IIT-Madras students work on satellite to pre-empt quakes

In spite of all the technological advances of the past few decades, accurate prediction of earthquakes has always been beyond the reach of science. Four years ago, a group of IIT-Madras (Indian Institute of Technology-Madras) students decided to give it a shot of their own. They also chose a method that is not yet proven in scientific and technological terms: send a satellite up to detect radiation from the earth prior to an earthquake. The satellite-building has now evolved into a large multidisciplinary project involving 150 students and some professors, as well as mentoring from the engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

In a few months, ISRO will do a preliminary design review of the IIT-M student satellite. Once the design is approved and frozen, the students will begin integrating the satellite components. It will be launched — if ISRO approves the design and agrees for launch — by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) sometime in the fourth quarter of 2015. Once up in the sky, the 15-kg satellite will look for a sudden precipitation of charged particles — ions — that is supposed to be the signature of an impending earthquake. “The students are building something hands on and not just writing reports,” says David Koilpillai, Dean and Professor of Electrical Engineering at IIT-Madras.

When complete, this will be the third satellite in India to be made in a university. The earlier two launches were challenging projects, but the IIT-M satellite is different in conception, and it will also try to test a theory not yet accepted by the scientific community. “It is good to work on a project that even industry finds hard,” says Akshay Gulati, one of the students who began the project. He has since graduated and become a project staff.

The project began in 2009, after some students heard a lecture by Muriel Richard, an engineer at the Swiss technical university EPFL. “We figured out that no Indian satellite had looked at ions,” says Gulati. Within a year, the students had identified the payload and shortlisted four instruments. Some students went to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai and watched them build an experimental satellite. But things did not go smoothly. At the end of 2010, two years into the project, many ideas were still not clear and only four students left in the project.

The students then went to David Koilpillai and requested assistance. IIT-Madras then became involved at the institutional level and sanctioned Rs. 30 million, most of it to be raised from the alumni. They also assigned some space within the campus for a lab. The students then did a feasibility study and started the design process. They designed some sub-systems, which Isro engineers reviewed. The project also got integrated with MTech thesis: 14 students have now submitted this work as part of their course requirements. Many of them loved the challenge. Says S Varsha, a third year electrical engineering student who is designing the analogue electronics for the particle detector: “I am able to get practical experience at level difficult in a course.” If the students succeed in the project, they might end up making good contributions to science as well.

In the last few decades, scientists have made progress in predicting all natural disasters except earthquakes. Earthquakes can be predicted only when they begin. Before an earthquake happens, the ground is believed to emit low frequency and ultra-low frequency waves. These waves go up and interact with the Van Allen belt, a layer of charged particles more than 1,000 km above the earth.

This is supposed to lead to a sudden precipitation of particles from the belt, which the IIT-M students are trying to detect using a satellite below. But it is not a proven theory. In 2012, US space agency NASA launched two satellites right into the Van Allen belt to study this phenomenon; it is supposed to have found particle precipitations four days before an earthquake. However, NASA scientists also found longer-term associations between particle precipitation and earthquakes, and so do not consider it an accurate method of prediction yet.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), January 20, 2014

Pre-placement offers roll in steadily at IITs

Pre-placement offers (PPOs), including plum international postings, are rolling in steadily at the country’s premier technological institutes, indicating a good placement season in December. Among the companies who have lined up international offers are Google, which has offered salaries of $120,000 (Rs. 7.5 million) compared with Rs. 7.3 million last year to one student at its US headquarters to students at IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Guwahati. Facebook, too, has offered overseas jobs at IIT-Madras and IIT-Roorkee while Microsoft has made oofers at IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Roorkee. Both the companies are expected to revise last year’s offer upwards— Facebook’s Rs. 6.5 million and Microsoft’s Rs. 6 million.

Himanshu Srivastava (22) of IIT-Kharagpur, who has received the offer from Google, is looking forward to his stint with Google. “I have done two internships for the company and I know their work culture. They mix work and fun well and give ample scope to grow,” he says.

Several other top recruiters have made lucrative offers at IIT campuses, but are yet to disclose the details. Among these are Barclays, LinkedIn, Goldman Sachs Technology, Daikin, Qualcomm, Deutsche Bank, Shell, GE, Directi, Reliance and ITC. PPOs, which typically start coming in from August, are jobs offered to students who have done internships in these companies.

In terms of the number of hires too, the picture looks good so far. With 75 PPOs till date, IIT-Bombay is inching closer to last year’s number of 77. IIT-Kharagpur too looks set to close at last year’s level of 130, with 104 PPOs received till date. IIT-Madras, on the other hand, has crossed last year’s count of 33 PPOs with 54 PPOs till date this year.

