Pragyan - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Pragyan is the annual Science and Technology Festival of the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli

Tiruchirapalli

Tiruchirappalli ) , also called Tiruchi or Trichy , is a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Tiruchirappalli District. It is the fourth largest municipal corporation in Tamil Nadu and also the fourth largest urban agglomeration in the state...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Since its inception in 2005, it has been held every year over a period of four days during either the month of January or February. The event aims to provide a common platform for students from all across the country and abroad to exhibit their technical skill and accomplishments; additionally, it is intended to encourage interaction between students and prominent technologists, scientists and industrialists. Every year, Pragyan sees participants from over 200 colleges from across the country and, since the event's second year, international delegations including students from Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, USA and France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

The tagline for Pragyan was changed from "Create.. Innovate.. Scintillate" to "Let's Celebrate Technology" for the 2011 edition. The 2011 edition of Pragyan presents to the FOSS community - Pengufest, the first of its kind, consisting of talks, celebrations, hackathons, unconference and much more.

The Pragyan website is designed and maintained by the Webteam of NIT Trichy using the Pragyan CMS, a customized open-source Content Management System

Content management system

A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...

for the purpose.

2005

The first Pragyan was held from 29 to 31 January 2005. The idea for a technical festival originated with the institution's students, who also bore responsibility for planning and organization; organization was supported both by the institution's director, P. Subramanian and by alumni, and guided by an advisory committee drawn from the institution's faculty. The event's Corporate sponsors included IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

, Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

, CTS

Cognizant Technology Solutions

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. is an American global provider of custom information technology, consulting and business process outsourcing services. Its headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, United States and is a member of NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500 and Fortune 500...

, Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...

, Autodesk

Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...

, Dell

Dell

Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...

, Logic Info, L&T

Larsen & Toubro

Larsen & Toubro Limited is an Indian multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Mumbai, India. The company has four main business sectors: technology, engineering, construction and manufacturing. L&T has an international presence, with a global spread of offices and factories, further...

, Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, Discreet, Masibus and The Hindu Education-Plus

The Hindu

The Hindu is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded and continuously published in Chennai since 1878. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 1.46 million copies as of December 2009. The enterprise employed over 1,600 workers and gross income reached $40...

.

The first 'Pragyan' featured more than a thousand delegates and industry representatives, including participants from 85 colleges (including the IITs and NITs) from all over India

India

, who took part in 17 events and 35 different competitions covering the entire spectrum of engineering.

2006

Pragyan 2006 witnessed increased participation from colleges all over the country, and international participation for the first time in the programming event ByteCode. Prominent guest lecturers included Yash Pal

Yash Pal

Yash Pal is an Indian scientist and educator. He was raised in Pai, Kaithal, Haryana , graduated with a degree in physics from Panjab University, Chandigarh in 1949 and gained a PhD degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958.Yash Pal has held many positions within...

, Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram is a British scientist and the chief designer of the Mathematica software application and the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine.- Biography :...

, Christopher Gill, and Christopher Charles Benninger

Christopher Charles Benninger

Christopher Charles Benninger is an American-Indian architect and planner born in the United States in 1942. He studied urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, where he later taught .Benninger studied under Josep Lluis...

. The chief sponsor for this year was Tata Consultancy Services

Tata Consultancy Services

Tata Consultancy Services Limited is a global IT services, business solutions and outsourcing company headquartered in Mumbai, India. It is the largest provider of information technology in Asia and second largest provider of business process outsourcing services in India...

; other major sponsors included Videocon

Videocon

Videocon is an industrial conglomerate with interests all over the world, and is a Indian multinational company. The group has 17 manufacturing sites in India and plants in China, Poland, Italy and Mexico. It is also the third largest picture tube manufacturer in the world...

