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Annual Report 2015

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LEADERSHIP 2015 ........................................................................2

SCHOLARSHIPS TEAM, BITSAA INTL. ........................................6

BITS2BSCHOOL ..........................................................................12

BITS2MSPHD...............................................................................13

BITS ALUMNI MENTORING PROGRAM .....................................14

BITS2 FITNESS ...........................................................................16

BITSAA INVESTMENT COMMITTEE (BIC) .................................16

STATEMENT OF ACCOUNTS .....................................................18

HOW TO DONATE? .....................................................................21

CONTENTS

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LEADERSHIP 2015

EXECUTIVE TEAM

BITS-AMP BITS2BSCHOOL BITS2MSPhD

Rajesh ChelapurathCIO

Ravi Sekhar CherukuriCEO

Vishrut ShuklaCOO

Deekshith VanamalaCFO

Kaushik BalasubramanianCMO

Kalyan KrishnamaniVP Communications, CPRO

Sandeepa Garlapati Manager

Shekhar Kanodia Team Leader

Vineesha Satwani Team Leader

Vani Macha Team Leader

AkhileshAgrawal Volunteer

Prateek Chaudhary Manager

Avneesh Singh Team Leader

Animesh Tambi Team Leader

Manish Shukla Team Leader

Adwait Gandhe Manager

Manish Kumar Team Leader

Apoorvaa Deshpande Team Leader

Manasa Gopal Team Leader

Ashwin Naik Team Leader

Likhita Ravuri Volunteer

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LEADERSHIP 2015

BITS2MSPhD (Contd.) CAMPUS RELATIONS CAMPUS RELATIONS (Contd.)

BITS2FITNESS

BITS SPARK

CAREER CENTER

Samarth Hegde Volunteer

Vikas Goel Volunteer

Parth Bhogate Volunteer

Siddharth Gupta Volunteer

Siddharth Gupta Director

Robin Garg Manager

Jyoth Kali Prasad Bhogaraju Manager

Pratyush Mahapatra Manager

Rohan Manchanda Convener

Rajesh Damarapati Director

Arjun Baskaran Volunteer

Anurag Nandi Volunteer

Utkarsh Mehrotra Director

Chinmaya Patnayak Team Leader

Akshit Sandooja Team Leader

Parth Goel Team Leader

Rajarshi Sinha Team Leader

Nilesh Gaurav Team Leader

Rajdeep Pundir Team Leader

Abhinav Gupta Team Leader

Aditya Sharma Member

Angad S Oberoi Member

Tanish Anand Member

Aditi Kulkarni Member

Amitabh Aggarwal Member

Anjali Sinha Member

Raghav Jajodia Member

Shivam Darmora Member

Tushar Vatsa Volunteer

Sourav Banerjee Volunteer

Jaivardhan S Chauhan Volunteer

Nikhil Sahakari Volunteer

Susheel Tatineni Vice President, Operations

Suhas Kashyap Director

Aishwarya Raghavan Marketing Head

Vivekananda Murarishetty Technology Manager

Anvesh Gudivada UI Manager

Siddharth Biyani Team Leader

Rachit Agarwal Team Leader

Ratna Prashanth Analytics Lead

Rohit Tipnis Volunteer

Ramanjanaya Reddy Volunteer

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Hari Kishore DirectorAditya Garg DirectorAshwin GowdaAashish Takkala Manager (New York & New Jeresy)Basant Choudhary Manager (Mumbai)Disha Sharma ManagerSriteja Burla Team LeaderLakshmi Raj Team LeaderNishamathi Kumaraswamy Team LeaderPreethi Myla Vaikuntaraman Team Leader (US West) Ashish Kumar Team LeaderAyush Agarwal VolunteerAsna Varshney VolunteerRaghuram Salguti Volunteer

CHAPTER RELATIONS & OUTREACH

CHAPTER RELATIONS & OUTREACH (Contd.)

FINANCE

FUNDRAISINGCOMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

Sneha Nandan VolunteerRoshan Mishra VolunteerAnuj Kulshreshtha Volunteer

Bharati Makhijani DirectorPriya Venkitachalam Team Leader Priyatham Dharmana Team LeaderSatyavihar Kothamasu Team LeaderKruthika Sundaram Team LeaderDalan Mendonca Team LeaderKeshav Parashar Team LeaderRahul Priyadarshi Team LeaderYashaswy Akella Team LeaderPradyumna Kiran Kummamuru Team LeaderVinay Iyer Volunteer

Anmol Gupta DirectorGaurav Kothari Team LeaderIshita Aggarwal ManagerDeepak Agrawal Volunteer

Sashidhar Battu DirectorGaelen Pereira DirectorShashwat Nandan DirectorRohit Suvarna ManagerAbhinav Yadav Team LeaderYatharth Chaturvedi Team LeaderAiswarya Iyer VolunteerSiva Banda Volunteer

GROWTH TEAM

Reuben George ManagerPrateek Sharma VolunteerMohit Batra VolunteerKoti Mylavarapu Director

LEADERSHIP 2015

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OPERATIONS

TECHNOLOGY

SCHOLARSHIPS & AWARDS

SCHOLARSHIPS & AWARDS (Contd.)

