Tag Archives: education

Event: R&D in Publicly-Funded Labs In India -by Sourav Pal, Directory NCL

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National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, is one of the top R&D institutions in the country. With approximately 200 scientific staff working here, it is an interdisciplinary research center with wide research scope and specializes in polymer science, organic chemistry, catalysis, materials chemistry, chemical engineering, biochemical sciences and process development. It houses good infrastructure for measurement science and chemical information.

There are about 400 graduate students pursuing research towards doctoral degree; about 50 students are awarded Ph.D. degree every year. NCL publishes over 400 research papers annually in the field of chemical sciences and over 60 patents worldwide. It is a unique source of research education producing the largest number of PhDs in chemical sciences within India.

InnoVidya and IUCAA present a talk by Dr. Sourav Pal, the current Director of NCL, on Research and Development in Publicly Funded Laboratories in India, on Saturday, 23 Aug, 2014, at Bhaskara 3 Hall, IUCAA. This is the next talk in the InnoVidya/IUCAA SPARK lecture series.

Abstract of the talk:

Publicly funded Research and development laboratories play a major role in promoting scientific research and development of technology in India. In this presentation, Dr Pal will relate his experiences of working in such laboratories and presently as Director, NCL. He will highlight the role of these institutions in leading scientific research. He will bring out the expectations that the Government has from such publicly funded institutions.

About the Speaker – Dr. Sourav Pal

Dr Sourav Pal is the Director, of National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune, and Director, Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI), Bhavnagar. He holds an integrated Masters degree in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a Ph.D. from Calcutta University. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, Germany . He was a visiting Professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA and at the Institute for Molecular Sciences, Okazaki, Japan. Dr. Pal has been recognized by several awards and honours for his contribution to science and technology including the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Chemical Sciences, the SASTRA-CNR Rao Award in Chemistry & Materials Science. He is a Fellow of all the three National Academies of Science in India and the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK. He has published over 215 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, guided over 25 Ph D thesis, delivered more than 100 lectures in important conferences and is serving on the editorial boards of international journals.

About the InnoVidya IUCAA Spark Program

The SPARK program is a series of events jointly conducted by InnoVidya and IUCAA. These are special events that <spark> imagination & curiosity of our young, build bonds between participants of different disciplines, catalyze interactivity & promote peer links

About InnoVidya

InnoVidya is a group of educators and industry professionals who want to reach out to students, teachers, trainers and working professionals and catalyze significant improvements in their learning ecosystems. In addition to the InnoVidya website and the InnoVidya mailing list, we also hold public lectures on the 4th Saturday of every month. Lectures usually involve talks by senior educators, industry visionaries, or social and/or for-profit entrepreneurs working in the space of higher education.

If you’re interested in the state of education in India, please subscribe to get updates by email

Event Details

The event is on Saturday, Aug 23, 2014, at 11am, at the Bhaskara 3 Hall, IUCAA, at University of Pune campus.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here. There is ample parking at the venue.

FOSSsumMIT: A 2-day, 5-track open source conference at MIT Pune

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FOSSsumMIT is a 2-day conference on Free/Open Source Software, organized by the Dept. of Computer Engineering, at MIT College, in association with PLUG (Pune Linux Users Group), happening on 1 & 2 August, 2014.

The conference has introductory talks and workshops for students on various topics, and is free for anyone to attend. Day 1 has 5 tracks – Python, Scientific Computing, Linux, Linux Overview, and Big Data. Day 2 has 4 tracks – Python, Scientific Computing, Linux, and Cloud Computing.

See Day 1 Schedule and Day 2 Schedule for details.

Register here: http://fosssummit.in/register – it’s free. And you get a certificate.

Overview of Function Space (@fspace314), Pune’s “Facebook for Science”

In Depth, Overviews, , , ,

FirstPost has an good overview of Function Space – Pune’s Science Social Network, the startup founded by Pune’s Adit Gupta, Sakshi Majumdar, and Sumit Maniyar, and that was recently funded by Nexus Venture Partners.

How did Function Space get started?

The venture, started in April 2013, was conceived as a sort of Facebook for science – a way to make knowledge sharing accessible and approachable. Now known as Function Space, it uses the social learning model to make science easy and understandable for all skill levels – be it novices or experts.