, Airtel, and Hewlett Packard.The participation was close to 5000 studentsfrom more than 100 colleges

2007

Pragyan 2007 was held from the 1st to the 4th of February 2007, and included a large number of events encompassing both engineering and managerial disciplines. The guest lecture series, meant to give students an opportunity to listen to, interact with and be inspired by top practitioners from various disciplines included lectures by Douglas Osheroff, Rudolph Marcus, aeronautical and mechanical engineer Guruswami Ravichandran, author Gurcharan Das

Gurcharan Das

Gurcharan Das , , is an Indian author, commentator and public intellectual. He is the author of The Difficulty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma which interrogates the epic, Mahabharata...

and a video-conference with Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....

, the co-founder of Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

.

Pragyan 2007 featured an exhibition of re-modeled car

Čar

Čar is a village in the municipality of Bujanovac, Serbia. According to the 2002 census, the town has a population of 296 people.-References:...

s including a 'behind-the-scenes' look organized by Dilip Chhabria

Dilip Chhabria

Dilip Chhabria is an Indian automobile designer. He is the founder of DC Design.-Biography:He is qualified in Transportation Design from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California, U.S. and worked with General Motors USA in their Design Centre...

of Dilip Chhabria Design Private Limited (DCD). In addition there were a number of workshops including one on automobile design by Amarendra Kr. Das and another on digital signal processing

Digital signal processing

Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...

- Pattern Recognition and Digital Watermarking. Pragyan 2007 also included a one-day management

Management

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...

simulation game called "MyFirm". This event was hosted by Dr.Vinod Dumblekar, Founder, MANTIS.

2008

Pragyan 2008 was held from 28 February to 2 March 2008. It included lectures by several eminent scientists including Philippe Lebrun from CERN

CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...

, Ronald Mallett, Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

, Subramanian Swamy

Subramanian Swamy

Subramanian Swamy is an Indian politician, academician, and an economist and presently the President of the Janata Party of India.-Early life and education:...

, Trilochan Sastry, K.R. Sridhar and Philip Zimmermann. It also featured several new workshops on ham radio operation, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, bio-inspired robotics, astronomy and management.

2009

The fifth edition of Pragyan was held from 12 - 15 February 2009 in the NIT Trichy

National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli

The National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli , formerly the Regional Engineering College , Tiruchirappalli, is a public engineering and technology university located 20 km near the city of Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu, India. The institute was founded in 1964 to cater to the country's...

campus. This year's theme was 'Presenting the Future'. This edition of the fest included events, guest lectures, workshops and infotainment shows; some of these were conducted for the first time. Lectures were delivered by several notable guests including Peter Norvig

Peter Norvig

Peter Norvig is an American computer scientist. He is currently the Director of Research at Google Inc.-Educational Background:...

from Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

Research, astronaut Loren Acton

Loren Acton

Loren Wilber Acton is an American physicist who flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-F as a Payload Specialist for the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory.Acton was born in Lewistown, Montana...

, John C. Mather

John C. Mather

John Cromwell Mather is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite with George Smoot. COBE was the first experiment to measure ".....

from NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

's Goddard Space Flight Center

Goddard Space Flight Center

The Goddard Space Flight Center is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center. GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors, and is located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA. GSFC,...

, Manish Tripathi from Dabbawallas

Dabbawala

A dabbawala ; also spelled as dabbawalla or dabbawallah; literally meaning , is a person in India, most commonly found in the city of Mumbai, who is employed in a unique service industry whose primary business is collecting the freshly cooked food in lunch boxes from the residences of the office...

and Kalyan Banerjee from MindTree

MindTree

MindTree Limited, formerly known as MindTree Consulting Limited , is a mid-sized international information technology consulting and implementation company. It operates in two units: production engineering services and IT services. MindTree was started in 1999 by ten industry professionals from...

.

Pragyan '09 also saw a variety of workshops relating to JavaFX

JavaFX

JavaFX is a software platform for creating and delivering rich Internet applications that can run across a wide variety of connected devices....

, animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

, light painting

Light Painting

Light painting, also known as light drawing or light graffiti is a photographic technique in which exposures are made usually at night or in a darkened room by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera. In many cases the light source itself does not have to appear in the image...

and forensics

Forensics

Forensic science is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to a legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or a civil action...

.

It also featured Crossfire, a panel discussion with noted panelists Prof. Anil Gupta from IIM-A

Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad , better known as IIM Ahmedabad or simply IIM-A, is a business school located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. It is the second Indian Institute of Management to be established, in 1961.-History:...