PEOPLE STRATEGY

Saagar Gadhok Director

Arun Vinayak Manager

Hardik Tiwari Manager

Ankur Arvind Manager

Ankit Surolia Team Leader

Srikanth CS Team Leader

Sanket Jain Team Leader

Sujay Jain Team Leader

Sunalini Sinha Team Leader

Siddhartha Bahl Team Leader

Sandeep Murisetty Team Leader

Anirudh Sharma Volunteer

Debanshu Singh Volunteer

Sparsh Maheshwari Volunteer

Surya Santosh Director

Rama Satya Diwakar Grandhi Director

Sowmyavadhana Manager

Pavan Kumar Mullangi Manager

Padma Priya Team Leader

Nidhi Gurnani Vice President

Nikhitha Punna Manager

Rohit Kulkarni Team Leader

Sumit Kumar Team Leader

Nishank Varshney Volunteer

Neeti Pokharna Volunteer

Sahil Aggarwal Volunteer

Parth Shah Volunteer

Abhishek Kalantri Volunteer

Rakesh Komuravelli Director

Abhisek Rathi Director

Gaurab Ghosh Manager

Aditya Sharma Technology

Prathyush Reddy Team Leader

Srikanth Potipireddi Volunteer

Sai Prameela Konduru Volunteer

Sumit Binnani Volunteer

LEADERSHIP 2015

Shreeraman Raghavan Team Leader

Sai Prajwal Team Leader

Jitendra Kewalramani Volunteer

Harsh Thakar Volunteer

Monica Jain Volunteer

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The scholarships team at BITSAA is dedicated to support and encourage students by managing alumni supported scholarships and awards. The scholarships cover tuition fees, international conference travel cost and graduate school application fees. The awards recognize the excellent work done by students in various fields of academics and entrepreneurship. The team aims to encourage the students to pursue excellence and ensure that no student at BITS Pilani is denied a holistic educational experience due to lack of funds.

1. BITSAA Merit-cum-Need Scholarships

The Merit-cum-need (MCN) scholarships are a category of scholarships offered by BITS to students from weaker financial background based on their academic performance and merit. Testimonials show that the students have greatly benefitted from the MCN scholarships, as a part of their financial burden is alleviated and they are able to concentrate better on their academics. This motivates us to look for more avenues for providing such scholarships to deserving students.

Thanks to the generous donations from BITS alumni, BITSAA currently manages ten MCN scholarships helping about 17 students in total every year. Below table presents the list of winners of various MCNs in the academic year 2014 -15.

MCN Scholarship winners (2014 – 2015)

Name Campus Scholarship NameRamya Mittal Pilani Class of 1966-71Bugade Vishwajit Babasaheb Pilani Class of 1966-71Deeksha Awadh Dadhich Pilani Rakesh ChandraKunal Dharamsi Pilani Rakesh Chandra ScholarshipManek Aishwarya Himanshu Pilani Pendyala Vamsi Krishna Memorial ScholarshipVishal Kejriwal Pilani SS Sedhadri MemorialBhanu Priya Pilani Santha E IyerPriya Agarwal Pilani Santha E IyerNeha Agarwal Pilani Santha E IyerVrinda Poddar Pilani Santha E Iyer

Hardik Verma Goa Bhushan Bhatia ScholarshipGanisha Bhawsar Goa Bhushan Bhatia ScholarshipRakde Abhijeet Kakas Goa Bhushan Bhatia ScholarshipArcha R I Goa Bhushan Bhatia ScholarshipPatlori Samaritha Hyderabad Ashok Agarwal ScholarshipAyush Gupta Pilani Hiralal Agarwal ScholarshipVyankatesh Sanjay Marathe Pilani Arun Kumar Agarwal Scholarship

2. BITSAA Awards

BITSAA bestows awards to meritorious students, alumni and faculty in various categories. The categories include Research & Development, Arts & Literature and Sports for students. For alumni, the list of categories is much more diverse to include Social Entrepreneurship & Community Building, Entrepreneurship, Invention & Innovation and Leadership as well. As many as 50 people receive awards from BITSAA every year, and this is only possible because of the strong support and funding from the BITSian community.

