The Centre plans to open one of three proposed IITs in the 11th plan period in Bihar. Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh intimated this to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in a letter, the state Science and Technology Minister Anil Kumar said today. The letter said the spot selected for setting up the prestigious institute should have approximately 600 acres and be well connected by road, rail and air.

"An Indian in Cowboy Country", a debut novel by Pradeep Anand (BTech '75 MetE/MatSc) of Sugar Land was released on Dec 2 ... the book is about an Asian Indian engineer discovering his personal and professional potential in the heart of Texas and flourishing in the United States. "Pradeep Anand has put together a collection of highly enjoyable stories about the many challenges of being a brown-skinned techie in Texas. Immigrants everywhere will relate to this perceptive and relevant book," says the award-winning author and poet, Chitra Divakaruni.

Rajasthan will soon have an Indian Institute of Technology - as the central government has given its green signal to open such an institute in the state. The state has been demanding an IIT for the last several years. Similar institutes will also be opened in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. 'The central government has approved it. We received the information Tuesday. We will try to start it from the next academic session,' said Vasudev Devnani, state minister for education said Wednesday.

The central government's decision to start an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Andhra Pradesh has been hailed as a dream come true by students, academicians and knowledge-based industries in the state. The announcement to set up an IIT at Isnapur in Medak district, about 40 km from here, was made by Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy on Tuesday. The IIT will benefit hundreds of students from the state aspiring to get seats in the premier institutes. About 660 students from Andhra Pradesh were admitted to seven IITs, which together have 3,980 seats. "The proposed IIT will be only the second in south India after IIT Chennai."

The President inaugurated the PanIIT Global Conference 2006, the largest gathering of the IIT alumni at the Bandra-Kurla Complex in suburban Mumbai. His observations focussed on where the Indian Institutes of Technology lag and how IITians can actually make a difference. He said he first called a Professor of Indian origin in the US who felt that there may be many hidden Ramanujans and Einsteins amongst the vast majority of the students, which the IIT system does not touch. "The greatest challenge for the Pan IITians and the nation is to find a mechanism to identify those needles in the haystack," the President said. He urged the IITians to look for hidden Ramanujans and bring them to the mainstream.

PanIIT coverage on Rediff.com ...

• IITians do something for Indian education ... Ram Kelkar (BTech '80 EE)

• IIT is about fundas ... Pranay Shah (BTech '77 CivE)

• Success tip: No idea is too small ... Rajendra Gadgil (BTech '75 ChE)

• Let Pan IIT build a bridge of philanthropy ... Mathew Eipe (BTech '75 ChE)

• IIT education is a wonderful package ... Kekoo Colah (BTech '76 ME)

• IIT-ians must give something back to India ... Satish Kini (BTech '76 ME)

• 5 things entrepreneurs must do to succeed ... Uma Ganesh (PhD '04 Mgmt)

• IIT-ians can do wonders if they want ... Shailesh Gandhi (BTech '69 CivE)

• How IITians aim to transform India  ... Ashank Desai (MTech '74 ME)

Enhancing the fabled Brand IIT will be on everyone's mind as IITians from all over the world arrive in Mumbai for the PanIIT 2006 Global Conference ... the number of patents and citations per IIT faculty member in the 1990s was a tenth of what obtained in leading universities such as Stanford and MIT. IIT Delhi professor Pankaj Jalote, in his article (TOI, Nov 30) rightly observes that "the archaic system of fixed increment-based salary scales with no regular performance evaluation...is guaranteed to lead to mediocrity and lack of competitiveness" ... "every brand ... is vulnerable to decline — because without substance, any credential is worthless". The energies of IITians should be spent on ensuring that their own alma maters have the necessary resources and support to attract and nurture the best and smartest young men and women. If the fundamentals are sound, then nation-building will happen as a matter of course.

Promising startups from Indian research institutes display their tech prowess across IT, communications and biotech sectors ... VCs too are beginning to take note of their achievements. Success stories coming out of IIT Bombay are equally impressive: Herald Logic develops products in enterprise information, rule-based engine; Voyager2 Infotech built a creative ideas portal and was bought out by Purple Yogi in an all-stock deal; Myzus Technologies develops products and services in the areas of wireless gateways and connectivity bridges; eInfinitus develops real-time bandwidth provisioning and specialised router software.

