CONTENTS
From the Editor’s Desk
Campus News
Poem Writers Pre-Placement Talk
Indonesian Delegation
16th ESRI User Conference @ New Delhi
StackRoute Pre-Placement Talk
Nagarro Off-Campus Recruitment Drive
Coca-Cola Off-Campus Recruitment Drive
Sapient Campus Recruitment Drive
UCLA Delegation at NU
AT-Lead Campus Recruitment Drive
Sandhar Technologies Off-Campus Recruitment Drive
NU-MIC
Nature Talk
Great Indian Rhinoceros
Student Editorial Special
The Other Side of Google Summer of Code
Expressions
A Trip to Chandragiri
A Person’s Quest
Art Work
Test your Brain
Achievements
Research @ NU
From the Editor’s Desk
Dear Readers,
January is a harbinger of change. It heralds the coming of New Year and along with it a whole new set of months, days, hours and minutes presenting new opportunities and inviting us to start all over again if we could not succeed the previous year. Let’s welcome this New Year with a hope that we will be able to harness the new energy and fulfil the incomplete tasks of last year or just shine in all the endeavours we undertake.
This issue has quite some Campus news with campus being abuzz with a lot of recruitment activity and student led activities. Our students made quite some news outside and that too is covered in the Achievements and Research@NU sections.
The creative side of students has filled the Expressions and Student Editorial Special Sections. For those who love to read, you will find both the sections interesting.
We now handover the issue to our readers to enjoy reading the various sections and comments or suggestions on improvement will be welcome as always. Please send your suggestions to the undersigned at the given email address.
Wish you all a Happy Reading experience!!
Best Wishes,
Anshima P Srivastav
Editor In-Charge,
NU Newsletter
Anshima.Srivastava@niituniversity.in
Campus News
Poem Writers Pre-Placement Talk
A Pre-Placement Talk was held by the Founder of Poem Writers on 2nd December, 2015. He shared his past experiences and his exciting journey with Poem Writers.
During the interaction, he also talked about the opportunities available for B.Tech. students within his organization and showed high interest in recruiting NU students for a six-month Industry Practice.
Indonesian Delegation
The twelve-member team from Indonesian Universities arrived at the NU campus on 10th December, 2015.
During the visit, they had an interaction with the President of NU and the Leadership Team. They were briefed about NU and its distinctive features.
The delegation elicited interest in having a collaboration with NU for exchange programme of both faculty and students in various fields.
16th ESRI User Conference @ New Delhi
NIIT University (NU) participated at 16th ESRI User Conference held during 2nd–4th December, 2015 in New Delhi.
NU M.Tech. GIS students got an opportunity to interact with Mr. Jack Dangermond, President, ESRI Inc. and they also presented their papers on that platform. A paper by Mr.Vikram Kiranrao Aundhekar, M.Tech. 2016 student titled ‘Location and Historic Geography of Forts in Bhor Region’ received the first runner up award in the event.
Stack Route Pre-Placement Talk
StackRoute, India’s first full-stack boot camp (an initiative of NIIT @ Bangalore), that focuses on building the world’s best full-stack developers, delivered a pre-placement talk to B. Tech. IV(CSE) class on 27th November, 2015.
Mr. Satish, Principal Designer and CTO of the StackRoute Program, had a prolific discussion with the students regarding their overall career development in the world of programming.
Nagarro off-campus Recruitment Drive
Nagarro Software Pvt. Ltd, a custom software development and business consulting company, conducted an off-campus recruitment drive for Industry Practice on 23rd November, 2015 for B. Tech. IV (CSE).
Coca-Cola Off-Campus Recruitment Drive
Coca-Cola, a global leader in the beverage industry conducted an off-campus recruitment process on 26th November, 2015 for Industry Practice. Thirty-two students from B. Tech. IV (CSE) were shortlisted for appearing in the interview process.
Sapient Campus Recruitment Drive
Sapient conducted a campus recruitment drive at NIIT University on 16th December, 2015 and thirty-one students from B. Tech. IV turned up for the online written exam for Industry Practice.
