Semester I, 2018-2019.

INSTITUTE ACTIVITIES

JCI sponsored Smart Building Lab was inaugurated at Pilani Campus on

October 24, 2018.

DST Sponsored laboratory (The Matrix Isolation Infrared Spectors Facility)

has been set up in Pilani campus.

Engineer's Day was celebrated on September 16, 2018 at Dubai Campus to

commemorate the birthday of the

legendary engineer Sir M. Visvesvaraya (1861-1962). The theme for the event was "Digital Transformation: A New Industrial Revolution", with Mr. Mohammed Abdul

Bari (Air Accident Investigator, UAE General Civil Aviation Authority) as the Chief Guest.

CRE lab was inaugurated in Hyderabad campus, in November 2018.

Nirmaan, Pilani campus organized a

tree plantation drive on November 17, 2018 and the Joy of Giving Week in September 2018 with Mr. Anoop Khanna,

a Noida based social activist famous for ‘Dadi ki Rasoi.’ as the chief guest.

Junoon, Pilani campus organised the

7th edition of the sporting extravaganza to provide a platform for the specially abled children which was inaugurated by

Padma Shri Murlikant Petkar on September 15, 2018.

Various social activities were initiated at Dubai campus on the occasion of 150th

birth anniversary of the father of India "Mahatma Gandhi" wherein the Art Club

(Shades) arranged the Art exhibition & Rangoli, Social & Environment Club arranged for Clothes & Detergent collection, Blood Donation as a part of

Dan Utsav, and several other activities.

The Social and Environment Club, Dubai campus organized ‘Beyond Okay’

the Mental Health Awareness Workshop

on September 23, 2018.

Palakurthi and Mrs. Anuradha Palakurthi (batch of 1978-83) contributed a sum of $1 Million for setting up a Research Endowment Fund at BITS Pilani during a gala event ‘Desert Storm’ to celebrate 40th anniversary of the 1978 entry batch on November 16, 2018.

Mr. Kishore Kumar Gupta donated one crore rupees to set up the Kishore Kumar Gupta Electrical Machines Laboratory in Pilani campus. It features coupling and decoupling of different types of state-of-the-art industrial category machines on the same test bench.

The 1988 batch donated a sum of INR 1.5Cr to BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus for the setting up of a scholarship to be awarded to four students each year, covering 25% of their tuition fees for the duration of their degree programme under the MCN (Merit-cum-Need) category.

The 1989 batch had a reunion on campus recently wherein they set a collective target of contributing $120000 towards promoting active alumni engagement with their alma mater.

The 1993-98 batch, celebrated 25 years of entering Pilani, have set themselves a target of contributing $333031 to the institute to be used for high priority needs.

Sai Nikhil Reddy Mettupally, a BITS Pilani alumnus, was awarded the second place at the University of Alabama Science and Technology Open House for creating a space detecting algorithm to lead drivers directly to an empty parking spot.

An Internet of Things (IoT) startup by three BITS Goa alumni Abhilash Dasyreddy, Nikhil Mandalika and Prashant Rao, won the HYSEA product award under the best gadget category.

ENGAGE ’18, an alumni meet up was organized in the Dubai Campus on December 8, 2018.

Koinex, a cryptocurrency trading

globally amidst restrictions on cryptocurrency trading placed by the Indian Government.

DailyNinja, a 2015 startup by BITS alumni Sagar Yarnalkar and Anurag Gupta acquired its second acquisition, Wake Up Basket.

BITS Alma Connect: an interactive platform to connect and engage with the alumni was launched in October 2018.

Satish Goel of the 1980 batch committed a fund of INR 21Lakhs to support 50% of the fellowship for a research scholar from Chemical Engineering, Chemistry or Computer Science discipline from the Pilani Campus.

Mr. Tanmay Lal, a 1982 BITS Pilani graduate has been appointed as the Indian Ambassador to Mauritius.

