A REPORT ON KSHITIJ 2013

Kshitij is the annual techno-management symposium of Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. A showcase of innovation, the symposium aims to bring together healthy competition from across the country together and celebrate technological advancements. The festival constitutes competitions, workshops, exhibitions and guest lectures focusing on technological and entrepreneurial front. We, hereby, would like to apprise you of the astounding success of Kshitij 2012. The last edition of Kshitij played host to numerous towering personalities in technical as well as managerial domains including the likes of Naseeruddin Shah ( Critically Acclaimed Actor), Prabhu Chawla ( Highly Acclaimed Media Person), Ajay Bhatt ( Inventor of USB) and Sir James Mirrlees ( Nobel Laureate in Economics). Hands-on workshops on varied topics like Cloud Computing and Enterprise Computing by IBM, Digital Forensics by CSI, Indian Capital Markets by NSE, Bomb Disposal by CID and Green Electronics by Texas Instruments gave the students an opportunity to learn from the experts in the respective fields. A multitude of exhibitions from 3-D Street Painting to Optical Camouflage, proved to be a visual treat for the audience with its rare blend of technology, science and entertainment. Kshitij is associated with world renowned organizations in ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), ACM, ASHRAE, IEEE and IMechE. The fest drew participation from all corners of the country and even abroad in a wide array of events organized to gauge the technical dexterity and managerial acumen of bright young minds.

Our sponsors have been an integral part of our fest, helping us applaud innovative education, sharing our dream to take Kshitij to a new horizon. The Kshitij team would like to thank you for showing faith in us and helping us in this endeavour of ours.

Highlights of Kshitij 2012

Participation of around 50,000 students with 5000 outstation participants from the eminent institutes like NUS, NTU, IIMs, IITs, NITs and many more.

Prizes worth over INR 6,000,000 for many online and on-the-spot events in Kshitij’12.

Certifications from reputed International Associations like ACM, ASME, IEEE ASHRAE and IMechE for the events of Kshitij.

More than 8 external workshops throughout the India in major cities like Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Jaipur, Chennai, etc. with a total turnout of more than 3000 participants.

Association with noted eminent companies like General Electric, Google, Barclays Capital, Boeing, Airbus, Cairn Energy, HCL, etc.

31 Technical and 14 managerial events packed within a span of 4 days.

Guest Lectures by Naseeruddin Shah ( Critically Acclaimed Actor), Prabhu Chawla ( Highly Acclaimed Media Person), Ajay Bhatt ( Inventor of USB) and Sir James Mirrlees ( Nobel Laureate in Economics).

Workshops on topics such as Cloud Computing and Enterprise Computing by IBM, Digital Forensics by CSI, Indian Capital Markets by NSE, Bomb Disposal by CID and Green Electronics by Texas Instruments.

Kshitij 2012: - Review

1. Events-

Technical Events-

a) Overnite:- The ACM ICPC Multi Provincial Programming contest, i.e., Overnite is a flagship event of Kshitij beckons the students to recharge their brains and join us in the quest for a competent programmer. One of the most promising events of Kshitij, Overnite assesses the students on grounds of perseverance, endurance and needless to say, expertise in coding. Besides, this event received the maximum foreign participation among all the events.

b) Laws of Motion:- The flagship event of Kshitij for two years in succession now, Laws of Motion was made out to be India's most promising event in the field of Aero Modeling and the outputs seen at Kshitij 2012 bear strong testimony to that. The problem statement was to design a RC motor powered aircraft that can take off at a given runaway similar to that of an aircraft carrier and drop two loads at specific areas.

c) Eureka:- Eureka is a paper presentation competition. This is an open ended event, i.e. ideas could be from any possible domain, without any restrictions on any field whatsoever, which is what distinguishes Eureka from other technical paper presentations of its kind. The event has seen seen submissions from foreign colleges and was judged by Nobel Laureate Prof. Klaus Von Klitzing in one of the previous editions.