ScHoLARSHIPS TEAM, BITSAA INTL.

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The complete list of awards given by BITSAA are as below:

Name of the Award Link to the Award Page Applicable for CategoryProf SC Rastogi Merit Scholarship http://www.bitsaa.org/?SCRastogiSchol Students EducationSrikant Visweswariah Analog Design Award and Fellowship

http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=SrikantAnalogAward Students Research & Development

Prof. Suresh Ramaswamy Memorial Award

http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=SuRa_Award Students Research & Development

Shashi Kishore Research Excellence Award

http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=shashi_kishore_award Students Education

R.P. Vaid Award http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=rpvaidaward Students EducationPrabhat Award for Best Outgoing Student in Physics

http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=prabhataward Students Education

Ranvir Trehan Tennis Trophy http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=ranvirtrehan Students SportsBrij Bhushan Badminton Trophy http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=bhushan_badminton Students SportsLeuna Herkawat Award http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=leunaaward Students Arts & LiteratureMantra Awards http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=mantraawards Students EntrepreneurshipBITSAA Global 30 Under 30 Awards http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=bits30under30 Alumni Various CategoriesAPOGEE Awards(Courtesy-Class of 1966-'71)

http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=apogeeawards Students Education

Distinguished BITS Alumnus Award http://www.bitsaa.org/?dist_alumnus Alumni Various CategoriesBatch of 2006 Award for Excellence in Computer Science

http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=2006CSaward Students Education

Prof S.Venkateswaran Faculty Excellence Award

http://www.bitsaa.org/?SVenkateswaranAward Faculty Faculty

We highlight a couple of the awards in detail below.

Professor Suresh Ramaswamy Memorial Award

This award is to honor the memory and lasting impact of Professor Ramaswamy in the lives of students he mentored. It aims to institutionalize his legacy, and promote activities that embody his spirit and enthusiasm for nurturing students. A prize of Rs. 40,000 is awarded every year to a team of students (max. 6 students) from any department of Goa campus, in order to encourage and nurture them to work on a student project. The recipients of the award will be chosen by a competitive peer-review process in the previous semester to the award. Interested students have applied to the award with a sound proposal of the project. For the year 2014-15, proposals were restricted to science and engineering. They were judged on their innovation and feasibility.

Winners (2014-2015):

Project: Mudra- A Braille Dicta

Students: Akshay Sonandkar Yash Bardapurkar Vandan

Project description:Hitch is a tiny electronic device which can wirelessly connect to mobile devices and enhance bidirectional flow of information and commands. With integration of specific sensors the device can inform mobile about outside temperature, humidity, air pressure, heart rate, speed or movement and most importantly can tell about its proximity to the connected mobile device. Therefore the device can be simply hooked with your belongings. And then your mobile phone will ensure that your valuables remain in your close range and generate an alert notification in case of losing, forgetting or theft.

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Testimonial (SuRa award winners): “We consider ourselves very fortunate to receive this highly reputed award from BITS. It is our honour to gain such recognition for our project. This award has helped us get access to Technology Business Incubator of BITS as well as permission to use Labs and 3 D printer for prototyping. The fund will help us manufacture our first finished product and buy new equipments for further research and development. We are grateful for such a support from college and hope that we will create a great impact on the society with the accomplishment of our project.”

BITSAA Global 30 Under 30 AwardsThe recipients of BITSAA Global 30 Under 30 Awards represent the very best of the young BITSian Achievers. The group was chosen from 130 nominations, of which 102 were nominated by others – and for that we are grateful to all BITSians for recognizing the superstars in their midst. We’d also like to thank the judges and the team for a rigorous three-month process of selection. The selection committee for 2015 is,

1. Mukesh Chatter (Chairman Neosaej & Serial Entrepreneur) 2. Ajay Chaturvedi (Founder, HarVa) 3. Ajay Chopra (General Partner, Trinity Ventures) 4. Rajat Gupta (Director, Mckinsey) 5. Anu Hassan (Actress & TV Personality) 6. Sanjay Nath (Managing Director, Blume Ventures) 7. Punita Pandey (CEO, Netcustomer) 8. Kris Ramachandran (Advisor to Chairman, Aditya Birla Group) 9. Jayan Ramankutty (Chairman, BITSAA International) 10. Prof G Raghurama (Professor & Former Director, BITS Pilani) 11. Mani Shankar (Movie Director) 12. Prof Balagopal Vissa (Professor, INSEAD)

The 2015 30 under 30 Winners

The year of entry at BITS is given is brackets next to the candidate name.