ACCOLADES AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Prof Chandra Shekhar, Ex-Director,

CSIR-CEERI and Senior Professor

Emeritus has been appointed as the Chairperson and Chancellor of the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR) by the Honorable Prime Minister of India.

Prof Ashish Das, and Narayan J, Pilani

campus received a patent No: 304798 Application No.: 3004/DEL/2010, Temperature Inducible Promoter Derived

and Modified from Enterococcus Faecium DJ1 Plasmid, and Its Use in E. COLI for Production of Desired Protein.

Dr Neetu Yadav, Pilani campus has been

awarded Paul R. Lawrence fellowship for participating in 2018 annual meeting of

the North American Case Research Association held in Florida, USA during October 04-06, 2018. She is also in group of ten Paul R. Lawrence Fellowship

recipients who have been offered this fellowship around the world.

Dr Richa Singhal, Goa campus received

the Early Career Research Award from Science and Engineering Research

Board (SERB), Government of India for a research project entitled ‘Mechanistic approach to design composite metal-carbon nanofiber oxygen electrodes for high-performance metal-air batteries’.

Dr Souvik Kundu, Hyderabad Campus

received the Best Paper & Presentation Award at ICNSE 2018, Venice, Italy, on November, 2018. He also delivered an invited lecture at ICN 2018, Rome, Italy, on November 12, 2018.

Dr Soumya J, Hyderabad Campus,

delivered an invited Lecture at ICT, TU Vienna, Austria on November 8, 2018.

Prof. Biju Raveendran, Goa campus has

been awarded with Prof S.S.R Memorial Teaching Excellence Award.

company co-founded by BITS Pilani graduate Aditya Naik, aims to expand

ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENTS

Two BITS Pilani Alumni: Mr. Prashant

GUEST LECTURES/ DISTINGUISHED VISITS

● Dr Anand Rao (Alumnus, BITS 1984), Global Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Lead (Data & Analytics) & Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), USA conducted an interactive session at Dubai campus on September 2, 2018.

● Mr. Rizwan Sajan, Founder and Chairman, Danube Group of Companies, UAE delivered a talk wherein he shared his success

story and also about his company Danube organized by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship at Dubai Campus on September 18, 2018.

Dr Aryesh Mukherje, PhD Harvard University Boston, delivered a special lecture on ‘Experimental Studies in Elastic

Hydrodynamic Interactions’ at Goa Campus.

● Dr Biswa Nath Datta, distinguished Professor, Northern Illinois University, USA delivered a guest lecture on ‘Computational and Optimization Methods for Active Vibration Control and Finite Element Model Updating in Structural Dynamics: Linking

Mathematics to Engineering’ at KK Birla Goa Campus on December 4, 2018.

● Prof Kiran R. Bhutani, Department of Mathematics, The Catholic University of America, Washington DC, delivered a talk on “F-Domination in Graphs and Applications” at KK Birla Goa Campus on August 8, 2018.

● Dr Raja Bhattacharyya, Dept. of Neurosciences, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, delivered a talk on ‘Trafficking and processing of Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP) in Alzheimer’s disease’ at Goa Campus on October 12, 2018.

Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar, Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, Indian Navy delivered an invited talk on ‘Re-Imaging Indo Pacific & Indian Naval Diplomacy’ organized by the Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences at the International Centre Goa on October 12, 2018.

● Prof Ashok Kundapur, Environment and Energy Pro Activist. Acclaimed Expert on Solar Cookers, delivered a talk on ‘Solar Cookers’ at Goa campus on December 3, 2018.

● Prof Simon Washington, Head School of Civil Engineering, Queens Land University, Australia visited the Department of Civil Engineering, Hyderabad Campus on November 21, 2018.

● Dr Anand Parey, IIT-Indore Gear Fault Diagnosis visited Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Hyderabad Campus on November 24,

2018.

● Prof V.D. Sharma, (IIT Mumbai) delivered a talk on ‘Differential Equations’ at Hyderabad Campus on November 27, 2018.

