Tag: IIT Bombay

54th Inter IIT Sports Meet Flags Off at IIT Kharagpur

 

IIT Kharagpur, 15th December: IIT Kharagpur flagged off its 54th Inter IIT Sports Meet on 14th December 2019. The nine-day event is co-hosted by IIT Bhubaneswar with more than 2600 students participating from 23 IITs.

Athletics

The mega event held at IIT KGP is witnessing tough competition across eight games – Athletics, Basketball, Chess, Cricket, Football, Hockey, Lawn Tennis and Weightlifting while IIT Bhubaneswar is hosting four events – Volleyball, Badminton, Table Tennis and Squash. Tyra, the Royal Bengal Tigress is the mascot for the 54th Inter IIT Sports Meet 2019.

Prof Sriman Kumar Bhattacharya, Director, IIT Kharagpur and Chief Patron of the 54th Inter IIT Sports Meet remarked on Brand IIT’s achievement in both academics and all-round ability of the students in diverse aspects and areas that sets IITs apart from other institutes. Students are the brand ambassadors and the onus is on them to keep their brand name high, he said.

Basketball

12 distinguished sportspersons from KGP campus, took to lighting the torch for the ceremony. Former Skipper of Indian Women’s Cricket Team, Jhulan Goswami sent across her best wishes to the participants via voice message, saying, “I would like to congratulate all the participants who have come here today, and are going to perform. I extend my best wishes to you all, and once again, from the bottom of my heart. I shall come next time and spend some quality time with you people.” The event will be graced by sports stars like former cricket captains Kapil Dev and Sourav Ganguly, swimming champion Bula Choudhary and para swimmer Prasanta Karmakar among others.

Cricket

Inter IIT Sports Meet started in 1961 with IIT Bombay as the first host. With the increasing number of participants, the number of disciplines in the games have also increased over the years. This year, chess has been added as a competitive event. Squash for girls has also been added as a demo event.

March Past : IIT Kharagpur contingent

IIT Kharagpur has completely renovated its Sports Facilities. A new synthetic track has been built at the Jnan Ghosh Stadium. New floodlights have been also installed both at the Stadium and the Tata Steel Sports Complex. The tennis and basketball courts have been given an all-new look.

Rhythmic Yoga by Majida Khatun

The competition has started taking shape right from day one with the march past following the flag hoisting ceremony. IIT-ISM Dhanbad secured first place in the event. Prof Rajeev Shekhar, Director, IIT-ISM Dhanbad, hoped the participants would compete with the never-dying fighting spirit.

Performance by campus kids

The opening ceremony was celebrated by several professional performances including rhythmic yoga performance by Majida Khatun, second runners-up for Rhythmic Yoga at the Under-17 category for 2019 National School Games, football juggling by Amit Biswas, a young football juggler, with speech and hearing impairment and  a medley of folk songs and dances across all states of India, ending with the anthem of Atletico-De-Kolkata.

Pictures – Click KGP, Inter IIT Sports Meet Facebook Page

Happy Birthday IIT Kharagpur!

“We can always aspire to better our place, but we should not worry too much about rankings,” said Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri, Director, IIT Bombay, who was Chief Guest at IIT Kharagpur’s 69th Foundation Day celebrations. He added, “If our products, that is our students and alumni are doing well, that is justification enough of what the IITs are doing.”

Prof. Chaudhuri, who is a Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awardee and also recipient of the IIT Kharagpur Distinguished Alumnus Award, put before the audience the unique challenges that all IITs, his own alma mater as well as IIT Bombay under his administration, are facing in what he called their “3.0” version. All the leading IITs, he said, had gone through the 1.0 phase during the first 35 years of their inception and the “2.0” phase once they had established themselves. In the “3.0” phase, IITs had to concentrate on ways to create jobs, new companies, bridge the gap with industry and connect with society.

Among the many challenges that the IITs are facing in their present phase is that concerning reconciling their slow infrastructural growth with the burgeoning student population. He also pointed out that IITs need to think about flexibility in their rules and curriculum and also encourage student innovation. In all this, he emphasized the critical role of alumni funding and philanthropy.

The Director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, too laid emphasis on alumni participation in the new challenges that lay before the Institute. “The 2020s bring big challenges in the shape of the Institute of Eminence tag, starting the activities of the medical college and hospital and several such dreams that we will need to fulfil. I am sure with the support and help from all the stakeholders, particularly the alumni, we will be able to take this forward.”

The Foundation Day also provided occasion to hold the second instalment of the Institute’s new annual ritual of ‘Homecoming’. The event brings to the campus batches who have completed the 20th, 15th and 10th year of their graduation. This year saw more than 100 alumni of these batches together with close to 100 family members participate in Homecoming. “I am overwhelmed to see the response of the batches. The number of attendees has increased threefold in just one year,” said the Institute’s Dean, Alumni Affairs, Prof. Subrata Chattopadhyay.

The batches of 1999, 2004 and 2009 took a unique Pledge of Loyalty this year. They not only pledged to uphold the ideals and prestige of their alma mater, but also to take advantage of every opportunity to speak on its behalf, visit, give back time, talent, and whatever else they could share. The Institute’s newly launched ADEP program (Alumni Department Engagement Program) is increasingly seeing alumni come forward to mentor students through guest lectures, collaboration in research and funded internships and placements. Alumni meets have kicked off fundraising campaigns among the Alumni. The Homecoming this year led to the initiation of a campaign by the 1999 batch for a target of Rs 50 lakh.

The 69th Foundation Day also saw the Young Alumni Achiever Award being conferred on 19 young alumni who had distinguished themselves in their chosen domains that ranged widely from fundamental research and entrepreneurship to social activism and cinematography. The day also saw close to 200 children of classes VIII-XII participate in a quiz from six schools in and around Kharagpur. The Institute also had a debate session on the relevance of the IIT JEE exam between members of the faculty and students.

Five student awards and six Faculty excellence awards were given away by the Director. The Director also gave out staff excellence awards and recognition for staff who had completed 25 years of service.

The day also saw the award of the Nina Saxena Technology Excellence Award 2019 to Prof Samir Kumar Pal, Senior Professor in the Department of Chemical, Biological & Macromolecular Sciences at S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata, for his Innovation of a biomedical device, AJO.