Academia / Research & DevelopmentSaniya Deshpande (2006) –Creating optical devices and nano-LEDS. Shivani Gupta (2011) - Developing solutions for early detection and diagnosis of infectious diseases.Rakesh Komuravelli (2002) - 450 citations and 8 patents in computer science. Deepan Kishore Kumar (2010) - Winner of 17 awards for research; currently at Caltech.Sundar Murugappan (2001) - User Experience Researcher at GE Global Research.

Arts, Literature & CultureAkhshay Gandhi (2005) - Performance artist and cofounder of the Sva Collective initiative.Uttam Grandhi (2005) – Art work using metal, electronics and paper has been exhibited internationally.K R Bhavani GuruCharan (2003) - Extraordinary street photographer.Mohamed Ahasan Karim ( Ehsaan Nashad ) (2003) - Novelist with three books.

Social Entrepreneurship & Community BuildingChandra Sekhar Putchakayala (2003) - President of Nirmaan & CEO of Vidya HelpLine.Aswini Sivaraman (2004) - Digital Engagement Campaigner at Greenpeace India.George Tom (2004) – Director of Projects at the Kenneth Anderson Nature Society (KANS). Nishank Varshney (2009) - Right to Education Resource Centre (RTERC) coordinator.

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EntrepreneurshipRohit Agarwal (2007) is Founder& CEO of Framebench, a file collaboration tool.Surabhi Dewra (2003) is the co-founder and CEO of MeraCareerGuide.Com for high school students and their families and teachers. Ankit Gupta (2007) - Product Manager at Uber, Zomato and Founder of a startup sold to Gruner+Jahr.Aakash Jain (2005) - Founder of Cube26, a software firm that develops gesture controls.Shubh Malhotra (2005) - Creator of Teewe, a Chromecast competitor device.Rajagopal Sathyamurthi (2004) - Cofounder of AirPR, a PRTech startup in San Francisco.Vijay Sharma (2006) - Co-founder of Belong.co, a SaaS product disrupting the talent acquisition market. Ankit Taparia (2005) is CoFounder at Teramatrix, a 70-member company focused on telecom network management and enterprise IoT solutions.Invention & InnovationMahesh Jadhav (2011) holds several patents and has written six books on a wide range of technology and innovation topics. Govinda Upadhyay (2005) CEO of LEDsafari wherepeople make their own electrical rechargeable lamp.

LeadershipShruti Shah (2006) Work on $400M HIV/AIDS drugs access program for Cipla.Shrey Sanger (2005) Banking Analyst, former Radio Jockey and Student Union President.Deepali Agarwal (2009) Brand manager at RB & P&G and a range of activities.Pranav Jampani (2004) Leads sustainability issues for Las Vegas Sands Corporation.

Sports & TalentsSameer Qayoom (2007) State Football Player and J&K Footaball Festival.Srini Santhanam (2001) is on the US Mens National Cricket Team. Praneeth (2005) is a marathoner and Iron Man.

The detailed descriptions about the winners can be seen at https://goo.gl/oU2FhB.

3. BITSAA-IRU Partial Travel Grant

BITSAA-IRU Partial Travel Grant supports the travel expenses of students participating in academic events of International repute. BITSAA awarded five travel grants in 2015. The winner details are given below:

Student Name Amount ConferencePVG Sai Subrahmanyam INR 25,000 IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference. New Orleans, USASruthi V INR 25,000 International Conference on Surface Plasmon Photonics. Jerusalem, IsraelAnkur Omar INR 25,000 International Conference on Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services and

Technologies. Cambridge, UKSancheti Chirag Ishwarlal

INR 25,000 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Service Science. Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Ajinkya Bhole INR 25,000 Sports Engineering Conference, Lisbon,Portugal (http://www.insticc.org/Portal/aboutus.aspx)

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4. other scholarships and awards

4.1. Graduate Application Scholarship

The BITSAA Graduate Application Scholarship provides financial assistance to students for their applications to MS/PhD programs. This initiative is a small step towards ensuring that the financial burden of applications does not get in the way of the students for securing admission to an ambitious program at top universities. The cost of applying to graduate programs has risen considerably in the last few years. Even for people applying to just six universities, the cost of tests and application fees can be easily over 1000 USD. There are additional costs for getting transcripts and applying for visas.

Since application process has become expensive, BITSians face greater financial pressure and are often discouraged from applying to many of the top universities. The idea is for BITS alumni to pay for a significant part of the costs, making the application process more affordable, and encouraging more students to apply to top schools. The number of applications for the Graduate Application scholarship increased significantly in the past year.