● Mr. William De Oreo, President and Principal Engineer of Aquacraft, Inc, USA delivered a talk on ‘Water audits and their role in municipal water management’ at Hyderabad Campus on November 30, 2018.

SIGNIFICANT PROJECTS

S.No Principal Investigator and Name of

the Department Title of the Project Funding Agency Amount

1.

Dr Deepak Chitkara (Project coordinator)

Dr Anupama Mittal (Co-Investigator) Dept. of Pharmacy, Pilani campus

cRGD decorated lipo-polymeric nanoplexes of CRISPR/Cas9

ribonucleoprotein (RNP) for the management of retinal dystrophic conditions (Project co-ordinator)

DBT

INR 125.214 (BITS

share: INR 50.046)

3 years

2.

PIs: Dr Aniruddha Roy and Dr Gautam Singhvi

Dept. of Pharmacy,Pilani campus

Enhancement of oral bioavailability of selected drugs

Industry sponsored: Intas Pharmaceuticals,

Ahmedabad (Gujrat),

India.

INR 45.00

3 years

3.

Dr Sabareesh GR (PI)

Dept. of Mechanical Engineering &

Dr Rahul Nigam and Dr Kalluri Ramachandra Murthy (Co-PI),

Dept. of Physics, Hyderabad campus

Studies on Wind Resistant

Design of proposed LIGO IUCAA- LIGO Project

INR 44.81

3 years

4.

Dr Sarmistha Banik (PI) &

Dr Asrarul Haque, (Co-PI)

Dept. of Physics, Hyderabad campus

Fundamental Physics in Strong Gravitational Field of Neutron

Stars

Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences,

Department of Atomic Energy

INR 24.40

2 years

5.

Dr Yashvardhan Sharma,

Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, Pilani campus

Design and implementation of Content based Recommender

System for Effectively Answering Web based User Queries

DST/ICPS INR 16.5756

3 years

6.

PIs: Prof R.N. Saha

and Dr. Gautam Singhvi

Dept. of Pharmacy, Pilani campus

Novel ophthalmic formulation development

Industry sponsored: Slayback Pharma, India.

INR 15.00

2 years

STUDENTS ACTIVITIES

Achievements and Awards

In the Vertical Flight Society's annual Student Design Competition, Team Garuda comprising of Kunal Nandanwar (captain), Animesh Jain, Devashish Bonde, Divya Rathore,

Rishav Utkarsh and Satyam Bhaskar, Pilani campus

designed Druta, a reconfigurable VTOL. The team has been awarded $500 as prize money.

Two teams “VR Bros” and “Holosight”, Pilani campus have been

selected for “Virtual Reality Program” under “School of Innovation India” from Facebook India and SV.CO. Mayank Bhutani and Koustubh Gupta, fourth year undergraduates,

were part of team VR Bros and a third year undergraduate, Utkarsh Tripathi, was the sole member of team HoloSight.

These teams participated in the six months Program from August 1 to January 31, 2019.

Siddharth Mehta, Pilani campus one of the contingents of a 25

members team represented India at the World Youth Forum 2018, at Egypt in November wherein young leaders from over

160 countries exchanged views and recommended initiatives to influential figures.

Rutwik Jain, Pilani campus presented a paper titled "Modes of

Operation of a 3U CubeSat with Hyper-Spectral

Imaging Payload" in the Space Systems Symposium at the 69th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) held in Bremen, Germany from 1st-5th October 2018. In the same symposium, Karabee Batta and Prerna Baranwal, presented a paper

entitled "Comparative Study between classical and fuzzy PID Attitude Control System for nanosatellites”.

Tanuj Kumar, Pilani campus represented the university at the

Open Source Cubesat Workshop organized by the European

Space Agency held at the European Space Astronomy Center, Madrid, Spain from 24-25 September 2018.

Pepper, a startup in the Content Creation industry, Pilani campus was formed by- Anirudh Singla, Adit Mittal, Rishabh Shekhar, and Parv Panthari which connects talented writers

to organizations that require content.

