, 2018 in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur. These include the Virtual Reality and Safety Analytics Laboratory, the Operations Research & Data Science Laboratory, the e-Business Laboratory, the Conference-cum-Video Conference Room and the new room of the Head of the Department. Prof. Jhareswar Maiti, Head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, says, “These laboratories will give a fillip to teaching, research and industry collaboration for the department, especially, in pursuit of Industry 4.0”.

The Virtual Reality (VR) Laboratory is dedicated to the purpose of accident modelling, simulation and analysis for improved hazard identification, safety training & education, safety inspection and instruction, and will ultimately help in a big way hazardous industries like iron & steel, oil & gas, coal and power, etc. in implementing the upcoming concept of ‘prevention through design (PtD). IIT Kharagpur has already started providing consultancy to industries such as integrated steel industry on VR based hazard identification, training and PtD for their ongoing operations and upcoming expansion.

Accidents are a cause of serious concern for industries the world over and companies run several safety programmes to prevent accident and injuries at work. The present methods have reached their limit of effectiveness and there is a need for new methods, technology and interventions. Since accidents cannot be created on the shop floor, experiments need to be conducted virtually. At the VR Laboratory, accident scenarios are generated and modelled on the computer, and all hazards and accident paths are identified. Users experience various hazardous scenarios as seen on a realistic plane through the use of sensors. The laboratory also deals with other subjects, such as work system design, ergonomics, and product development.

The newly-opened Safety Analytics Laboratory is part of the VR Laboratory. It seeks to analyse both structured and unstructured data, including texts and videos, which come up through industry’s Occupational Health & Safety management Systems (OHSMS), and to identify and predict incident patterns in order to introduce necessary interventions. The Safety Analytics Laboratory will also help industries to collect rich data using lagging and leading safety performance indicators.

Prof. Maiti says, “The department is executing a UAY (Ucchatar Avishkar Yojana) project titled ‘Safety Analytics: Save People at Work from Accidents and Injuries’. One major part of this project is how virtual reality can be used to train people to recognize and avoid hazards, and then, prevent hazard at the design stage. For training purpose, operators require sensors like head mounted display (HMD), data gloves, head tracker, hand tracker, eye tracker, etc. We have these here. We have developed an electric overhead travelling (EOT) crane simulator and employees from Tata Steel are coming in batches to be trained and to learn.”

Another unique equipment of the VR Laboratory is the 3D laser scanner, which is a powerful high speed three dimensional (3D) scanner delivering realistic and true-to-details scans in 3D point cloud format. Its software creates 3D models of facilities that ultimately helps in creating 3D virtual environment (VE). The laser scanner has a wide variety of applications. Other common applications include Industrial design, orthotics and prosthetics, reverse engineering and rapid prototyping, and documentation of cultural artefacts.

The Industrial and Systems Engineering Department already has a Product Development laboratory with a 3D printer. The Product Development students can not only test their ideas and create virtual prototypes, they can also use the 3D printer to create real products. Prof. Maiti says, “We are thankful to the IIT Kharagpur Director, Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti. It was his initiative and encouragement that helped us develop the laboratories.”

The other important addition to the Department is the Operations Research and Data Science laboratory. The laboratory is a 70 seater facility, both well-equipped and well decorated. “We not only provide students requisite hardware and software, but also make them comfortable,” says Prof. Maiti.

He adds, “The Industrial and Systems Engineering Department is uniquely endowed to pursue data analytics. It has in its curriculum subjects related to programming, statistics and mathematical modeling. We focus on multidisciplinary investigation, models and methods of data, and computing with data. At the same time, it has great industry connect that helps in grooming students in functional application areas”. Prof. Maiti says, “We want our students to be groomed in all kinds of available commercial as well as open source software.” The Department has SAS, CPLEX, simulation, and other software.

The grand opening ceremony at the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department also saw the opening of the refurbished e-Business Centre. It will deal with all e-business, IT based development, online transaction related work, algorithm development, requirement analysis, and B2B, B2C and other transactions, including RFID and IoT related interfaces. The Department also inaugurated a Video Conference room where meetings, video conferences with people and organizations across the globe can happen, and a new room for the Head of Department.

Prof. Maiti has a lot of plans for the future. He says, “We will look more into the application side of data analytics, virtual reality, IoT and AI. One of the issues we want to focus on is safety in human-robot interface. We are already working on UAY (safety analytics), IMPRINT (Improved design of Shells for Field Guns), DHI (digital manufacturing & IIoT), food supply chain, and e-Business projects. We want to further enhance our research activities around these newly opened facilities catering to industry requirements. Thanks to the advice and guidance of Prof. Chakrabarti, we are looking forward to greater academic-industry collaboration from research, consulting and teaching point of view.”