Come January and city’s techno buffs will head for IIT Bombay’s Techfest 2007. And to give the 10-year-old festival a new twist, the students have promised to come up with solutions for problems that hamper infrastructural development in the state. The three-day festival, commencing on January 26 next year, will also attract students from the US, Australia, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Alumni in the news ...

• "Per ardua ad astra" the Latin phrase that translates to "Through adversity to the stars" was the motto of Antonio D’Souza High School, Mumbai, where Avinash Sankholkar BTech '74 ChE) studied ... he found many warm, friendly and intellectual people at IIT Bombay.

• Minaxi Gupta (MSc '95 Phys) from the IU School of Informatics was awareded the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at IU Bloomington. Gupta obtained her master's and doctoral degrees in computer science from Georgia Tech. She earned a master's in physics from IIT in Mumbai (Bombay), India, and her undergraduate degree at Bombay University.

• India Infoline interviews Pramod Chaudhari (BTech '71 ME), Chairman & Managing Director, Praj Industries Limited, a technology, engineering and plant and equipment company focused upon Ethanol Plants, Breweries and Wastewater Treatment Systems.

Now you don’t have to go aimlessly knocking on doors for funding. If you have a business idea, but didn’t know how and who to tap to take it forward, then IIT Bombay has the answer: Global Entrepreneurship Network, or GEN, helps you set up your own business enterprise with the help of a team spread across the globe. An online platform, GEN will help provide a support system for the business initiatives of budding entrepreneurs among students and working professionals. "Networking forms an intricate part of any initiative. GEN aims at bringing together individuals at different stages of entrepreneurship on a common platform," explained entrepreneurship cell (IIT-B) manager and GEN project coordinator Abhishek Mohta ... the portal was formally launched on the sidelines of the “Entrepreneurship Summit” at IIT-B.

Call them the new million-dollar babies. Barely out of their teens and IIT campuses, they’re the new richie rich of India — graduate at 21, millionaire by 22. IITians are giving their IIM brethren a run for their money as global financial majors put an extra trust premium on the quantitative analytical skills of BTechs graduating from India’s premier technological institutes ... at IIT Bombay, the US-based Mercer group has offered a salary of $85,000 with a guaranteed bonus of about 20%.

In IIT Bombay, the lime tastes sweet. A BTech (computer science) student of the institute has bagged a whopping $90,000 annual package from the US-based Lime group, a financial services and technology conglomerate. The student is among the four candidates recruited by the Lime group. A UBS Investment Bank placement stood next, with an offer of $85,000 a year. The Lime group is a New York-based conglomerate that has businesses in finance and software and is a regular recruiter from India.

Come January and city’s techno buffs will head for IIT Bombay’s Techfest 2007. And to give the 10-year-old festival a new twist, the students have promised to come up with solutions for problems that hamper infrastructural development in the state. The three-day festival, commencing on January 26 next year, will also attract students from the US, Australia, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

In a move that hints at a big shift in the global pharmaceutical business ... as big drug companies shut down some research facilities in the U.S. and other rich countries, labs in India and China are increasingly picking up the slack. Eli Lilly & Co., Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline PLC all have outsourced chemistry work to Indian firms. Dr. Barbhaiya took early retirement from Bristol-Myers and headed home. Among his first hires was a former colleague at Bristol-Myers, Kasim Mookhtiar (MSc '80 Chem), who became Ranbaxy's head of drug discovery. Looking to run his own show, Dr. Barbhaiya found a backer in the Tata Group ... the result was Advinus Therapeutics, a company whose new-drug research would be powered by Indian scientists returning from the U.S. and other countries. The lab is run by the jocular Dr. Mookhtiar.

Nandan Nilekani (BTech '78 EE) is riding Infosys at a global gallop, changing the company as it changes the way the world does business. Nandan Nilekani of Infosys has had a great year. So great that he faces a daunting problem: He has to hire 28,500 workers--in a single year. Oh, and while he's at it, he has to reshape his company's strategy, selling higher-value services to keep ahead of competitors that try to imitate Infosys by hiring low-wage Indian workers. And while doing both, he has to add nearly $1 billion to last year's revenue to keep his word to Wall Street analysts--he promised them Infosys would be a $3 billion company by April. "We have a unique challenge," he says, "and it is a nice challenge to have: How do you at the same time have rapid growth and rapid change?"