d) ASME Student Design Exposition:- Open Hardware, is a competition where students display their technical and engineering skills to produce innovative hardware models. In keeping with the developments surrounding the hardware innovations, the competition gauges hardware implementations of creative and inspiring ideas. Direct industrial connection makes the event an ideal chamber of publicity, both within the student and the industrial fraternity. In the previous editions, the participants came up with innovative designs like-

i. Prepaid vending machine ii. Wireless Military Surveillance Robot iii. Braille Keyboard

Management Events-

a) B Plan:- With a great platform to interact with eminent management gurus in addition to famous Venture Capitalists, B Plan gave students an opportunity to present ideas that could revolutionize the way business is done. It is a platform for budding entrepreneurs to test the potential and viability of their ideas.

b) Marca De Fabrica:- Welcome to the world of marketing where branding has become an inevitable part! Marca de Fabrica is an ideal event for minds looking forward to showcase their ideas and creativity in the field of marketing strategies, brand creation. As it does every year, this edition of Kshitij too saw a stupendous participation from all over the country.

2. Industrial Design Problem

Kshitij has always tried to formulate a link between the industry and academia. IDP is a category of events which promotes direct relationship between industry and students giving students exposure to practical world outside college as well as providing the industries with novel ideas from brightest minds of the country. The Industrial Design Problem in Kshitij 2012 was: Geotech Given by GE (General Electric) this year, the problem statement was designed exclusively to obtain technical models for economic oil extraction from these fields from students all across the nation. The competing team had to come up with a technical model by studying the geological and physical conditions of the oil-field to extract oil economically and hence increasing the production from these fields. The IDP aimed at developing a business model to tap the potential oil reserves in India.

3. Workshops The array of workshops organized by Kshitij are very interactive where the participants can combine forces to identify, exchange, plan and elaborate emerging ideas, high-quality research, cutting-edge practices.

Some of the workshops from Kshitij 2012 are:

a) Bomb Disposal and Fingerprint tracking by CID, West Bengal- Kshitij 2012 in association with Criminal Investigation Department (CID), West Bengal motivated the youth of this nation to step forward and be a part of the campaign aimed at involvement of common men in security of India. Kshitij organized a workshop on bomb disposal and fingerprint tracking in which a team of experts from CID shared their technical 'know- how' on identification and disposal of bomb.

b) Indian Capital Markets by NSE- The workshop provided the participants with an 'Overview of a Stock Exchange’, the structure, operations & role of a Stock Exchange in the economy. Participants learned about the Indian Financial System, various Financial Instruments available in India &Regulatory bodies governing the same. The concept of Capital Markets, Derivative Markets and NSE’s Certification of Financial Markets (NCFM) was also imparted to the participants.

c) Cloud Computing by IBM- Organized by IBM in IIT Kharagpur, this workshop provided a platform in which experts from IBM shared their experiences apart while introducing various aspects, architecture and view point of cloud computing. The sessions included emerging trends in Cloud Computing. The new and evolving job roles in the Cloud space, Cloud infrastructure and services offerings, Open source stack for cloud, apart from some introductory concepts on the subject followed by a business study. These interactive sessions to catered to a broad mix of audience and focused from both the business and technological perspectives.

4. Guest Lectures

Kshitij gives you the opportunity to interact with the best of the best in their fields. Previous editions of Kshitij have seen the likes of Shekhar Kapur, Oscar winning film director, Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian cosmonaut, 'Ad Guru' Prahlad Kakkar, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU. Guest lectures at Kshitij 2012 included likes of:

a) Paolo Nespoli, NASA Astronaut

The Mission Specialist at the STS 120 space mission and the Flight Engineer at the recent Expedition 26/27 'MagISStra', astronaut Paulo Nespoli has always been in the thick of contemporary astronomical matters, in his superlative career that took off in July 1998, when he was selected as an astronaut for Italian Space Agency. Paolo Nespoli carried out an intensive series of experiments in the Station, ranging from radiation monitoring to measurements that could improve oil recovery in petroleum. reservoirs.