Currently, BITSAA awards three graduate application scholarships of 500 USD each, in every academic year. We hope that the program will eventually become self-sustaining, with people who receive the scholarship in one year paying for the next generation of BITSians to apply.

All students who are currently pursuing their undergraduate/graduate degree in any of the BITS campuses are eligible to apply for the scholarship.

Winners (2014):Arjun Ram S P - 2012A8PS327PMeghana Bansal - 2012A7PS054PUjash Dipakbhai Shah - 2012A4TS134GSarguna Janani Padmanabhan - 2012A7PS148H

4.2. Prof. I J Nagrath Student Project fund

The “Prof. I J Nagrath Student Project fund” has been instituted by Brij Bhushan, an alumni from the class of 1964 in honor of Prof. I J Nagrath, who served various roles at BITS from 1952 to 1999. Prof. I J Nagrath retired as the Deputy Director after serving at BITS in educational, administrative and managerial roles. He is an excellent academician who taught many generations of BITSians and also the author of several well known books in Electrical & Electronics Engineering. The project fund aims to encourage students and faculty in EEE department at Pilani campus to undertake projects in labs of their choice and gain a hands-on experience.

Winners (2015):

Project: Headlight beam optimization and Speed control for Vehicular Systems for Road accident prevention

Students: Rishabh Choudhary (2012A3PS156P) Naman Gupta (2012A3PS080P)Faculty: Prof V K Chaubey, Professor, EEEProject Description:

Majority of road accidents occur mainly due to over speeding of the vehicles leading to head on collision or unregulated headlight intensity during night which causes glare in the eyes of the driver leading to disorientation in driving. The proposed project idea aims to develop a system which can automatically adjust the headlight beam intensity of the approaching vehicles to an optimum level to reduce any unwanted glare. We also aim to implement speed control mechanism in vehicular systems where approaching vehicles, if moving at a relative speed higher than the safe threshold will be automatically able to reduce their speed to a optimum level to avoid any head on collision. This hybrid vehicle safety system if deployed at a large scale can minimize the possibility of road accidents to a large extent.

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4.3. BITSAA BITSMUN Travel scholarship

The BITSAA-BITSMUN Travel scholarship has been initiated with a purpose of supporting BITSians participating in leadership, public speaking, entrepreneurship events, both within India and abroad in 2014 by two BITS Pilani graduates Sachin Jain (class of 2011) & Aman Gupta (class of 2012). The winner details for the year 2015 are given below:

Name ID No. Amount Event Shrikant Sushil Sharda 2014A7PS046P INR 20,000 International Student Energy Summit 2015, Bali,

IndonesiaShubham Arora 2012B3A7522P INR 10,000 World Business Dialogue, Germany (2016)

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BITS2BSchool is a closed group of more than 3000 BITSians. Over time we have started many initiatives to bring the alumni together with the purpose of increasing the BITSians intake in the top business schools of the world.

Such initiatives include organizing coffee meet ups, audio conferences, writing blogs, publishing e-interviews, maintaining and sharing alumni databases and forums for MBA admit related discussions. It also includes a holistic analysis of the BITSians admitted to business schools and understanding the admission trends.

Coffee Meet Ups

Team usually organizes one coffee meet up every 2-3 months. Recent invitees of the meet ups include alumni from Duke, Kellogg and INSEAD MBA programms. Every coffee meet up sees a participation of around 8-10 MBA applicants.

InterviewBay deal

With support from fundraising team, we have signed an agreement with InterviewBay.com to assist BITSians with B-school interviews and also act as a FR avenue to BITSAA. Salient features of the deal include:

• 10% discount offered to BITSians on services offered by InterviewBay

• 10% sale proceeds donated to BITSAA

Going digital

We have collaborated with Career Center team to leverage the technology platform provided by CC team. Primarily BITS2BSCHOOL has shifted its alumni database on to the wordpress platform and also is using ‘Knowledge Center’ (KC) platform to engage with audience through blogs, application advice and e-interview.

Alumni Database

We continuously strive to update our database with the latest MBA admits. So far we have captured more than a total of 430 BITSian admits across the globe. Last application year saw ~30 BITSians enter the top 20 global schools such as Wharton, LBS, Tuck, Darden, Duke etc.

Currently the online data base has the following features:

• List-view report of the entire directory

• Detailed view of each BITSian on a single click

• Search to the directory based on specific criteria

Blogs/ E-Interviews

We target to write one blog entry/ e-interview each month and share it with the BITS2BSchool group. In the recent past alums from LBS, Wharton etc have contributed in such interview sessions. Thanks to WordPress technology of ‘Knowledge Center’ platform, publishing articles is now a self-administered job handled by BITS2BSCHOOL independently.