IIT-Guwahati has received 40 PPOs almost touching last year’s total of 42. IIT-Kanpur, too expects to end the season with 20% more offers compared with last year, with 62 PPOs already in. Last year’s total count was 80. IIT-Roorkee has received 37 offers till date, topping last year’s 35. “The huge inflow of PPOs suggests a change in the recruitment pattern. Companies want to take the internship route to reach their decision on final placements,” says Avijit Chatterjee, Professor-In-charge, Placement, IIT-B. He says recruiters are now doing more to hire the right candidate, as during internships, they can get to know the student better.

The total number of internships at his institute went up by 40% this year to 900, compared with last year. Another reason for the steady inflow of PPOs could be that the process of placing interns has been formalised. At IIT-B, for instance, the placement office is taking care of internships along with placements.

“The pay package has seen an increase for almost all the companies as compared to last year,” says Natesan Srinivasan, Faculty-In-Charge, Placement, IIT-Guwahati.

Source: The Economic Times, October 8, 2013

Meet IIT-Madras alumnus Prem Watsa, iconic BlackBerry’s new owner

Forty two years after he migrated to Canada, V. Prem Watsa, who was then just another IIT engineer in search of an MBA, now holds the future of an ailing, but still iconic BlackBerry in his hands. On Monday afternoon, a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings, Watsa’s flagship company, bid $9 a share to buy out Blackberry.

A 1971 batch IIT-Madras graduate in chemical engineering, Watsa arrived in Canada with little more than pocket change with which to pursue his dreams. He did his MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Since then, he has made a name for himself, mostly as an investor who identifies distressed and undervalued assets, bets on them, and reaps returns. Fairfax Financial Holdings, an insurance-cum-investment company that Watsa founded in 1985, went on to become Canada’s most profitable company in 2008.

“I know he is an ardent admirer of Warren Buffett and is sometimes referred to as the Warren Buffett of Canada,” says MG Venkatesh Mannar, the Ottawa-based President of The Micronutrient Initiative, and Watsa’s senior at IIT-Madras. “I remember him then as a shy and reserved person (maybe he still is).”

Funds for Alma Mater
Watsa, Mannar says, has made significant contributions to the IIT-Madras Alumni Fund. Despite a couple of recent lacklustre years, Fairfax Financial Holdings’ revenue crossed $8 billion in 2012, up over 7% from a year earlier, with net profit at $532.4 million and nearly $37 billion in assets, spread across pulp mills, specialty retailers, and restaurant chains. Its stock price has compounded at 19 percent annually.

Watsa, 63, and one of the wealthiest individuals in Canada, is reclusive by nature and limits public appearances mostly to Fairfax’s annual shareholder meetings. However, his company’s latest move – a $4.7 billion bid to buy smartphone maker BlackBerry, has put the spot light on the Hyderabad-born billionaire. BlackBerry is by far the most high profile company in Canada and Fairfax – short for fair, friendly acquisitions – is its largest shareholder with around a 10% stake. Fairfax raised its stake in Blackberry from 2 percent in January 2012 (when he joined the Blackberry board) to 10% by mid-2013, during a period when the company stock prices were on a decline.

Last month, when BlackBerry announced it was exploring options for a sale, Watsa resigned as a director on the Blackberry board, citing potential conflict of interest. This was read as a statement of intent to mount a bid for the company.

Watsa has been a strong believer in BlackBerry from the time he started buying its shares. “The brand name, a security system second to none, a distribution network across 650 telecom carriers worldwide, a 79 million subscriber base, enterprise customers accounting for 90% of the Fortune 500….are all formidable strengths..” he wrote in a letter to Fairfax Financial shareholders this March.

Truck Start
His professional career started in 1974 at the Confederation Life Insurance Co. (CLI) in Toronto, where he stayed till 1983, rising to become the company’s vice president. After a short stint at GW Asset Management, he founded his own asset management company – Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel Ltd. (now wholly owned by Fairfax) – along with his former boss at CLI and three others. In 1985, Watsa bought over Markel Financial, a Canadian company specialising in trucking insurance, and later renamed it Fairfax Financial Holdings.