, Dr. P.V Indiresan, Dr. Sujatha Ramdorai and Dr. Prabhakar Marur with Rashmi Bansal as the moderator. The theme for the panel discussion was 'India as a global knowledge superpower'.

Other shows organised for the entertainment of guests and participants included a display of Hand Shadowgraphy, a laser show with the theme 'Evolution' and a 'Techno-Magic' show by the renowned Mr Christopher James.

In all, 38 events were organised and conducted over the course of the fest.

2010

With the tagline, "Create.. Innovate.. Scintillate", the sixth edition was celebrated from February 25th to 28th 2010. Pragyan 10 was an opportunity for engineering students to absorb new skills and display their talents; it was also a platform for interaction between students, scientists, technologists and industrialists.

The main events of Pragyan were distributed into various clusters including Encipher, Innovation, Brainwork, Chill Pill, Managing Technology , Robovigyan and Engineering Tomorrow.

Crossfire, the panel discussion, was an integral part of the festival. With the topic, "Why aren't we I.D.I.O.T.S?" (I do it on my own terms), six renowned panelists debated over their views and arguments to reach a common verdict - Krish Ashok, Dr L S Ganesh, Subramanian Vincent, Kishore Kumar, Dr. Ramesh Jain and Jagan Jothivel.

Guest Lectures offered students an opportunity to interact with the world's leading technologists - from famous Indians like Dr. Ramesh Jain, N S Ramaswamy, Dr. P. M. Bhargava, Dr. Sreenidihi Varadharajan and Raj Bala, to foreign nationals such as Are Holen

Are Holen

Are Holen is a M.D. and Ph.D. and is currently professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology...

.

Workshops are aimed at putting to practice what one has already learned. Four workshops were organised at Pragyan '10 - Adobe Flex, Ethical Hacking, 3D Photography and Hexapod robotics.

Exhibitions of various technological creations were set up across the campus. The DRDO presented a preview of some of India's finest arsenal, while Bharath Electronics Limited displayed an array of Military Navigation System hardware. HAL exhibited scale models and presentations on indigenous aircraft used by the Indian Armed Forces and their working.

Sand Art by Mr. Amar Sen and a showcase of 3D visual effects, animation and other special effects by ZICA were also featured. The final day saw an air show and aircraft exhibition by the Rotor Sports and Hobby Club of Chennai.

In all, more than 40 events were conducted over the four day period of the festival.

2011

The seventh edition of Pragyan was held from 17th-20th Feb, 2011. The tagline for the event was “Let’s celebrate technology” and included over 40 events, encompassing engineering, science and management. Guest lecturers included David Hanson, Sugata Mitra

Sugata Mitra

Prof. Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He is best known for his Hole in the Wall experiment, and widely cited in works on literacy and education...

, Narayanan Krishnan

Narayanan Krishnan

Narayanan Krishnan is an Indian chef turned social worker. He quit his career as a leading chef and began supplying meals to the homeless in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India, beginning in 2002.-Early life:...

, T. V. Padma

T. V. Padma

Padma Venkatraman, also known as T. V. Padma is a children's author from India.- Background :She was born in Chennai, a city in the south of India and completed her schooling and her undergraduate studies there. She moved to the United States to pursue her studies further...

, Stefan Engeseth of Detective Marketing and Ajeet N. Mathur, Professor, IM Ahmedabad]. Workshops on Haptics

Haptics

Haptics refers to the sense of touch . It is a form of nonverbal communication.Haptic customs differ greatly throughout the world. In many Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, people greet each other with one kiss on the cheek, for example in Argentina. In Spain, people greet each other...

, aircraft design, Open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

(Pengufest) were organised. A panel discussion called Crosswire featuring was also organised. An electronic musical instrument called Reactable was displayed prominently. Other events organised included GREENgineer, SAVE AS YOU BUILD, GreeNITT and an IGBC Session (on environmental engineering). Hundreds of students from across India and some from outside India participated in Pragyan 2011.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.