UCLA Delegation at NU
NIIT University hosted a delegation of thirty-five highly accomplished and ambitious MBA students from Anderson Business School, University of California, Los Angeles, on 16th December, 2015 led by Prof. Romain Wacziarg and Ms. Tereza Wodehouse. Students learnt about the success of Industry linked MBA Programs of NIIT University and had a very engaging interaction with Dr. Parimal Mandke, who briefed them on University’s history, academic disciplines, unique features and the four core Principles; Maj. Gen. A. K. Singh discussed about the sustainability initiatives at NU. Then Dr. Kapil Pandla gave a presentation on Management of Education at NU.
AT-Lead Campus Recruitment Drive
On 15th December, 2015, AT- Lead, founded by one of the B. Tech. IV batch student, Atif Inayat Khan, conducted a campus recruitment drive for Industry Practice, and observed participation of twelve students from B. Tech. IV (CSE/ECE).
Sandhar Technologies off campus Recruitment Drive
Sandhar Technologies Ltd., a leading auto component manufacturer and supplier, conducted an off-campus recruitment drive on 10th December, 2015 for Industry Practice, for students of B. Tech. IV (ECE).
NU-MIC
NU-MIC Bids Farewell to final year MSPs.
The last MIC meeting for August-December Semester, 2015 was held on 10th December, 2015 in NU to bid farewell to the first batch of NU-MIC MSP and MSA members, who are currently in their final year, and will be away from campus during the next semester for internship. The event kicked off with Sreyash and Vaibhav (B. Tech. III), current MSPs, introducing the final year members, namely, Om Shridhar, Deepankar Tyagi, Puranjay Jain, Neelanjana Basu Roy, Sourabh Madan, Saarthak Kapoor and Harshit Doodhwal. When asked about MIC and its contributions, while Om gave the entire credit to NU-MIC for inculcating his passion for Game Development, Deepankar said the opportunity opened great avenues for him and will continue to do so in the near future. Puranjay and Harshit encouraged more people towards web technologies and coding. Neelanjana, Sourabh and Sarthak talked about the efficient tools they came across while working as a member and were ready to lend out a helping hand to students whenever they require. The final announcement for students was to participate in the next Imagine Cup. The event came to an end with all the students profusely thanking Mr. Akhlesh Agarwal, Coordinator of NU-MIC, for his constant support and encouragement throughout.
Nature Talk
Great Indian Rhinoceros
The Indian Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), also called the greater one-horned rhinoceros and Indian one-horned rhinoceros, belongs to the family Rhinocerotidae. Listed as a vulnerable species, the large mammal is primarily found in north-eastern India’s Assam and in protected areas in the Terai of Nepal, where populations are confined to the riverine grasslands in the foothills of the Himalayas.
The Indian rhinoceros once ranged throughout the entire stretch of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, but excessive hunting reduced their range drastically. Today, more than 3,000 rhinos live in the wild. In 2014, 2,544 of which are found in India’s Assam alone, an increase by 27 percent since 2006, although in early 1900s, Assam had about 200 rhinos only.
The Indian rhinoceros has a thick grey-brown skin with pinkish skin folds and a black horn. Its upper legs and shoulders are covered in wart-like bumps. It has very little body hair, aside from eyelashes, ear fringes and tail brush. Males have huge neck folds. Its skull is heavy. The rhino’s single horn is present in both males and females, but not on newborn young. The black horn is pure keratin, like human fingernails, and starts to show after about six years.
One-horned rhinos once ranged across the entire northern part of the Indian Subcontinent, along the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra River basins. Today, their range has further shrunk to a few pockets in southern Nepal, northern Bengal, and the Brahmaputra Valley.
The rhinos are also vulnerable to diseases spread by parasites such as leeches, ticks, and nematodes. Anthrax and the blood-disease Septicemia are known to occur.
