IIIT's Industry-Academia meet attracts top industry representatives

International Institute of Information Technology (IIT) Naya Raipur, hosted its second Industry-Academia Meet at its campus on Saturday. The meet witnessed a congregation of representatives from top industries of the country.

Dr Pradeep K Sinha, Vice-Chancellor and Director of IIIT-Naya Raipur during his welcome address at the inaugural ceremony drew attention to the fact that today more than 60% of the engineers produced in India are not employable by industries due to lack of the desired skill sets.

Thus, it becomes immensely crucial for upcoming premier institutes like IIIT-NR to be in constant touch with industry. With this vision in mind, IAM 2019 was conceptualised, and focused on bridging the gap between the industry and academic communities. Towards this end, he also pointed out the diversity and flexibility of IIIT-NR's academic curriculum, which addresses the changing requirements of the industry.

A M Parial, Vice-Chairman CHiPS, was the esteemed chief guest for this flagship event at IIIT-NR. He is well-known for his contributions towards various e-governance initiatives in Chhattisgarh.

He began his talk by highlighting the fact that IIIT-NR was born with a vision to function as an institute, which is ahead of its time in terms of its curriculum and hands-on experience with industry-based projects.

He maintained that the institute was strategically located in terms of close proximity to the airport and the upcoming industrial hubs at Naya Raipur. Finally, he demonstrated his faith and confidence in the students and faculties of IIIT-NR, who he believed would bring many laurels to IIIT- N Rand, take it to new heights.

Dean (R&D) of IIIT-NR, Prof Subhendu Kumar Sahoo talked about the various industry related aspects included in the curriculum of the institute. IAM 2019 had 28 student projects handpicked from a large number of submissions and were based on cutting edge engineering technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Internet of Things, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Signal Processing and VLSI Design.

Dr Amit Kumar Agarwal, Training and Career Cell Incharge, briefed about the role of IAM 2019 in career planning and career advancement of the students. The inaugural session was followed by three parallel project presentation tracks.

During the projects presentation and demonstration sessions, the industry experts served as jury members and assessed projects and gave valuable feedback to the students to render their projects industry-oriented. The students were able to gather valuable insights on the quality of their finished work, oral presentations as well as the working prototypes in terms of the expectations and relevance to industry.