In April 2013, both Gupta and Majmudar quit their jobs in the design and IT fields respectively, and decided to focus on creating a science platform full-time – within two months they had a basic prototype of what Function Space would look like. During that period, their current partner Sumit Maniyar heard about their venture through a common friend and soon after decided to join the duo.

How did they do the initial marketing for Function Space?

Maniyar, 28, explained how word about Function Space got out. “Adit’s friend posted that we were working on social learning science platform on Hackernews, a social news website dedicated to content related to computer science and entrepreneurship,” Maniyar said. Soon, someone picked up the thread and the discussion went viral.
Within a day’s time, the Function Space team had between 800-1000 people sending in requests for invitations to the beta site. As with many startups, word-of-mouth was Function Space’s number one marketing tool, with the team spending no money on advertising.

What exactly does Function Space do?

The main goal of the site is to bridge the gap between an academic curriculum to the skill-based requirements of the workplace. Through the use of videos, articles, problems, diagrams, equations and codes, the site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other on everything from algebra and applied maths to cosmology and particle physics to artificial intelligence.

For instance, a user might post a query or an opinion on a subject which could result in discussion threads that could include solutions, readings or even more questions and opinions. Users can also share news or post challenges for others to solve. Tabs on the screen allow users to navigate between sections like ‘Feed’, ‘News’ and ‘Challenges.’

What were the next challenges?

The buzz Function Space started out with helped it get noticed in a few hallowed educational institutions. PhD students and professors from universities like IITs, Stanford and MIT began logging in to check out the material being shared and sometimes even engaging with users from across 190 countries globally, Maniyar said.

But trawling through the mounds of sometimes useless data on the site to find that one IIT professor’s post was a painful task. So the Function Space team signed on volunteers to “sanitise the platform.”

“We get a lot of garbage on the site and maintaining the quality is a big challenge. It’s also difficult to find good talent,” he said. “The volunteers remove factually inaccurate content.”

As regular readers of PuneTech are aware, Function Space entered the list of tech companies in Pune that have recently raised funding last month, which now makes it one of Pune’s hottest young startups.

Naren Gupta, of Nexus Venture Partners who funded Function Space, points out how Function Space is different from a MOOC:

“Would anyone expect a Physics Noble prize winner to discuss relevant issues and share ideas on Quora?” he asked. “Function Space could take learning to new levels even beyond MOOCs (Massive Open On-line Courses). While MOOCs are one too many learning platforms, Function Space would become a many-to-many learning and discussions platform,” believes Gupta.

Read the full article on FirstPost.

Pune’s CSIR-URDIP Starts India’s first ever course on PatInformatics (Patent Informatics)

News, , , ,

CSIR-URDIP, which is CSIR‘s Pune based Unit for Research and Development of Information Products. has launched India’s first ever Post Graduate Diploma Course on PatInformatics (i.e. Patent Informatics).

What is PatInformatics?

The participants will be introduced to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and the importance of patent information in research and business. The course will basically focus on Patinformatics and its applications which will enable the participants undertake  technology scenario analysis, white space mapping, competitive intelligence study, new product development, patentability, infringement analysis, freedom to operate study, citation analysis, patent valuation etc. This course will thus help participants develop their skills in patent searching and analysis and use this information for research and business planning. Thus the participants, after successful completion of the course will be capable of handling all the IPR related issues independently.

Source

Details about the course:

The course will begin from August 4, 2014. The course will be of one year duration and will be full time. The lectures will be delivered by Scientists at CSIR-URDIP having minimum ten years of experience in the area for Patinformatics. It will consist of four quarters with 12 modules of theory classes and hands-on practical sessions working on databases and analytical tools including daily assignments and projects.

See full course details

Who can apply?

Basically, it is open for Engineering, Science, or Law graduates. The precise requirements are:

Minimum qualification required is a Post Graduate Degree from recognized universities. The candidate should have any one of the following:

  • Masters degree with minimum of 60% marks in any of the life sciences, chemical sciences and physical sciences..
  • M. Pharm. with minimum of 60% marks and GATE qualified
  • B.E ( Min. 60% marks) and GATE qualified
  • L.L.B with Science background ( Min. 60% marks at B.Sc. and L.L.B )
  • M.Lib Sci. with graduation in science ( Min.60% at each degree)

Fees?