Poaching for rhinoceros horn became the single most important reason for the decline of the Indian rhino after conservation measures were put in place from the beginning of the 20th century, when legal hunting ended.
Status in the Wild: Endangered
Divya Sara Kurian (B. Tech. 2013-17
Student Editor Special
The Other Side of Google Summer of Code
Google Summer of Code is a lot of fun. You work on a project which you choose, from the comfort of your home for an entire summer and walk away thousands of dollars richer with a certificate and a neat little badge of honour for your CV. We’ve had students from NU get selected as GSoC students last summer – and they’ve successfully completed their projects. We’ve heard about the fun they’ve had, the challenges they’ve faced and how at the end of it all they were all the richer for experience. Now let me tell you about the other side- mentoring.
A little bit of preface is in order. I’m a developer for KDE. KDE is a worldwide community of developers who make a ton of applications and libraries for desktop Linux, OS X and Windows. KDE is a regular at GSoC, and we generally have a few tens of projects for students. KDE is also one of the more difficult organizations to bag a project for – since you’re working on system-level applications and libraries, we have strict code quality standards. We can’t have applications start crashing the moment someone boots up their computer (this, by the way, isn’t a guarantee with Windows).
KDE is the community; our products are split into three major collections – the Frameworks, which are a set of libraries you use to make your apps, Plasma, which is the desktop workspace, and Applications, which are basic system utilities that you’d expect on an operating system (file archiver, text editor, calculator, screen shooter etc). There are a few more – Calligra, a professional office suite and productivity application collection, KDEPIM, a suite of applications for managing contacts, email, calendars, etc. and KDEEdu, a set of applications for educational use. It’s a huge operation.
Preparations for GSoC start really early – by February, people are already considering projects and dividing up tasks to submit to Google as soon as we get the greenlight to start submitting proposals. Once they’re accepted, we start assigning mentors. Mentors as officially assigned to Google tend to be the maintainer for the individual application/library that your project is based on, but behind the scenes there’s an entire flood of additional people who’re there to help you out. And scold you if you mess up.
This year (my first year helping out GSoC students as one of the additional people), I saw a few things that I think potential GSoC students should know about.
There were exactly two kinds of students who we mentored. The first kind was the one who had worked on KDE projects as a volunteer before, was familiar with how we do things and jumped into the code as soon as the time started. The code quality and style was in line with the standard at KDE, there was a lot of constructive debate where both sides threw ideas at each other (i.e., mentors and students) and quite a few times, as it turned out, the students had better ideas than the mentors on how to accomplish a certain task most efficiently. After the project ended, they stuck around and became full-time KDE developers. In fact, one of the students this year was already a full-time KDE developer who’d started out in KDE as a GSoC student in 2014.
The second kind was the one who asked the mentor exactly what needed to be done, diligently did all the work exactly as the mentor requested, finished the project, collected his certificates and goodies, and completely disappeared. There was no in-between within these two extremes.
Now before you draw conclusions – we like both kinds of students. Both types of students finished their tasks and fulfilled all their objectives, and most importantly they did it in time. But we had more fun with the former type of students. 4 months after GSoC finished, some of these people still hang around the IRC channels and we have a lot of fun throwing ideas around or just geeking out, in general. In fact, it’s a humbling experience when you’re poring over a 400-line patch that’s just been sent into code-review, looking for mistakes of hidden bugs that should be caught before the code is committed into the main code repository, and you suddenly see something intensely clever that the person you’re supposed to be offering guidance to did, and you didn’t even think of doing something so elegant in your code.
KDE holds an annual week-long developer’s conference in Europe once a month – called Akademy – and this year it coincided with the end of GSoC (it usually does). We ended up inviting and sponsoring a GSoC student all the way to A Coruña in Spain, where he spoke about what he did in GSoC this year and what he intended to do after GSoC ended. He’s still a regular contributor to the particular project, and sometimes ends up taking maintainer-level decisions (which generally involve major architectural and design choices).