The Pune Chapters of IITBAA and TiE are jointly organising an innovation show, 'Innovations 2007' on January 6 for innovators to showcase 'ideas that are already in practice'. The organisers have selected 15 innovations from 145 nominations. The 15 nominations include three from IT and Telecommunications, one in biotech, one in electronics, two in pharma, one in chemical, four in manufacturing and three in mechanical product technology. The day-long event will have Gururaj Deshpande, a technology entrepreneur and Arun Shourie making key note and concluding addresses respectively, the event will also allow the innovators to make six minute presentations to an audience comprising venture capitalists, financial institutions, R&D foundations, scientists, academicians, corporate executives and media professionals.

Rajendra Gadgil (BTech '75 ChE) is the senior vice president of marketing at NOCIL. He is a chemical engineer and has graduated from IIT Bombay. "IIT-ians have made a lot of difference to India by putting in on the technological map of the world. People recognise India as a strong technical country. Look at Sabeer Bhatia, Rajat Gupta and the likes. Today more then 50-60 big companies of the world have Indians at the very top. Also, besides the bigwigs, a lot of IIT-ians have chosen not to go abroad and have made their mark here in India.

Entrepreneurship is fast catching on in college festivals. Techfest (http://www.techfest.org), the annual science and technology festival of Indian Institute of Technology Powai, will introduce a section called Imagineer that will allow students to develop their ideas and get recognition both in the student community and in industry. Techfest, which completes a decade, will be held from 26 January to 28 January 2007. The competitions have been classified under four themes: Overdrive, iBots, Dimensions and Wired Logic.

Memories of the years spent in IIT Bombay still bring a smile on Kekoo Colah's (BTech '76 ME) face. You broach the subject and the high profile executive director of Knight Frank (India) Pvt Ltd just can't help grinning. Colah obtained a BTech. "Things that I learnt in IIT Bombay - the value system, work ethics and the problem solving capability - helped me tremendously in my career ... it's simply a great feeling to be in an IITian."

As head of 21st Century Healthcare Solutions, Satish Kini (BTech '76 ME) is out to transform healthcare with people, processes and technologies. "... the very environment of IIT inculcates a spirit of achievement in them and they take pride in the fact that they are into one of the premier educational institutes of the county."

With IT maps, plans, awards and at least three phone-lines, one can imagine how busy Avinash Sankholkar (BTech '74 ChE), Head, IT and Research & Development at Larsen and Toubro would be. "I ranked 54th in the western region in the joint entrance exam for the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT),” he says, remembering the years of his education. He adds that he found many warm, friendly and intellectual people at IIT Bombay.

The IIMs have got competition when it comes to attracting financial companies and consultancies for campus recruitment: the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). IIT Bombay will place its students in companies like Mc Kinsey, Boston Consultancy Group and UBS for the first time. With just three days down into recruitments, IIT Bombay has already placed 120 students with an average pay packet of Rs 10 lakh.

Uma Ganesh (PhD '04 Mgmt) is the CEO and principal consultant, Kalzoom Technologies. She did her Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in 2004. She was earlier CEO of Zee Interactive Learning Systems and vice president at Aptech. She was awarded IT Woman of the Year Award for 2001 and has been actively involved with professional bodies such as Nasscom, CII, NACT and CSI. Uma Ganesh spoke about the Pan-IIT Global Conference to be held in Mumbai from December 23 to December 25, about how IIT-ians have helped transform India, and what young IIT-ians and entrepreneurs must do to succeed.

"IIT-ians think they are God's own creation but the acid test is how much they do for India. Without that, their feeling that they contribute anything is meaningless. And if there are about a lakh of IIT-ians across the world, they can really do wonders. This conference may initiate the important process of change. But the real test of the meet lies in what happens in the post-conference euphoria period." - Shailesh Gandhi (BTech '69 CivE).

Indian Institute of Technology graduate begins prestigious American fellowship ... Manoranjan Sahu (MTech '01 EnvSci) has been named a McDonnell International Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, and he has received a corporate fellowship from Engineering and Environmental Research Group, Inc. (EERG) of Ames, Iowa.