Watsa’s mantra of risk-averseness and long term view has stood him well over the years, but it’s his eye for the big picture that enables him to see investment pitfalls and financial crises way before others, say observers. He was among the first to predict the crash of 1987, the Japanese collapse of 1990 and the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), September 25, 2013

IIT-Madras talks joint PhDs with US universities; move to improve profile of students

Last July, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) director Bhaskar Ramamurthy and external relations dean R Nagarajan set off on a rather unusual mission: to ask American universities whether they were interested in offering joint PhD programmes with IIT Madras. The IITs have got the best undergraduate students in India – probably in the world – but their PhD programmes were not going too well. Most IIT undergraduates left for high-paying jobs or management education after their degree and the remaining went for PhD in overseas universities.

All the IITs were working to change this, and IIT Madras had found its own unique method. Ramamurthy and Nagarajan went to 20 American universities. These universities were not picked at random. They had IIT Madras alumni as senior faculty who could be used to broker relationships. IIT Madras, like many top institutions, had a number of collaborations between the faculty in many universities. But Ramamurthy wanted to take the collaboration to a deeper level culminating in a joint PhD programme in the near future.

IIT Madras had one such programme with National University of Singapore, but it had not gone too well — only one student had used it in six years. Ramamurthy wanted to sow the ground first with US universities before offering joint PhD programmes. Their tour went exceptionally well. US universities were too keen to collaborate with IIT Madras.

Michigan State University was eager to get to a joint PhD programme quickly, as soon as later this year. Two others, Purdue University and the University of Maryland, also wanted to move on to deeper relationships culminating in a joint PhD programme. IIT Madras expects more US universities to join this list soon which should expand to include universities from other countries. Taiwanese universities are at the top of the list outside the US since they found many IIT PhDs end up in the Taiwanese semiconductor firms.

The Shift
The IITs are now in the middle of a paradigm shift as they try to morph from world-class teaching institutions to world-class research centres. Their PhD students are an important part of this shift. But they have not been able to persuade their undergraduate students to do PhDs in their own institutions. Integrated programmes for undergrads have had very few takers while their masters and PhD students come from other engineering colleges, and often with inadequate preparation for the rigour of a PhD programme.

Most of them do not get exposed to global trends during their PhDs and the IITs do not get foreign students to any significant degree. Meanwhile, IIT faculty has got strong hints about the possibilities of sending students abroad. “We’ve seen students who go abroad come back transformed,” says Ramamurthy. IIT faculty has found that students who spend some time abroad on collaborative projects are better prepared for continuing their research work here. They also meet students from many countries and get a better sense of their own place in the global education ecosystem.

Unlike the great universities, IITs are not ethnically-diverse campuses. Foreign research students come to India in small numbers but IITs and other institutions are keen to increase their presence. “A joint PhD is a good way to bring visitors to our own campuses,” says Ramamurthy.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), January 28, 2013

Automation industry body partners IIT-Madras for research projects

The Automation Industry Association (AIA) has tied up with Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) to enhance research projects in the field of industrial automation. It is eyeing a similar tie-up with IIT-Mumbai. The association is a forum for all automation companies in India spreading knowledge and creating awareness.

The institute has set up a Centre of Excellence in Industrial Automation at its campus. The collaboration will enable the institute to get industry inputs in developing curriculum and a modern lab, and formulate industry-relevant and need-based research projects, said the association’s President, K. Nandakumar. The centre has been set up by the institute’s Design Engineering Department, he said.

Each participating member company of AIA will bring a ‘mentor’ and a subject matter (or domain) expert. There will be joint development of curriculum, research projects, individual technology demonstrations, and training workshops under the agreement. The idea is to infuse contemporary technology and content into the educational system.

Leading players in the field of automation, such as B&R Automation, Larsen & Toubro Control and Automation and Siemens Ltd., have announced immediate participation in the project with their technologies, said Nandakumar, who is also the Chairman & Managing Director of the Mumbai-based Chemtrols Industries Ltd.

To begin with, the centre will focus on factory automation, which is easy to start, and later move on to process automation. About 20 students will be in the first batch, which is likely to commence in the next couple of weeks, he told Business Line. With automation pervasive in the manufacturing sector, there will be greater demand for ‘skilled manpower’ in automation. The centre will prepare students at the post-graduate level to be readily absorbed by the industry, he said.

Source: The Hindu Business Line, August 26, 2012

IIT-Madras announces Distinguished Alumnus Awards

Corporate head honchos V. Sumantran and Prabhakar Raghavan are among the winners of this year’s Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) Distinguished Alumnus Award (DAA), the institute said today. During his Republic Day address, IIT-Madras Director Bhaskar Ramamurthi said the Selection Committee for DAA has chosen Hinduja Automotive Ltd. Vice Chairman Sumantran and Yahoo! Labs Chief Strategy Officer and Head Raghavan for this year’s distinguished alumnus award.