This article has a point. If you’re doing GSoC just for an entry on your CV, by all means go ahead. It’s a wonderful opportunity and you’ll do a lot of real work that’ll make a real difference to users of the software. If on the other hand, you’re doing GSoC because you’re completely into the project and you want to hack on it to your heart’s content, I can promise you you’ll get a lot more than a CV entry out of GSoC. One project might end up fixing up your entire career, not to mention it’ll be a job which you’ll actually like doing, which makes the idea of going to work so much more bearable (you may actually look forward to Mondays – I’m not kidding).
There’s exactly five months to go for GSoC 2016. If you want to work on an open-source project (such as KDE), I’d suggest start getting familiar with their developer communication channels, their people, their tooling and more right now, so that you don’t waste time learning the ropes when you’re given the green light to start coding. In the meantime, I’ll go back to mentoring school kids for Google Code-In. Yes, that’s a thing, so if you have brother or sisters in school who’re inclined towards computers and coding (or even designing coffee mugs), have them take a look at GCI. It’s a ton of fun for them too.
Boudhayan Gupta
B.Tech (2013-17)
Expressions
A Trip to Chandragiri
All good trips!
My under-graduation days are coming to an end and it is not very difficult for one to imagine the final work load. Nor is it difficult to imagine all those career oriented questions that inevitably pop up in one’s mind and being a true confused soul, all I craved for since the beginning of my final semester was some sense of peace and clarity. So it wasn’t till the Diwali break that I got a chance to sort my head out. I had requested my parents to arrange for a trip to the Buddhist Monastery in Chandragiri, Odisha. This was going to be our second visit there and even though my parents could not completely fathom the reason behind re-visiting a place so far off and desolate, we still set off for our long car journey to Chandragiri.
The seven-hour long journey (interrupted by various food, restroom and site seeing breaks) covered Chilika, Ramba, Berampur and Taptapani. The drive itself was as beautiful as Odisha gets with its share of forest lands, hills and the vast Chilikalake. I slept through a quarter of the journey and talked for two quarters. We had company all throughout the journey from people bound to the same destination and so the monastery was not going to be desolate that day after all. But soon I fell into my own thoughts and reflections and thus begun the untangling of mind that was expected of the trip. Of course my family members did not have a set expectation from this trip but I am glad they bear me. What I cannot help but mention is the relevance of this monastery to me. It is regarded a tourist spot and maybe it also has a religious significance for some, but for me it wasn’t either. I cannot explain why exactly it is relevant to me but while I was pondering on this we hit the maize crop lands of Chandragiri.
This is exactly how you realise that you have entered Chandragiri. On your left and right you see expanses of corn fields cordoned by hills. The fields are sometimes interrupted by rice paddy. Then you see houses scattered in between with dried yellow-orange corn cob in large open holders or corn lying to dry under the sun on roof tops. Then you will notice the local Indian street dog being replaced by a white or black Pomeranian! Chandragiri is a Tibetan refugee settlement and therefore the refugees had brought their pets with them which majorly are Pomeranians. Since this establishment does not have large buildings, the monastery appears out of forestation after a few minutes’ drive. We thought we were just in time for the evening ritual but our timing was worse than we had expected it to be. It was a special day according to the monks there and they had completed their ritual by 3 o clock. And we had arrived by 3:30pm assuming we would have at least half an hour before the 4 o clock daily ritual. But we were only slightly dissatisfied by this bad timing. I took in the expanse of the monastery and the silence that surrounded it. It still gave me a sense of purity I seem to not realise the absence of in my college or home. It would have been delightful to have packed some good vibes from here to carry back to my world.