Cyrus Driver (BTech '98 ME) graduated from IIT Bombay, did his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and worked with Chase Manhattan’s venture capital wing for 4 years. But he noticed that working late hours and an unhealthy diet had given him a bloated middle. He looked around for a service that would provide food that was healthy, tasty, had variety and the right quantity ... and since no one could hear his cry, he decided to do something on his own. His answer - Calorie Care, India's "first ever calorie-counted meal delivery service."

Autodesk Inc. has announced the launch of its Global Student Engineering and Design Community portal in India, as part of the firm’s global initiative to educate the student community with latest 3D design technologies and prepare them for careers in engineering and design. India was amongst the five countries beside US, UK, Australia and New Zealand selected for the pilot launch of this portal. Students from four of India’s premier institutes - IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, Sir JJ School of Architecture, Mumbai and School of Planning & Architecture, Delhi - were involved in the initiative..

PanIIT 2006 coverage on Rediff.com ...

• How India can be the global KPO king ...

• IIT-ians have the whole world ahead of them ...

• First micro credit was from an IITian-led co ...

• Pan-IIT alumni against OBC quota ...

• Why India can be global knowledge economy leader ...

• Nation building, top priority for IIT-ians  ...

• Pan IIT mission is to transform India ...

• You just cannot do without IIT-ians ...

• How IITians aim to transform India ...

Brace yourself for the attack of the alpha geeks. Between December 23 and 25, more than five thousand of the world’s brightest technologists, engineers, physicists, mathematicians and managers will converge upon the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay campus in Powai to attend the fourth Global IIT Alumni Conference, possibly making Mumbai the world’s brainiest city for that period. Called PanIIT 2006, the event is not your run-of-the-mill alumni gathering. President APJ Abdul Kalam will speak to the IIT graduates in a keynote speech, a tradition begun by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, the keynote speaker at the first conference in California in 2003. The closing address will be given by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while spirituality guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is slated to host a session on bringing technology and spirituality.

Alumni in the news ...

• Chennai Corporation's new Commissioner Rajesh B. Lakhani took charge at the Ripon Buildings on Thursday. Mr. Lakhoni told reporters that he would ensure that the government schemes were implemented successfully. The new Commissioner, an engineer by training, is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.

• The Mittal Steel USA plant at Burns Harbor has replaced its manager. Madhukar "Madhu" Ranade (BTech '75 MetE/MatSc) will replace former plant manager Jim Hrusovsky, according to David C. Allen, Mittal Steel spokesman. Ranade has an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and a master's degree in material science and engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

• Nandan Nilekani spent many of his early years in Dharwad and entered the portals of IIT Mumbai in 1973 to do his BTech in Electrical Engineering. "I was from a small town and not at all sophisticated. I was surrounded by all these boys from Cathedral and other up-market schools from Bombay. So learning how to survive and flourish in that environment gave me self confidence." Besides studies, Nilekani was an avid quizzer and also organized IIT Mumbai’s collegiate cultural fest Mood Indigo.

• "10 ways to find, retain best tutors at IIMs, IITs" and "9 more ways to find, retain best tutors" by Manoj Kumar (PhD '04 Finance) ... Dr. Kumar is a faculty member in the Finance & Accounting discipline at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow. He has done his PhD in Finance from IIT Bombay.

In classic "born global" tradition, SecLore Technology Pte Ltd opened an overseas presence on its first day. The company set up its headquarters in Singapore to capitalise on the city-state's location and status as a premier business hub, and opened a research and development division in India to benefit from the country's talent pool and cost advantages. Thanks to a timely partnership with SINE, an incubator run by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, SecLore began with two offices at startup: Singapore as the channel to the Asia-Pacific market and India as the R&D centre.

"Romancing with advertising" ... Hindustan Times calls Mahesh Chauhan (BTech '93 MetE/MatSc) one of "the top advertising brains of India." Not yet 40 (37 to be exact), Mahesh is the President of Rediffusion DY&R, India's top advertising company. And though entry into the field was by a fluke, the growth was 'definitely' talent for the guy who gave you the famous 'definitely male' one-liner to Bajaj Pulsar bike. "It was simply a providential interaction with some advertising people that defined the career I would embark upon," recalls Mahesh, who was sure about not pursuing engineering after the years at IIT Mumbai.