Team Short Circuits, Pilani Campus won 3rd Prize and a sum

of Rs. 1.5 lakhs in the 1st edition of Grand India IOT Innovation Challenge hosted by Tata Communications for their V2G Power

Management System. The event had over 700 applicants and 230 idea submissions from 27 colleges across India.

Suvigya Vijay and Shivani Singh, Pilani campus participated

in a global business case challenge - Schneider Electric's Go

Green in the City 2018 as Team "BITS Pilani" and emerged as the winners of the Greater India Region and to visit Atlanta, US for the global finals.

Siddharth Shankar Tripathi, Pilani campus has been selected

by Indian School of Business as a young leader and offered admission through the prestigious Young Leadership Program (YLP)

Ananyashree Garg, Pilani campus won the award title GHCI

Scholar in the event Grace Hopper Celebration India at Bangalore during November 14-16, 2018. Grace Hopper Celebration India (GHCI) is India's largest technical conference for women in computing and technology.

Rudhir Mehra, Nandita Mathur, Bir Anmol Singh, and Maithil Mehta team of 4 students, were awarded with Hult Prize

2019-Campus Round at Pilani campus on November 3, 2018. They will now represent BITS Pilani in the World Regional Semi-

Finals in March 2019 with their idea of the ‘2nd Innings Homes, a 3D Printing Social Housing Concept’ for a seed funding of USD 1 Million.

Rahul Dua, Harsh Grover, Rushabha B, Sumukh Nitundil

and Rohan Goyal, Pilani campus on behalf of The Radio

Astronomy Club students undertook following projects: Super SID (Sudden Ionosphere Disturbance), Radio Jove, SWAN (Sky Watch Array Network) Imaging Challenge, Horn

Antenna.

Srujan Penta Pilani campus final Year student, received the

Best Poster Award at Indo Israel Workshop on Nanoelectronic Materials and Devices (I2NMD) on November 2, 2018. He presented the poster titled ‘3D NEGF Quantum transport simulation for modelling ballistic transport in nano FinFETs’. He was also awarded the Best Graduating Student

Award, 2018 by the Professor L.K Maheshwari Foundation, EEE Dept, Pilani campus during the EEE/ENI Farewell on

November 21, 2018.

Sarthak Sethi, Dubai campus has won the James Dyson Award

UAE Competition on September 5, 2018. Out of hundreds of entries across the world, project "Smart Biometric Ring" from

BITS secured 2nd position at the JDA UAE competition.

Two teams of students Dubai campus participated in Al Hackathon biggest in MENA region organized by IQPC from September 4-5, 2018 and . Team of students namely, Mihir

Prabhudesai, Juzar Gulamali and Dev Gupta won the first

prize.

Team AERONYX, Dubai campus comprising Akansha Das

and Ashlyn D'Souza won the Second Position and team ZUV comprising Raagashree Ravi, Komal Harish, Simran Narang, Aatrayee Bhattacharjee, Hiloni Mehta and Sabiha Shaik won

the third Position in the Techstars Global Startup Weekend Dubai, Women Edition 2018, held at DTEC Silicon Oasis, from

November 15-17, 2018.

BITS Dubai Toastmasters Club Team emerged as Champions

in the Division-F Inter Club Debate Contest, a division level toastmasters debate contest conducted on November 16, 2018

in American University in the Emirates, UAE.

Team NaviFly (Aeronyx), Dubai campus comprising Yashodhan Naik and Shivank Gupta, secured 2nd place in

Techstars Women's Start-Up Weekend, 2018, the first women's

startup in the Middle East held on 20 November 2018. The team have been selected amongst the top 20 teams in the world to Pitch at Propeller Shannon, Ireland.