The temple has a huge Buddha statue in the middle and he will be looking at you when you enter. If the exterior of the temple is beautiful the interior is even more. The flooring was covered with black tiles, the ceiling had intricate paintings and the room had absolute silence. And in this silence I had assumed I would be over-whelmed by my own thoughts, and then cry and feel the same rawness that I had felt in my last visit. Yes, this was my expectation because I remember feeling better after my outburst. So I sat down to meditate, to lose myself to confusion first so I could feel thoughtless later. And this did not happen. I could not feel my confusion. I did not feel confused at all. I did not feel sad or stressed either. In reality I felt ‘damn chill’! So I did not bother questioning or over-thinking why I wasn’t over-thinking and let myself meditate for some time. We sat for some more time after I was done meditating and then I started reasoning my recent behaviour. My reasoning is that the last time I was so agitated that when I was put in an environment that was completely still, I could feel the full force of my unrest. I was disconcerted by my thoughts and later upset because of my inability to handle them. And in this trip whenever I was agitated it was only in the presence of others or in chaotic environments. So inside the temple I felt I had left my unrest in that chaotic world. I accepted this as an improvement and this brought me immense pleasure. I guess if I learn to keep my peace in turbulent environments as well, I would reach the next stage. But this seems like a goal that will take its own sweet time. So I am going to be complacent with what I have become and, patient for whatever changes need to come in the future.
Every journey has a different initial intention and final impression for each individual. And I believe travelling is not just about visiting a place. It is about every moment of the journey, every thought that comes during it, the people you meet and interact with and the past the place you are visiting has had. And all of this will bring a change in you and make you feel a little lighter. Since all places have their history you only need to see what the place you visit has been through to learn something new. Like in my case, driven out from their country, the Tibetan settlement slowly grows to show they still have hope for a better future. And the way they treat their environment shows that even though they have been deprived of their land, they have learnt to respect what they have now. And with all of this they have established a good place on earth. The charm this place has attracts me and I am sure it will attract anyone who would want to know that this planet holds more colour and hope than what our cities might make us feel at times. So if we realise something good from every trip that we make, the trips have been good ones!
Haritha S
Tech. (2012-16)
A person’s quest
Nature said Hi, good morning !
Get up kid and start some work.
Lazy in bed , in my dreams ,
I covered my face to extend my sleep like a murk.
Birds chirping and cool breeze came,
As mom opened window again the same…
I got up, taking a big yawn…
Looking outside towards the green lawn…
Due drops on the grass, shining like pearls ,
Freshness all around, with a lot of earl’s…
I am going to office to do some work and learn something new,
This is who I am today and how I grew…
Now what ahead, greed doesn’t seem to end ,
Shall I stay out on the same path or shall I take the bend !!!
So much of thinking is surrounding me now,
I am thinking of leaving and enjoying life somehow !!!
Anoop Kumar Sharma
MBA Finance & Banking, Batch VIII
Art Work
Sketches
DebansheeSaha
Tech. III
Painting
Sibeli Mukherjee
Tech. III
Test Your Brain
There were four kids playing near the river. They decided to play a game of throwing rocks into a solid area in the water such that none of the rocks should sink. Each of them were given five rocks each.
The first kid threw 2 on a solid surface but the other rocks sunk.
The second kid threw 3 on the surface and only one sunk.
The third kid aimed badly and all his rocks sunk.
The fourth kid was good at aiming. He threw all the rocks on a solid surface and won the competition but suddenly, he was hit by a rock in the head and he died on the spot.
Who killed the fourth kid?
Answer for the previous mystery:
Math teacher as she can’t give grades on the first day of college.
Sanya Mittal
Tech. (2013-17)
Achievements
From GIS Area- Participation at 16th ESRI User Conference
NIIT University (NU) participated at 16th ESRI User Conference held during 02nd – 4th December, 2015 in New Delhi. Students of M. Tech. GIS area got an opportunity to interact with Mr. Jack Dangermond, President, ESRI Inc. and they also presented their papers.
Pic1: At NIIT University Exhibition Area with Mr. Jack Dangermond and Mr. Rajendra S Pawar
Pic2: M.Tech. GIS student Mr. Vikram Kiranrao Aundhekar presenting his paper during the Conference
Pic3: Students of M. Tech. GIS
One of the papers titled ‘Location and Historic Geography of Forts in Bhor Region’ by Mr. Vikram Kiranrao Aundhekar( M. Tech. GIS 2015), received first runner-up award. During this event Dr. Parul Srivastava, Area Director, M. Tech. (GIS) chaired a session on GIS in eGov and Urban Infrastructure.