Rediffusion DY&R has appointed Mr Mahesh Chauhan (BTech '93 MetE/MatSc), currently President of Everest Brand Solutions, to succeed Mr Preet Bedi, the outgoing President.  Mr Chauhan takes over at Rediffusion after completing a three-year stint at Everest Brand Communications. At Everest, besides winning businesses such as Hitachi, LIC, Kinetic, ING Vyasa, Mirc Electronics and Elder Pharma, Chauhan was responsible for turning around the creative product of the agency during his tenure.

VIDYA, an NGO started 20 years ago in Delhi enters its “5th Founder’s Day” in Mumbai on this 11th Nov. Vidya – Mumbai organized a Founder’s Day celebration in the IIT, Powai campus to commemorate its vision and resolve to impact the local community. Rashmi Misra is the founder and chairperson of VIDYA (Vidya Integrated Development For Youth and Adults) a well known Indian non-profit organization working towards the empowerment of women and children from urban slum areas in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Goa. VIDYA's unique grass-root development programs have proved to be very successful in transforming the lives of many of India's most underprivileged. VIDYA was one of only two New Delhi based social development programs featured during Hillary Clinton's state visit to India in 1995.

Asia's spectacular monument of gratitude ... Air travellers over Mumbai will soon have something spectacular to goggle at: a cloud-high view of the golden Global Pagoda, the world's largest stone monument and the first dome in human history of this size without any supporting pillars. The completed massive main dome of the Global Pagoda, to seat more than 8,000, has been officially inaugurated last Sunday in the presence of many Indian leaders, including possibly Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. "The construction plans were finalized following advice from consultants and research studies, including one by the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai."

Hands-free driving, a locket that alerts you of an imminent heart attack, energy from the sun and wind as a petrol substitute and earthquake-resistant buildings. These are only a few innovations that could make our lives that much easier if research scholars at Bombay IIT have their way ... work is continuing on some key innovations, which if completed successfully, could change the paradigm of how we lead our lives in the future. For instance, the silicon locket when worn by an individual, will make it possible to instantly monitor various cardiac parameters to help in quick diagnosis. In the event of the slightest abnormality, the locket is designed to send automatic alerts—including the last few seconds of ECG data— to a central server or the nearest hospital using a mobile phone interface.

Daniel Dias (BTech '76 EE) has just been at the helm of IBM India Research Lab (IRL) for all of two months, but this IIT-Bombay alumnus has already drawn the roadmap for the company's R&D for the next few years. The focus, he says, is on innovation. "We are looking at 20%-25% growth in R&D at IBM India Research Lab. The growth primarily depends on the kind of innovations we do, which again is based on the people we hire," says Dias.

Imagine an 11-foot-tall Ganesh idol, weighing a cool 35 kilograms, made entirely out of newspaper. Surprised! Mumbai was too after this year’s Ganeshotsav celebrations became the first eco-friendly expression of religious fervour ever. Developed and designed by IIT Bombay’s Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, the large papier-mache Ganesh idol was the culmination of years of research ... most idols in this year’s Ganeshotsav celebrations were made of clay and silt from the Powai lake - about 1900 small clay and silt Ganeshas made their way into homes and localities. Navsrujan - a group of amateur environmentalists from IIT Bombay – were the progenitors of this vacuous idea that came to fruition this year.

The Tata Technologies building stands tall in the sprawling Hinjewadi IT Park, 20 km from Pune towards the Mumbai-Pune expressway. On the first floor of this building sits Narendra Karmarkar (BTech '78 EE), a globally renowned scientist best known for inventing the Karmarkar Algorithm. He is today associated with a relatively unknown firm, Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a subsidiary of Tata Sons. Mr Karmarkar is leading a team of scientists who are part of an ambitious project to create India’s answer to the newer, faster supercomputer. It’s a race involving many a superpower of the world – the US, Japan and China. Between them they are betting millions of dollars to push up super computing speeds to well over 1,000 tera flops (one peta flop).

How IITians aim to transform India: The Rediff Interview with Ashank Desai, Chairman, Mastek ... It will be payback time for the country's most talented minds -- the stars from Indian Institutes of Technology -- when they meet for three days in Mumbai in December. PanIIT 2006, an umbrella organisation of IITians, has scheduled the annual alumni conference from December 23 to December 25. This time a record 5,000 IITians are expected to participate in the convention, many of them from overseas.

Alumni in the news ...

