IIT Madras conducts Career Counselling for Children of Army Staff

Sanjog 2018 : ‘Building a Robot’ Opportunities in cyber security, Engineering and Science.

Navneet Kumar Gupta

Newswave@ New Delhi

IIT-Madras is hosting a Three-Day program to train children of Indian Army Staff in Computer Science and Life Skills besides career opportunities in Engineering and Science from 8th to 10th June. Program also features sessions on ‘Building a Robot,’ Opportunities in cyber security, Engineering and Science.

Called ‘Sanjog 2018’ the workshop features experts on Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics besides Entrepreneurs interacting with 30 children (Age group: 15-20 years) of Subedars, Havildars, Junior Commissioned Officers (JCO), war widows and retired servicemen. The applicants are selected by the Indian Army.

Speaking about this program, Prof V.Kamakoti, Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Workshop Coordinator, said, “I consider this as our duty towards the family of Great Soldiers who work tirelessly at remote places, away from their family, for the Security of our Country.”

Session on Artificial Intelligence

As Artificial Intelligence has gained a lot of importance, there is a session titled ‘SpeedoBotix – Introduction to Intelligent Robotics.’ Students will be taught to build, in less than three hours, a Robot that can follow a path and detect obstacles. They will be trained in writing programs and given an introduction to Intelligent Robotics.

This is the third edition of Sanjog. This year, it features lectures on Beautiful Mathematics, Problem Solving Using Computers, Gameistry- Games for a stress-free life without digital gadgets, Information Security Awareness, BreakFree to Success- enhancing analytical, Communication and Life Skills, and, SpeedoBotix- Introduction to Intelligent Robotics. Sanjog 2018 is sponsored by the City Union Bank as part of the Corporate Social Responsibility program.

The session titled ‘Gameistry’ involves a startup of the same name explaining to the participants a board game developed by them which is as entertaining as any electronic gadget.

Prof Kamakoti said that the total number of participants is restricted to 30 so that individual attention could be paid to each of them. The students coming for this program will be between Class XI and final year of their under graduation.

Workshop for State-of-the-art

This workshop focuses on enhancing their lateral thinking, especially in mathematics, creating awareness about opportunities in science and engineering, life skills such as communication and analytics and will also feature lectures by experts in engineering topics of huge interest such as Data Sciences and Chemical Engineering.

Further, sessions will also be held on ‘State-of-the-art’ subjects such as Information Security. Innovation is also of huge interest and the students will be taken to the Center for Innovation, IIT Madras

“As a follow-up, we encourage the students to apply for Summer and Winter Internships of IIT Madras. We will be in constant touch with the students touch to help them develop their careers,” said Prof Kamakoti.

The application is sent by the Army to all its units across India and Kids apply to the Army Headquarters. From around 100 applications received in the First Year, it grew to 500 in the second year and this time, a few thousands students applied.

Other areas of the workshop

• Bringing out the various entry schemes into IITs for BTech/ MS/ MTech/ PhD with stress on research oriented programs,
• Overview of the academic research programs in IITs, specific to MS/ PhD highlighting the advantages of the direct PhD program,
• Methodology of preparing for getting admission into IITs and other prominent universities for research programs,
• Talks by prominent persons for developing Lateral Thinking and How to become successful by taking leadership positions in one’s workspace,
• Sub-workshop on generating awareness on the information security essentials required during use of Internet on desktops/ smart phones to avoid leakage of information along with recent trends in cyber-attacks.