AT-Lead featured in Media
‘AT-Lead’, a start-up company founded by Atif Inayat Khan, B. Tech. IV (CSE), recently got media coverage in Vpaksh- “A digital platform which aims to reach out to the masses bringing unheard stories”.
Tech Students as Faculty Assistant
Prachi Singh & Ashima Goel, B. Tech. IV year students have been awarded with a cash reward of Rs. 3,900/- each by the University for their dedicated work in the Hindi Learning Course as Faculty Assistant under NU’s The Asian Lenses Forum (TALF). They were working as Faculty Assistant with Dr. Anuradha Parasar and have contributed effectively in engaging Hindi Lessons for the Japanese Forum Members from August 2015 to November 2015.
with this concluding semester, they have now successfully completed four semesters of this course. They have been teaching from February 2014 to November 2015. The Japanese students have learned well and are very satisfied with their teaching. The sincerity, regular attendance, practice, hard work and the zeal of the Japanese professionals to learn Hindi helped them through the course smoothly and effectively with remarkable results.
As a farewell from the responsibilities of this course, they were given a warm appreciation from Prof. Parimal Mandke and Dr. Anuradha Parasar. Both of them were glad to receive a gift along with the appreciation certificate.
Prachi Singh was quoted saying “I am very thankful to Anuradha Ma’am for giving me an opportunity to have such an amazing experience of teaching. I am personally very much inspired by the punctuality, dedication and hard work of Japanese people. It made me realize that I have a sincere interest towards teaching, and thus I enjoyed teaching them, and also I have learned a lot during the course. It has given me more confidence and an additional value to my resume. I am carrying forward great memories with me and I will always miss this time.”
NU students shine @ The GWS 2015
A paper GET IoT (Green Computing and Energy Harvesting in Internet of Things) was presented by B. Tech. III students Lakshya Gourav Moitra and Anshumali Singh in GWS 2015, held at Hyderabad. The co-authors of the paper included ManashDeka, another B.Tech. III student. The paper was based on the basics of IoT, along with its various application and security issues.
It was presented under special sessions on IoT with the session head Mr.Birger Andersen, Professor, Technical University of Denmark. The same will be published in the IEEE Explore.
Research @ NU
Lakshya Gourav Moitra and Anshumali Singh have presented their paper ‘GET IoT-Green computing and Energy harvesting in Internet of Things’ at Global Wireless Summit 2015. The Conference was held under WVITAE 2015 at Novotel Convention Center, Hyderabad from 13th-16th December, 2015.
The other authors included Manash Jyoti Deka. The paper was written under the guidance of Mr. Jetendra Joshi.
Manash Jyoti Deka has presented the paper, ‘OCTM: Over-Speeding and Congestion Reduction in Traffic Management’ at 2015 International Conference on Integrated and Sustainable Transportation (INTGAST) 2015. The conference was held 15-17th December, 2015.
The other authors included Anshumali Singh and Lakshya Gourav Moitra. The paper was written under the guidance of Mr. Jetendra Joshi.
Pravit Tuteja has presented his paper ‘Speed-based Lane Changing System’ at the International Conference on Micro-electronics (ICM 2015). The Conference was held at the Golden Tulip Farah Hotel, Casablanca, Morocco, during 20th-23rd December, 2015.
The other authors of this paper are Yash Aggarwal, Kritika Jain and Manash Jyoti Deka. The paper was written under the guidance of Mr. Jetendra Joshi.
The post January Issue of NU Newsletter 2016 appeared first on NIIT University: MBA and BTech, MTech & PhD Engineering Courses in Computer Science, Biotechnology, ICT, Educational Technology and Bio-informatics.