• Saicon Consultants Inc. experienced more than 730 percent growth in the last three years. Explosive? Not according to Ramesh Lokre (MSc '84 Math), the Chief Executive Officer for the Overland Park-based company ... Saicon ranked 142nd on Inc. magazine’s annual list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

• Tellabs issued revenue guidance for the fourth-quarter that sent the shares tumbling 6% on the day. But despite short-term investors' disappointment, long-term value players still love the stock. "I would say our stock is undervalued at this point," says CEO Krish Prabhu (MSc '75 Phys).

• SecondSpace, a new online services company formed by a team of Internet veterans, today announced two key appointments to its senior management team. Satbir Khanuja (BTech '89 MetE), former Vice President of Amazon.com's Worldwide Traffic Group, will serve as the company's Vice President of Marketing.

The Times Higher Education Supplement’s listing of 100 top technology universities ranked the IITs at #3, just behind MIT and the University of California-Berkeley. The new tech survey "puts IIT ahead of Imperial College, London", which comes in at #4. The survey is a subset of the main data collated by THES for last week’s overall excellence rankings in which the IITs were ranked #57.

Friday afternoons at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai are a time to relax for Ankit Jain, a final-year engineering student. In between his rigorous exam schedule, Ankit takes some time off from competing with his friends in the classroom to compete with them on the basketball courts. Ankit and his friends at the elite institute are considered some of the brightest brains in India. And they have found that they are in hot demand from Indian and foreign businesses. According to Mercer Human Resource Consulting's country head in India, R Sankar, India is facing an imminent talent shortage. "... there just aren't enough skilled graduates in India to fill these jobs."

IITBAA Pune and TiE Pune have announced the launch of Innovations 2007, an annual technology exhibition that aims to become the best forum in India to showcase innovations in practice. Innovations 2007 is an opportunity innovators anywhere on the globe should not miss. Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande is the keynote speaker, and the the event has an intense, single day, single-track format, ending with an Indian perspective given by Arun Shourie.

• Innovations 2007 ... nominations are due by November 10, 2006.
   

Did the nuclear test by North Korea on October nine trigger earthquakes in the region? Apparently yes, if geologists are to be believed. The earthquake pattern between October nine and 13 in East Asia, geologists say, was due to a disturbance in natural stress conditions of the subduction zone extending from Kuril Island in the north to Phillipines islands in the south. They said it was apparent that the nuclear explosion did create stress along the trench. In the last two months, such earthquake "clusters" were not observed in the zone, according to geologists from the Department of Earth Sciences in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here.

Google Inc. has appointed computer scientist Dr. Prasad Bhaarat Ram (BTech '87 CSE) to head engineering and site operations at its R&D center in Bangalore. Dr. Ram, whose appointment is effective immediately, will lead engineering operations and product innovation at the center. Prasad has over 15 years experience in computer science research and engineering, and has worked extensively in software and online industries. Prior to joining Google, Prasad was Chief Technology Office at Yahoo! India Research and Development in Bangalore, India. Prasad started his career as a research scientist at Xerox PARC and has a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

The Electrical Engineering Department of IIT Bombay has organised a two-day workshop on the campus on Saturday to encourage and discuss new trends in supercomputing by increasing innovation and participation. Titled ‘Aagomani 2006’, the workshop particularly focusses on high performance computing. On the first day, the significance of supercomputers and how they can combat asteroid hits, tsunamis, terrorist attacks and oil deficits were discussed.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did some plain speaking to top scientists and students inside IIT Bombay, voicing concern that China and South Korea may have "leapfrogged" ahead of the nation in their "mastery over science and technology" ... Singh’s concern extended to the "decline in standards of research in universities and even in the IITs". He emphasised that reverse brain drain must be encouraged in universities and government institutions.

Concerned at the poor quality of scientific research in Indian universities, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that his government planned to double allocations for science and technology within the next five years.

Alumni in the news ...

• Medical help is a click away ... Sandeep Shah (BTech '81 EE) got his start in technology by fixing fuses in his boyhood home. Today, he operates a database that shoots lifesaving information to handheld devices on the battlefield in Iraq. The 46-year-old Northborough resident is the founder and president of Skyscape, a cyberspace clearinghouse of medical data.

• For the last three years, Shailesh Gandhi (BTech '69 CivE) has been spreading awareness about Right to Information (RTI) Act across Maharashtra. Gandhi, an IIT Bombay graduate and a successful businessman, has conducted over 2,000 RTI camps and gives around 40 lectures every month on the use of the Act.