The others chosen for the award by the selection committee were Drexel University Professor Raj Mutharasan, Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science Department of Computer Science and Automation Senior Professor Jayant R. Haritsa; and University of Illinois Franklin W. Woeltge Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering P.R. Kumar.

In addition, US firm Chevron Corp’s V-P (Technology for Global Downstream) .S Krishnaswamy, Hyderabad-based Thermopads Pvt Ltd. Technical Director and Thermo Cables Ltd. Managing Director Uma Ghurka and Chennai-based AID India Founder and CEO Balaji Sampath were selected for the DAA 2012.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), January 26, 2012

IIT-Madras students offered Rs. 7.6 million a year

In a record at any of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), an annual compensation of $135,000 or around Rs. 7.6 million has been offered by an American multinational company to three computer science fresh graduates of IIT-Madras. These students were hired in the just concluded campus recrutiment and will be working in the US. In comparison, the annual salary package offered by many companies to the students ranged between Rs. 400,000 and Rs. 1.5 million in the campus recruitment. Officials from the institute could not be contacted for further details.

The US-based Pocket Gems, which is into mobile gaming, has offered the package. “To my knowledge, this could be the maximum salary at any of the IITs,” said Mr. B. Nagarajan, Deputy Registrar of Training, Placement and Public Relations at IIT-Madras. Pocket Gems, which has investors like Sequoia Capital and Harrison Metal, has also picked up a couple of students from IIT-Kanpur.The earlier record compensation offerred at IIT-Madras was Rs. 2.8 million, he told Business Line.

For the first time top multinational companies like Sony Corporation, Hondo, NTT Communications; US-based Pocket Gems, Infoaxe, EPIC and other global companies such as Hyundai Motors, PayPal, WS Atkins, UoP Honeywell and Commvalut participated in the campus recruitment. However, there was no information in the release given by the institute on how many students these foreign companies absorbed.

Public sector companies such as NTPC, HAL, ISRO, Indian Navy and Power Grid also visited the campus to recruit students. Core-engineering companies of India like Ashok Leyland, Hyundai, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hero Moto Corp, Coromandel Fertilizers and Murugappa Group too visited the campus this year.

The campus recruitment for the 2012 batch passing out students began on December 1, with 1,208 students having registered for placement. About 330 companies have consented to come for placement out of which 209 companies have completed their selection process. As on December 23, 769 students, including students of BTech, MTech, MBA and MSc, were placed. Last year, 172 companies recruited 627 students.

Students placed in Hyundai Motors will be sponsored for a two-year post-graduate program in a top management or engineering school in South Korea. On successful completion of this program, they will have the opportunity to work at their headquarters in South Korea for two years as part of a professional development program. They will also have an opportunity for a global assignment for two years at any of their overseas corporations. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd, Taiwan, has recruited MS and PhD scholars for their R&D division, the release says.

Source: The Hindu Business Line, January 7, 2012

>French studies head to India for higher studies

>When the merchants of Rouen set sail from France for the eastern seas in the 16th century, they had only one aim to have their share in the most happening trading post in the world. India still beckons the French, but the new wave of visitors, mostly students, seems to prefer the balmy south India to the shores of Surat.

Chennai, Vellore, Puducherry (earlier known as Pondicherry) and other south Indian cities are increasingly featuring in the career plans of students from France. Last year, eight students from various French universities came to the University of Madras on exchange programmes. The number has gone up to 26 in the current (2010-11) academic year, say university officials.

“The exchange programme has been on for the past five years. The demand is growing and this year students from around 14 French universities wanted to come down,” says Chitra Krishnan, Head, Department of French, University of Madras. It is the same scene in Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M), says an official with the institute’s international relations office. “This year there are more than 10 students,” says the official.

Floriane Bollazi, a 23-year-old economics student from the University of Lyon, chose Chennai as she wanted to experience a different culture. “Tamil Nadu is more traditional than highly westernised places like Delhi. In Chennai, I get to learn about Dravidian culture and also pursue my course,” says Bollazi, who arrived in July 2010.

Reputed technical education institutions such as IIT-M, Anna University, Jawaharlal Institute of Post-graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) and Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) are also major draws. “I got an internship in Bangalore partly because I did one semester at IIT-M,” says Clement Quertelet, 23, an engineering student from Paris. IIT-M has agreements with 12 French higher education institutions, such as Polytechnic Schools and Central Schools.