Forums/ BITS2BSchool Portal

Going forward we will provide extra push to the ‘go-digital’ goal. We intend to publish more interactive content, enhance existing functions and ultimately, engage with users in a sustainable manner.

Team profile:

Anurag VNVJ 06B3A3G

Animesh Tambi 07A1PSP

Prateeek Chaudary 07A7PSP

BITS2BScHooL

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Vision

• To help BITSians make a well informed decision on pursuing higher studies abroad.

• Establish a community of BITSians (students and alumni) to engage in communication about graduate studies and programs.

• Guiding BITSians on ways to improve their profiles and get better admits.

BITS2MSPhD forum

[1] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bits2msphd

[2] https://www.facebook.com/groups/bits2msphd

The Yahoo group still serves as the primary communication forum between aspiring BITSians and BITSians currently at graduate school. The forum has more than 5000 members and increasing. The group contains 1000+ messages over the years on various aspects of the application process. There is also a Facebook group for similar discussions. The Facebook group has more than 2200 members of the BITS community. Of late, the Facebook has picked up in terms of messages and is poised to take over as the primary form of communication in some time.

Campus Talks

BITS2MSPhD team conduct one main campus talk before the application process starts, for MS or PhD to make sure the juniors on campus aspiring to study abroad have all the information and resources to guide them through the application process. Starting with selecting the right universities, we focus on all the major categories of the application like Statement Of Purpose, resume, recommendation letters and also, on the job prospects after graduation. This approach, we believe, gives an overall perspective to the ones who want to pursue higher studies. Campus talks were held at all 4 BITS campuses. We also try to address the students in their initial years at BITS by helping them prepare themselves best for getting an admit in their dream school. We hope to achieve this by talking about the opportunities one can make use of, while they are at BITS. In this regard, we talk mainly about internship opportunities in India and abroad.

Monday Learning Articles

A popular weekly article series for the graduate school applicants to throw light on all aspects of the graduate school application process. 13 Articles were published as a part of this and posted to the Career Center Blog. This initiative has been run for the 5th consecutive year successfully.

Discipline Talks

Apart from this main talk which covers all the general aspects of the application process, we also organized and planned many discipline-wise talks for the coming year. A pilot talk was conducted at the Pilani campus on Cognitive Neuroscience. These talks concentrate more on a particular stream or discipline in collaboration with many BITS alumni who are interested in sharing their experiences and giving advice to the juniors. Thus, through this campus talk initiative, we try to reach as many students on campus as we can and provide them with reliable information before they make their decisions and to let them all be aware of the resources (BITS2MSPhD yahoo group, Facebook group, MLA series etc.) we provide as a part of BITS2MSPhD initiative, to help them with this whole process.

BITS2MSPhD

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BITS-AMP (BITS Alumni Mentoring Program) that has been launched during BGM 2014 is successfully progressing toward reaching out to larger audience and providing mentoring to the Alumni who are in need of guidance from accomplished Alumni in the desired career field. Through this article, we the team of BITS-AMP would like to share the progress time line and about what’s in-store for future.

The program was launched during BGM 2014 in Hyderabad campus, where Venu Palaparthi (BITS Class of ‘92, co-Founder of BITSAA) has designed and brought this initiative into action. Sandeepa Garlapati (BITS Class of ’06, Manager of BITS-AMP) along with Volunteers from the campus worked with him and matched around 20 pairs from among those who attended the session, giving it a kick start.

Post the pilot launch session, BITS-AMP team expanded with new members to focus more on reaching out to more BITSians around the world. The team created its new Facebook page for anyone to connect and reach out to the team, with the page’s fane base increasing rapidly. The team created its new logo and a new tag line, standing unique on its own.

overview of the program

BITS-AMP facilitates exclusive one-one interactions between a successful alumnus (mentor) and a budding alumnus/student (mentee) who is seeking inroads in the same industry or similar area of expertise. These interactions will be facilitated across various cities or via a virtual medium.

Following that, the mentors and mentees continue to interact. BITS-AMP evaluates the mentoring relationship after the first meeting and periodically there-on making proactive changes to the pairing depending on a suitability assessment. Throughout the session, the BITS-AMP team supports the pairs to achieve the objectives.

BITS ALUMNI MENToRING PRoGRAM

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During its session in 2015-2016, BITS-AMP matched around 50 pairs from the applications received (mentee application: mentor application (1:2)) from around the world. Match-making was done very carefully, by catering to each of the mentor and mentees goals. The program has been well received by everyone and is being reached out fast to the BITSians through word of mouth. The following are the excerpts from what our mentors and mentees from the previous session had to say.