India's Looming Talent Shortage ... Graduates from the seven prestigious IITs, Indian Institutes of Technology, hold their own against those from Caltech or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Many of the private engineering colleges and other programs that have proliferated in recent years do not reach anywhere close to the standard of the IITs. Prasad Krishna, head of quality assurance at the All India Council for Technical Education, which oversees engineering programs, said his staff had found it difficult to keep up with all the new schools. Currently, India boasts 1,475 approved engineering programs. "There are many institutions running programs not approved by the council," Krishna said. "Some of these fly-by-night operators should be checked."

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay is among 15 Asian varsities partnering Washington University in launching the McDonnell Academy aimed at fostering international cooperation in education and research to create a worldwide network of top-class scholars, and business and government leaders. The academy would groom leaders who are able to deal with challenges of globalisation in a socially sensitive way. At least nine MNCs, including Boeing and several foundations and individuals are supporting the academy established with an endowment of $10 million committed by retired chairman of the board of McDonnell Douglas Corporation John F McDonnell.

The Indian Institute of Technology has joined the premier league of best universities in the world. According to the rankings compiled by the Times Higher Education Supplement , published on Thursday, India’s premier science and technology education centre is ranked No.57 in the global list. American and British universities comprised nearly half of the top 100 universities in the world. United States led the way with 33 universities in the top 100, while Britain ranked second with 15. Australia and the Netherlands were next with seven each, while Switzerland and France followed with five. Hong Kong, Japan, Canada and Germany each had three to their credit. China and India, the world's two most populous countries, had two apiece, along with Singapore, New Zealand and Belgium.

The Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is conducting a survey to help understand the career development progression of alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology. In return for completing the survey, respondents will have the option of receiving a report summarizing the findings of the study of the career status of IIT alumni across the globe.

Meet the toppers of IIT Bombay's Class of 2006 ...

• Internet connectivity in rural areas at cheap rates? Well, this could be a reality if Srikanth's dream comes true. Meet Srikanth Jagabathula, IIT Bombay's pride, the President of India gold medal winner for 2005-06 ... Srikanth is all set to fly to the United States to pursue his studies at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Knowledge is indeed wealth. Who better exemplifies it than Krishnamurthy Rengarajan, IIT-B gold medallist (Dual Degree). Krishnamurthy's story is that of hard work, sheer grit and determination. "I have been selected for the scholarship programme at Stanford University for a PhD in operations research."

• Ashwin Limaye, Topper, M Tech dual degree in Computer Science and Engineering ... is simple, unassuming and, of course, intelligent! "The best thing about IIT is that it is not just about academics ... the interaction with professors and students from diverse backgrounds is also an enriching experience."

The SBI, Andhra Bank and JK Bank are among the banks that will work with the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) and IIT Mumbai in a pilot project for biometric smart cards, aimed at rural inclusion into the banking system. The rollout will take place in the next six weeks and will initially be confined to the North-East region.

The Indian-American Gen Next ... What lies ahead for the next generation of Indian Americans, even as many in the first generation enjoy the fruits of their hard work and success? "This generation, they just cannot focus the way we could, that is the problem," Sharat was saying. "Everything has come too easy for them. Remember how we worked to get into the IIT ..." said a second friend. They were all IITians and often are nostalgic about the alu parathas in their days at the Kanpur IIT or the chaat outside the gates of the Delhi IIT.

Meet the three Indian American CEOs who preceded Indra Nooyi in the elite Fortune 500 CEO Club ... two of them are IIT Bombay alumni. Ramani Ayer (BTech '69 ChE) is the CEO of Hartford Financial and a business biography mentions how he could "barely afford materials for his classes" since his father was a poorly paid government official. Rajiv L Gupta (BTech '67 ME), CEO of Rohm & Haas, is credited with increasing the company’s R&D growth from 11% in 1997 to 35% in 2003 as well as setting a long-term sales growth of 4% to 6% "to be achieved through new product development, expanded presence in Asia," among other ways and means.