Solar Decathlon Middle East: Team, Dubai Campus along

with Romanian University (Team EFdeN) reached the final stage of first Solar Decathlon Middle East held in Dubai and Secured 4th position in the world. Students actively involved were Jerin Jacob (Dubai Team Lead), Mitesh Aswani, Mohammed Shamroukh, Shubhankan Mukherjee, Nikitha

Rajendran, Kartik Math, Pranay Addepalli, Neeraja

Narayanswamy, Suyash Agarwal, Smrithi Nagesh, Avani Mishra & Karthika Kumar. The team won numerous awards

throughout the competition, like 1st in Communication, 2nd in

Engineering and Construction, 2nd in Comfort Conditions etc.

Techstars Global Startup Weekend Dubai, Women Edition 2018, Dubai campus Team comprising Mihir Prabhudesai and Sarthak Sethi, won the First Prize amongst 70+ participating

teams all across UAE for their Low-Computation Algorithmic Solution for the task of Speaker Recognition in the two-day coding event Google Developer Group, Codathon for Developers of all ages across UAE held from November 23-24,

2018. They were also awarded 25,000 AED Cash Prize by Emirates NBD for their win.

Mr. Nipun Sood, Goa campus secured a Student International

Travel Grant for 650 AUD (Australian dollars) to present a

research paper titled ‘Collaborative Neighbor Discovery with Slow Scan in Directional Sensor Networks’ from the International Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ITNAC) 2018 in Sydney, Australia.

Mr. Tushar Damani, Goa campus was awarded the second

prize at the Goa state level for the Sahaj Marg All-India Essay Writing Competition organized by Shri Ram Chandra Mission in association with the United Nations Information Centre for India and Bhutan.

Ms. Mansi Baveja, Goa campus won the 1st prize in poster

presentation in life science category and the 4th prize in poster presentation in Innovative Ideas and Patents Category at the National Biomedical Research Competition 2018 held at AIIMS

Rishikesh on October 15, 2018.

Mr. Joseph Fernandes, Goa campus received Prof. N J Chinoy

award for the best oral presentation & secured second position.

Ms. Pinky,a PhD student, Goa campus has been selected for

the EMBO short-term fellowship to visit Prof. Tony Miller’s lab., at John Innes Centre, Norwich starting from January 2019 to March 2019.

Ms. Krishna Kumari Swain, a PhD student, Goa campus

received the second prize in the Best Poster Presentation award at “Analytical Science at NCCCM: A Journey over 25 Years” organized by NCCCM, BARC Hyderabad from November 29 to December 1, 2018. The title of her paper was ‘Development of

an enzyme coupled nanoprobe for analysis of Hg2+, Cd2+ and Pb2+ ions; applications to drinking water and fish’.

Mr. Rakesh Manuka, a PhD student, Goa campus received

DST-SERB travel grant for attending the 16th International

Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics (ISFRG 2018) scheduled from September 5-7, 2018 at Tokyo University of Agriculture in Japan.

Cultural, Technical and Sports Fests

BOSM 2018: BITS Pilani successfully hosted the 33rd edition of

their annual sports meet, BOSM from September 19-23. Padma

Shri Awardee Yogeshwar Dutt, the freestyle wrestler, best known for his 2012 Summer Olympics Bronze was the chief guest for the event.

OASIS-2018 With the theme ‘The Far Out’, Oasis was

organized from October 27-31, 2018 at Pilani campus with

Abhishek Chaubey (the director of Udta Punjab) as the Chief Guest. Major highlights were the performances by the trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and many others.

SPARKS 2018: SPARKS, the Annual Intra-collegiate cultural

festival of Dubai Campus was conducted from October 23-25, 2018.

BITS Sports Festival: 16th BITS Sports Festival, the UAE Inter

University Tournament, BSF 2018 was organised from

November 25-29, 2018 with a participation of 34 universities, and 2200 athletes. BITS Pilani, Dubai Campus emerged as overall champions of BSF 2018. Mr. Virender Sehwag, the International cricketing legend and recipient of India's civilian

award Padma Shri was the Chief Guest for the event.

ATMOS: The technical fest of Hyderabad Campus was

organized during October 26-28, 2018.

Contact us: editorbitscan@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in