  • Application Fees: Rs 1000/ – to be paid in the SBI Power Jyoti account. 50% concession will be provided for SC/ST candidates.
  • Course Fees: Rs. 50,000/- to be paid at the beginning of the course.
  • Number of Seats: 30

For more details, see the PatInformatics Website

Pune-based Sci/Math Learning Platform @FunctionSpace get funding from @NexusVP

Money Matters, , , , ,

(Sorry, this news is being posted here a little late; I was on vacation when this news broke, and decided that a late update is better than no update at all.)

Pune-based Function Space, an online “social” platform for learning science and maths has recently raised seed funding from Nexus Venture Partners.

Function Space is trying to make STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education fun and engaging, something that is seriously been missing from our education system

Function Space, already offers a strong community consisting of users from over 190 countries, including students, professors and researchers from MIT, Stanford, University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, Indian Institute of Technology campuses, Indian Institute of Science and other prestigious institutions.

The funding will be used for expansion: of their content, their tools, and their customer reach.

Function Space was founded in 2013 by Adit Gupta, Sakshi Majmudar and Sumit Maniyar.

Note, this makes NexusVP the most Pune-friendly venture capital firm with 9 investments in Pune.

Read the full article

SEED Infotech launches “SEED IT Idol 2014” for college students

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Pune based technology training institute, SEED Infotech, has launched the 4th edition of “SEED IT Idol 2014”, a test of ‘C’ programming knowledge, for all students of engineering in the University of Pune, reports DNA India.

Excerpts:

The information technology (IT) Idol in Pune is being organised by SEED Infotech in association with the University of Pune (UoP), wherein students of engineering, MCM, MCS, MCA and all other computer-related educational programmes from all colleges affiliated to the UoP are eligible. The first round of the competition has already began.

Speaking about the initiative, executive director, SEED Infotech, Bharati Barhate, said, “Our aim is to tap the huge talent across colleges and make it industry ready. This year our target is to reach out to students across Maharashtra and for the first time to certain regions in Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Jaipur and Bangalore.”

Read the full article

CoEP unrolls online health management portal for 1800 hostelites

News, , , ,

COEP – The College of Engineering Pune, has unrolled a program called AyushDeep – an online health management portal for 1800 students living in hostels with the help of a local software company Ayushman aka IndiaOnlineHealth.com.

The portal will hold an electronic medical record of the students online, which can also be viewed by parents and doctors, and it is hoped that the students will continue to use and update this record for the rest of their life.

“The first and most obvious motivation is the identification of any health problem in our students that require special attention. Secondly, we want students to inculcate a habit of building their EMR, which will form the core of continuity in healthcare for them for the rest of their life. The platform of connected healthcare we offered to our students can render them help from appropriate specialists, if needed, using the online health platform,” college director A D Sahasrabudhe said at an Idea Exchange held at The Indian Express office here.

More info:

Credenz’13 : 3-day tech fest at PICT College 30 Aug-1 Sept

Events, , , ,

Credenz is the annual technical symposium organised by the PICT IEEE Student Branch. With 4000+ students from 50 different colleges attending, it is one of the top student tech fests, not only in the city, but in the country too.

Credenz this year will be from 30 August to 1st September.

From the Credenz website:

Inaugurated in 2004, with an aim to celebrate talent, it has prospered to become one of the finest technical events in the country. Credenz not only infuses a competitive spirit among participants, but it also provides an informative edge through various seminars and workshops conducted by eminent industry professionals. Participants get to experience a diversity of events like Clash, Bplan, Roboliga, WebWeaver, Pixelate, Mad Talks and seminars on recent technologies.

The IEEE Student branch at PICT has always believed in encouraging students to think beyond the academic domain and challenge their potential. The team changed the entire face of Credenz in the year 2009 when the entire event was hosted online due to the pandemic swine flu, which had made social gatherings impossible. Following the legacy, their juniors made Credenz’10 a great success. Now the PICT IEEE Student Branch presents to you Credenz’13 with an even wider platform to let students showcase their skills and talents.

More Info about Credenz 2013:

There is also an online software/app development contest that you can participate in right now

For full information, see the Credenz Website

University of Pune prepares a Math textbook, and puts it online for free download

Miscellaneous, , , ,

In a heartening display of moving forward with the times, the University of Pune has not only published a new textbook to match the recently updated syllabus for first year Maths for B.Sc. and B.A., but they have made the entire textbook available online as a free download, reports Pune Mirror.