b) Dr Antonio Ereditato, CERN

Dr Antonio Ereditato, the Director, Sub Atomic Particles Division at CERN was instrumental in the findings that reveal particles faster than the speed of light, a phenomenal success that could potentially overturn modern physics, as we know it. Involved in a series of ground-breaking research, ranging from development of particle detectors: wire chambers, calorimeters, time projection chambers, nuclear emulsions, detectors for medical applications.

c) Prof. Hogler Nielson Instated in the domains of science as the Father of String Theory, Prof Hogler Bech Nielson, has played a central role in contemporary scientific research. Recipient of the prestigious Humboldt Award, his string of achievements include institution of principal dogmas of physics, some of which have also been christened after him viz Nielsen-Olesen Vortex and the Nielsen-Ninomiya no-go theorem for representing chiral fermions on the lattice. His colossal research fiefdom includes varied areas of interest, ranging from String Field Theory and Random dynamics to Casimir effect and Neutrino oscillations.

d) Sir James Mirrlees Celebrated Scottish Economist, Sir James Mirrlees was awarded the Nobel Prize of Economic Studies in 1996 for his pioneering work in Economics, which have ever since served as a standard in the field. Queen Elizebeth II knighted him for his incomparable work in the field of Economic Sciences in the year 1998. Kshitij 2012 gave students the opportunity to acquaint themselves with matters of economic importance under the benign presence of the Nobel Laureate.

5. Exhibitions

At Kshitij we provide the students with an opportunity to get a glimpse of our future through our exhibitions on various forte of engineering. The previous editions have seen exhibitions ranging from LED’s, 3-D Holography to DRDO. The exhibition at Kshitij 2012 included:- a) Optical Camouflage –

The Tokyo University, Japan experienced the development of Optical camouflage by its research scholars and its most dedicated professors. The technology and the science behind this amazing scientific art was revealed by the developers of Optical camouflage by Tokyo University, Japan only at Kshitij 2012 and this proved to be a very valuable opportunity to be enthralled and educated with the technical intelligence.

b) 3-D Street Painting- Christiane Jessen-Richardsen, an internationally recognized American street-painter who specializes in spectacular, interactive 3d chalk art street paintings mesmerized the crowd with her extraordinary art . A visionary and master in the chalk art world, Christina’s mind-blowing dimensional images continued to ‘wow’, inspire and amaze viewers around the globe.

6. Megashows Megashows at Kshitij 2012 included-

a) 3 D Building Projection-

3D Building Projection is one such impressive evolution in the field of advanced technology. The real buildings are mapped and modelled in 3D, and then animations are created using those models and projected back onto the building. The result is incredibly lifelike — it nearly fools the eye. Kshitij 2012 presented the opportunity to have a glimpse of this 3D art.

b) Pyromania- Kshitij 2012 presented a night of exuberance that threatened to dull out the brilliance of the stars. Aerial rockets of all colours and the flight of multitudinous Chinese Lanterns prophesized a level of grandeur that set the sky as its limit. It just captivated everyone’s senses, by mere ignition of certain chemicals, orchestrated to the accuracy of microseconds. The magnitude of the fireworks lit up the night and their psychedelic patterns.

c) The Mentalizer- The Mentalizer (Ehud Segev) is a world renowned super mentalist. Known for his supernatural gift of insight, he enthralled the participants with his unique power.

EXCLUSIVE HOARDINGS PUT UP IN THE CAMPUS

ARENA AT KSHITIJ 2012

This year team Kshitij came up with a design which was never thought of before and surprised everyone with such a giant step towards glory. The arena of Kshitij 2012 was termed as “Simply Outstanding” by everyone who had the privilege to step into it or have a look at it.

With a foot fall of more than 50,000 in the arena over the four days of the fest, Kshitij scaled great heights and hopes to improve on this in the upcoming edition and take more giant leaps g towards achieving the unimaginable.

PARTICIPANTS & CROWD IN KSHITIJ 2012

In case of any query , please contact the undersigned Anurag Savarnya, Organizing Team Head, Sponsorship, Kshitij 2013, Technology Students Gymkhana , IIT Kharagpur. Phone No. : 9800043262