“I feel very glad to be a part of the BITS-AMP Mentor-Mentee program. I signed up for the program in September and in October I was matched with SrikarGoudNagelli, a scientist in Boston. Our goals matched, he was willing to help me in my applications for higher studies. I started applying to several universities in the USA from November to January. He helped me in presenting my profile in the best way through my Resume . I used to Skype him and he used to give a lot of tips on applying to universities and writing personal statements. I also got to know a lot of information of graduate school admission process in the USA through my mentor. I got many rejections in December and January through which I learnt to accept rejections. In March I was accepted into Masters program in Immunology at Harvard Medical School. The BITS-AMP Mentor program is a really great initiave and I believe It will help more and more students who sign up for this program !!

BITS-AMP program gave me moral support and confidence when I was going through my higher studies application process and I learnt a lot of valuable lessons in life through this program and through my mentor !”

-- Gayathri Ganesh(BITS-Pliani Dubai, Class of ‘2016, mentee)

“Whatever my mentee achieved is all due to her hard work and dedication. Good luck for the future. And yes about the BITS-AMP program, I am very confident it will help a lot of people.”

-- SrikarGoudNagelli (BITS-Pliani, Class of ‘2011, mentor)

For the upcoming mentoring sessions, BITS-AMP focuses on receiving very strong applications, analyze the applicants profile and determine the eligibility based on the program requirements. It also plans on automating the program to enable a smooth application and match-making.

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BITS2Fitness came into existence in March 2015 as a result of expansion of BITS2Marathon. The team (Divesh, Siddharth, Kali, Robin) pioneering this expansion wanted to promote healthy lifestyle among BITSians across the globe by not limiting them to just one sport: “Running”. Hence, this ideology led to evolution of BITS2Fitness that aims at building a stronger and more active BITSian community by providing a platform that spans across multiple sports. One of the main driving force behind this change was the freedom to organize many new events/activities across multiple sports (in addition to normal 5K/10K runs which BITS2Marathon provided). Formation of BITS2Fitness Facebook group was officially announced in April 2015 and it superseded BITS2Marathon in the same month.

BITS2FITNESS

As stewards of excess capital and various endowed fundsfor BITSAA International, the BITSAA Investment Committee (BIC) has the primary objective of generating proceeds (via investment income and/or capital appreciation) to administer BITSAA’s current endowed (fully or partially) initiatives. The BIC endeavors to achieve its objectives via appropriate investments within a combined investment portfolio called the BITSAA Endowment Fund (BEF).As of December 31, 2015 the BEF supports the following 12 endowments, with an annualized obligation of around USD 9,300:

NAME CAMPUS PURPOSE INSTITUTED

Pendyala Vamsikrishna Memorial Scholarship Pilani 50% tuition fee to a II year student (merit-cum-need) 2002

S.S. Seshadri Memorial Scholarship Pilani 50% tuition fee to a III year student (merit-cum-need) 2002

Leuna H Scholarship Pilani Rs. 5000 Award to the winner of Tarang-a music competition at Oasis 2003

RP Vaid Scholarship Pilani Rs. 5000 Award to a deserving Chemical Engineering student 2003

Bhushan Bhatia Scholarships All 50% tuition fees for 2 students (1 male and 1 female) in III year (need based) 2009

Hiralal Agarwal Memorial Scholarship Pilani/Goa/Hyderabad Fixed amount need-based scholarship towards tuition awarded to a student from Faizabad district, UP 2009

Ranvir Trehan Memorial Pilani Trophy & prize money awarded to the winning team of the tennis tournament at BOSM 2009

Bhushan Badminton Award Pilani Trophy & prize money awarded to the winning team of the badminton tournament at BOSM 2009

85 Helping Hands-Seema Sood Plus Pilani/Goa/Hyderabad As needed by 85HH Officials-currently approx. 1500 USD/Q 2015

Travel Endowment Pilani/Goa/Hyderabad Towards travel grant requests, upto 500pa 2015

Opex Endowment Pilani/Goa/Hyderabad Towards BITSAA Operational expenses, upto 500 pa 2015

SPARKS Endowment Pilani/Goa/Hyderabad Towards SPARKS initiative related expenses, upto 1000pa 2015

BITSAA Investment committee (BIc)

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2015 Highlights

The BEF has grown over the years (since its inception value of approx. $10,000 in April, 2003),via a combination of investment returns and new endowments, to $184,666 (12/31/2015 close) reflecting an average annualized return of +5.1% since inception.