A big chunk of the exchange programmes are organised by a Franco-Indian academic consortium formed in 2008 by associations of universities in both the countries. Once Conference des Presidents d universities’ and conference des directeurs des ecoles d ingenieurs francaises’ signed agreements with the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), several partner institutions formed tie-ups. For instance, the University of Technological and Health Sciences in Grenoble has exchange programmes with the Delhi University and Anna University in nanoscience and nanotechnology (MSc). The latest such agreement was signed between seven IITs and Paris-Tech (a consortium of Grandes Ecoles) when President Nicholas Sarkozy visited Indian visiting last year.

Students come to south India for studying specific areas in medicine too, says an official with the French consulate in Puducherry. “Many prefer JIPMER in Puducherry so they can study tropical diseases as there is a threat of these infections making a comeback in Europe due to global warming,” he says.

The other group that heads down south consists of students and researchers of social issues. Barbara S., a political science student from Lyon, found southern India to be the perfect place for her research on refugees. “I found that Tamil Nadu has a number of refugee camps,” she says. The 24-year-old, who arrived in August 2010, is now doing a post-graduate degree in defence and strategic studies at the University of Madras. She has also landed an internship with an organisation that works for the cause of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees. “I got my first field-level work experience here,” she says. “It will really help my career.”

Though most students say that their Indian sojourns would look good on their resumes and help them land jobs easily, there are a few complaints too. Jeremie Berlioux, a 21-year-old political science student, says he did not have much choice when it came to selecting universities under the exchange programme. Quertelet had only two places IIT-M and VIT to choose from.

Also, many face difficulties finding accommodation. Bolazzi says, “It was hard to find a flat because owners didn’t want non-Indians or non-Tamils.” She finally found a place but is yet to feel at home. These problems have not dampened their enthusiasm for the place. For many, it is an opportunity to brush up on their English and figure out new areas of economic growth, says the consular official. “And they prefer south India as there is not much of a law and order problem that might interfere with their tight schedules,” he adds.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), April 25, 2011

>Walmart to buy website founded by IIT-Madras alumni

>The world’s largest retailer Walmart has announced acquisition of social media site Kosmix, a Silicon Valley firm founded by two alumni of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), as the global retail giant aims to strengthen its position in social and mobile commerce offerings.

“We are expanding our capabilities in today’s rapidly growing social commerce environment. Social networking and mobile applications are increasingly becoming a part of our customers’ day-to-day lives globally, influencing how they think about shopping, both online and in retail stores,” Walmart’s Vice Chairman Eduardo Castro-Wright said in a statement.

Founded by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman in 2005, Kosmix has developed a social media technology platform that filters and organises content in social networks to connect people with real-time information that interests them.

Walmart has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kosmix. The retail major did not disclose the financial details of the transaction. The deal, subject to customary closing conditions, is likely to complete during the first half of this year, it said. The founders and the Kosmix team will operate as part of the newly formed ‘WalmartLabs’ and will continue to be based in Silicon Valley.

“We are thrilled to join one of the world’s largest companies and combine our work with Walmart’s vast online and offline retail businesses,” Rajaraman said. Walmart plans to expand the WalmartLabs team and expects this new group to create technologies and businesses around social and mobile commerce.

Source: The Indian Express, April 20, 2011

>IIT-Madras, Lafarge to launch cement research project

>The first joint project by French cement major Lafarge Group’s research arm and the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) is expected to kick start soon, an official said here on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters, Revindra Gettu, professor at IIT-M’s Department of Civil Engineering, said the research project will test the durability of concrete as a building material in different climatic conditions.

The cement major’s research arm, Lafarge Research Centre, and IIT-M last year signed a Memorandum of Understanding, under which the IIT’s civil engineering department set up a laboratory to carry out joint research programmes. Lafarge Research Centre has funded the laboratory to the tune of Rs.1.5 crore (Rs. 15 million) over a period of three years.

According to Prof. Gettu, the tests will be conducted on concrete in different parts of India to identify the carbonation and its effects on concrete in different atmospheric conditions. “Lafarge aims to improve the performance of concrete to address sustainable construction and global warming challenges. This is done through cutting-edge scientific research and forming partnerships with other institutes and organizations,” said Pascal Casanova, head of Lafarge Group’s Research and Development.

The French group has four cement plants in India – two in Chhattisgarh, and one grinding plant each in Jharkhand and West Bengal. Lafarge has also set up a gypsum plasterboard plant at Khushkhera in Rajasthan.

Source: http://www.indiaedunews.net, March 23, 2011