Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (NR)
Mangalore, Feb 18: The concluding session of 'Engineer 2008,' an annual technical symposium of NITK, Suratkal ended with a flourish here on Sunday February 17. Earlier events such as 'Automata,' 'Velocity,' 'Click,' 'Ad-Venture' and 'Fox Hunt' had successfully ended on day three.
The day commenced with the finals of the civil engineering quiz contest and finally concluded with sessions on photography and robotics workshops. The star event of Engineer 2008 however, was the eagerly-awaited group discussion on socially relevant issues aptly titled 'Last Word.'
This was indeed a rare opportunity for students, who had flocked to the venue to hear a distinguished panel comprising R K Mishra, the newly-crowned winner of TOI's 'Lead India,' Pallavi Ghosh, CNN-IBN correspondent, Prof S Balaram, gead of National Institute of Design, Subhash C Khuntia, joint secretary of ministry of HRD of Secondary Education, Dainik Jagran correspondent Ajay Upadhyay and L Prabhakar, HR manager of ITC Ltd who all in the course of the fest touched on various topics.
The underlying theme of the discussion was the role of corporates, media, government and citizens in a world which is increasingly becoming indifferent to social needs and responsibilities. The highlight of the discussion was the topic 'Social responsibility' with regard to issues in the corporate and public sector. Each member on the panel expressed his/her opinion on the issue, which was then followed by an interactive session with the students who were all bursting with queries for the distinguished panel.
On the occasion different robotics events conducted, one of them being the 'Automata' wherein the teams had to create a fully automated robot capable of scanning and checking errors on a chessboard pattern. Another robotics event 'Velocity' pushed the participating robots to their tether while they zipped, remote controlled, through a race track modelled on formula racing. The workshop on robotics 'Robokrithi', organized by technophilia had lectures on wired and wireless robots followed by hands-on-workshop cum competition on robot building.
An workshop on photograph entitled 'Click!' was conducted by expert wildlife photographers Jayanth Sharma of the Bangalore Photography Club and Venkatesh, wherein the participants were briefed on the finer nuances of photography. On the other hand, 'Fox Hunt' an amateur HAM radio enthusiasts’ key event proved to be quite interesting. It was a quest to find the fox for which the participants were trained in a workshop. The team had to zero in on the fox using the technique which was a beacon located at a remote location.
There was also a guest lecture by Dr Tim Poston, Ashutosh Mukherjee, professor at NIAS (National Institute Advanced Studies), Bangalore on the contributions of famous genius Alan Turing to the field of science and mathematics. Vice-president of Robert Bosch group R K Shenoy detailed on advanced automotive technology in his talk on the 'Role of Electronics in the Automotive Industry.'
A befitting finale to the fest was the programme 'Symphony' a mind-boggling combination of artistic and scientific abilities on display, where in students designed circuits that synchronized music with water fountains. This awesome display conjured up visions of professional fountains found all around the country, leaving the gathering gaping at the inventiveness of the participants.