$10,005$11,243 $11,910 $16,265$22,409

$41,537

$61,323

$109,760

$121,818$127,699

$122,845$129,344

$149,527

$184,666

$0

$20,000

$40,000

$60,000

$80,000

$100,000

$120,000

$140,000

$160,000

$180,000

$200,000

4/30/2

003

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

*

2009

*

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

BITSA

A End

owme

nt Fu

nd (U

S $)

Year

In 2015, the BEF, which has investments allocated in similar amounts into equities and fixed income, generated a return of -1.0%, for an unrealized capital depreciation of $2,241. The returns were weighed down by lackluster financial markets in 2015 and to some degree by the larger than normal cash levels sitting in the account for much of the year, as we waited for clarifications on the use of these new contributions. During the year, the rupee depreciated marginally from 63.2/ USD on Dec 31, 2014 to 66.2/USD on Dec 31, 2015. The academic year 2015-2016 saw an increase in tuition to the tune of +6.7% (from INR 1.79 Lakhs p.a. to INR 2.0 Lakhs p.a.), a small rise in USD terms for our obligations tied to tuition fees.

We remain in decent shape to weather storms from time to time in the form of USD depreciation or tuition increases or a below expected performance in any given year.

Four new Endowments came into effect in 2015, as follows: Travel Endowment, Opex Endowment, Spark Endowment, and 85 Batch Helping Hands Endowment and contributions towards these to the tune of $40,000 were made in 2015.

Publication of Investment Policy Statements All of BIC’s/BEF’s activities (including principles and parameters guiding these actions) and obligations are published in detail via periodic reports that are available online at www.bitsaa.org under the endowments section.

BITSAA Investment Committee

Rajesh Chelapurath (‘88) - Chief Investment Officer

KotiMylavarapu (’01)–Director

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Statement of Accounts

Beginning balance Jan 1, 2015Cash Flow In (Revenues/Donations)

$ 2,31,360.04

RevenuesGeneral Fund $ 34,916.67 NASDAQ bell ringing group $ 22,000.00 BITS Spark $ 20,000.00 9T Fund $ 6,707.00 86 Batch Silver Jubilee Fund $ 3,676.00 1985 Batch Help Fund $ 2,366.00 Surekha Banot department fund $ 2,000.00 Mantra Awards $ 1,830.00 Hyderabad Campus project $ 1,600.00 Student Enrichment $ 1,510.00 Sponsorship from 2014 Annual Report $ 1,250.00 Inspired Karters $ 1,200.00 Shell Eco Project at Pilani $ 1,100.00 Income towards new MCN scholarship $ 1,000.00 Prof. Suresh Ramaswamy Memorial Fund $ 400.00 Meera Bhavan Facilities $ 200.00 Prof I J Nagrath Outstanding Teacher Awards $ 200.00 BITSAA Seattle Chapter $ 150.00 Faculty Enrichment $ 75.00 Total Revenue $ 1,02,180.67

Cash Flow Out (Expenses/ Disbursements)Operational Expenses

YMC $ 6,887.93 Bluepay Fees $ 2,967.14 Neon CRM $ 1,042.00 Hostgator Fees $ 412.80 Double the Donation $ 399.00 Annual Report Printing $ 241.88 Thank you cards to donors $ 230.00 Send in Blue $ 157.95 Miscellaneous $ 119.00 Dropbox $ 99.00 Amex Fees $ 87.17 Wire Fees $ 80.00 Printing and shipping $ 47.00 2014 Tax Filing $ 35.00

$ 12,805.87Disbursements

1988 Batch Go 2 BITS $ 52,207.66 Endowments $ 40,000.00 BITS Connect 2.0 $ 12,605.00 Mana Maali $ 10,000.00 9T Fund $ 9,907.00 Endowed scholarships $ 6,481.51 1985 Batch Help Fund $ 3,000.00 Travel Grants $ 2,436.86 Mantra Awards $ 2,403.86 Hyderabad Campus project $ 1,600.00 Graduate Application Scholarship $ 1,017.68 1983 Batch Help Fund $ 1,000.00 Inspired Karters $ 1,000.00 Excess Pilani funds $ 767.00 Prof. Suresh Ramaswamy Memorial Fund $ 643.09 Student Projects Fund $ 500.00 2006 Batch CS Award $ 482.32

$ 1,46,051.98 Total Expenses $ 1,58,857.85

Ending balance, Dec 31, 2015 $ 1,74,682.86

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BITSAA International,

___________________________________________________________

_______________________________

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

me instructions

reasonable sized donation. See

HoW To DoNATE?

BITSAA International Donation Form (USD)Donation from Rest of the World

Donate online at https://www.bitsaa.org/fundraising

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HoW To DoNATE?

___________________________________________________________

_______________________________

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

me instructions

reasonable sized donation. See

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