This is a great step forward. Students who are used to the slow moving and bureaucratic education systems in India, will notice three unique characteristics that should make them happy,

  • It is online
  • It is free
  • They are soliciting feedback and suggestions for improvements, which they claim they will incorporate in future versions

Any one of these would have been cause for celebration. All three is just too much.

No wonder University of Pune has been picked by the government of India as 1 of the 4 universities to get Rs. 300CR “National Innovative University” scheme.

Excerpts from the article:

In the absence of a single prescribed textbook, Bachelor of Science (B Sc) students studying under the University of Pune (UoP) have always had to shuffle between various reference books. With the Board of Studies realising this issue, the varsity’s Department of Mathematics has compiled an official mathematics textbook .

Not only is such an effort the first of its kind, it has also been uploaded on the University’s website for free download.

According to Dr S A Katre, Head of Department, Mathematics at UoP,

“During the process, we decided to go a step ahead and considering the changing times, came up with an online textbook.”

and

“It is for the first time that an official University textbook is made available online for free,”

And, most importantly, this is just the first step. There is more to come:

The book could be found for download at http://math.unipune.ac.in/FyBsc.htm. The department is now working on the books for the second term and will gradually take out books for further terms. Soon, the entire bunch of textbooks, particularly designed by adhering to the new syllabus for mathematics, will be ready online.

Read the full article

Event: Intro to Inquiry-oriented Education by Prof. K.P. Mohanan (IISER)

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InnoVidya and IUCAA a talk by Prof. K.P. Mohanan on “An Introduction to Inquiry-Oriented Education” on Saturday, July 20, 2013, at 11am, at Bhaskara 3 Hall, IUCAA. This is the next talk in the InnoVidya/IUCAA SPARK lecture series.

Abstract of the talk:

Scientific inquiry is a form of rational inquiry that seeks knowledge by formulating our ignorance as questions and arriving at answers on the basis of data/observations. Most forms of science education focus on helping students to understand a body of knowledge — the conclusions resulting from scientific inquiry — and to apply that knowledge to solve problems. As an alternative, I have been pursuing an inquiry-oriented form of science education that goes beyond understanding and application, to help students acquire the capacity to engage in scientific inquiry, to function not only as consumers of knowledge, but also as producers of knowledge.

The youtube video clip on What Ruca Likes and Dislikes will give a brief taste of what an inquiry-oriented classroom is like.

In this talk, I will briefly outline what my colleagues and I have been doing to bring scientific inquiry into classrooms, textbooks, and examinations. It should be of interest to both students and educators.

About the Speaker – Prof. K.P. Mohanan

K.P. Mohanan received his PhD from MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), under Noam Chomsky, and taught at the University of Texas in Austin, MIT, Stanford University and National University of Singapore. At NUS, he initiated the General Education Program for undergraduate students, and as part of this program, created a web course on Academic Knowledge and Inquiry (http://wiki.nus.edu.sg/display/aki).

In January 2011, he moved to IISER-Pune to set up and develop the Centre for Integrative Studies. At IISER, he has created a three-course package on rational inquiry, covering scientific, mathematical, and conceptual inquiries. He is currently engaged in developing courses and programs on different types of inquiry based learning for high school and college students.

About the InnoVidya IUCAA Spark Program

The SPARK program is a series of events jointly conducted by InnoVidya and IUCAA. These are special events that <spark> imagination & curiosity of our young, build bonds between participants of different disciplines, catalyze interactivity & promote peer links

About InnoVidya

InnoVidya is a group of educators and industry professionals who want to reach out to students, teachers, trainers and working professionals and catalyze significant improvements in their learning ecosystems. In addition to the InnoVidya website and the InnoVidya mailing list, we also hold public lectures on the 4th Saturday of every month. Lectures usually involve talks by senior educators, industry visionaries, or social and/or for-profit entrepreneurs working in the space of higher education.

We are currently based in Pune, but we expect that this initiative will expand all over India.

If you’re interested in the state of education in India, please subscribe to get updates by email

Event Details

The event is on Saturday, July 20, 2013, at 11am, at the Bhaskara 3 Hall, IUCAA, at University of Pune campus.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here. There is ample parking at the venue.