Four undergraduate students from IIT Bombay have bagged the top prize in the Student Design Contest 2006 category at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' (ASME) International, for developing a novel robot. The robot "CATCH PHRASE", had to throw a sand bag weighing 50 gram, which represented a bait, as close as possible to the target set by the judges (between 6 metre to 10 metre) and retrieve it, Prof G Ukadgaonker, Faculty Advisor, ASME Student Section at IIT Bombay said on Friday. The IIT winning team has been invited by ASME International to Chicago in November 2006 to compete with the rest of twelve regions which are in North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), he added. The team led by Rishabh Bhandari included Anand Shah, Apeksha Khandelwal and Rutika Muchhala.

The Joint Entrance Examination 2007 will be held on Sunday, April 8, 2007. And, for those planning to give it a shot, there are a few changes in store ... the 2007 test will be a single-stage objective-type examination consisting of two papers of 3 hours each. Like JEE 2006, the format will still be multiple-choice questions, but the tests now aim to measure analytical and comprehension skills. Thanks to this new pattern, the total examination time should be reduced by 20 per cent if compared to last year's papers. According to Ram Kelkar (BTech '80 EE), Director, IIT Bombay Heritage Fund, the changes are for the better. "... the domination of coaching classes has been rather detrimental ... coaching classes are masterful at reverse engineering the JEE examination but, as a result, their focus is on teaching the rote art of test-taking rather than fundamentals ... the new pattern will ... level the playing field for all youngsters in India."

From the September Campus Diary ... IIT Bombay is the organizing institute for JEE 2007. JEE-2007 will be a single-stage objective-type examination consisting of two papers of three hours duration each to test comprehension and analytical ability of candidates. Both papers will have three separate sections on Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. This is in place of three papers of two hours duration each in JEE-2006. This step has been taken to further reduce stress on the candidates.

Over 400 casual workers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) have alleged that their contractor is exploiting them by delaying regular salaries and not providing basic facilities to them at the workplace. However, a source at the labour commission, said: "The problem of workers with PF and other such benefits arises because they submit incomplete forms and are unaware of the procedures. We have also looked into the matter of irregular payments and papers show that they receive salaries on time."

Alumni in the news ...

• The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. announced that its chairman, president and chief executive officer, Ramani Ayer (BTech '69 ChE), will provide testimony on Wednesday, Sept. 27 at 10 a.m. EDT at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on terrorism entitled, "Protecting Americans from Catastrophic Terrorism Risk."

• Capgemini ... providers of Consulting, Technology, and Outsourcing services ... has named Salil Parekh (BTech '86 Aero), Chief Executive Officer of the company’s North America Project & Consulting business unit.

• A scholarly background, splendid career achievements and touching humility - this is how one describes Dr Kamal K Sharma (BTech - IIT Kanpur / PhD '99 IndMgmt - IIT Bombay) ... MD of Lupin. While working, Sharma ... obtained a PhD in welfare economics from IIT Bombay.

• India’s Praj Industries has announced its first cross-border acquisition acquiring 100% of CJ Schneider Engineering for Rs225 million ($5 million). Praj has a 6%-8% share of the global market in the construction of plants that produce ethanol. Its founders are alumni of one of India’s leading engineering schools, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. The company's founder and chairman, (is) Pramod Chaudhari (BTech '71 ME). Silicon Valley venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems shares the euphoria on both the ethanol rally and in Praj’s prospects. In April this year, Vinod Khosla was given a preferential allotment of shares and warrants in Praj Industries.

• During the Mumbai train blasts in July, when phone lines and mobile networks either jammed or broke down, the BMC, police and hospitals found an unlikely ally in HAM radio stations, which had originally been established to deal with the floods. The brainchild, that ensured smooth communication, was one of several initiatives started by Vinay Somani (BTech '80 ChE), founder of karmayog.com. The free portal is one of its kind in the city, where NGOs, volunteers and service providers have a permanent e-space, which facilitates interactions with government servants, donors, needy people or even companies that feel a tinge of corporate social responsibility.

• 'Regulatory potholes' are a hindrance in the country’s exploding information and communication technology (ICT). This is one of the observations found in the Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2005-06 ... the India Chapter of this report, prepared by IIT alumni Madanmohan Rao (BTech '85 CSE), highlights ... the need for continued growth in international bandwidth for India.

•  the third in two months- officials of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) prepared to admit that Mumbai’s roads were still far from smooth. The court had also appointed three citizen-members to the BMC’s Standing Technical Advisory Committee (STAC). These members, advocate Mihir Desai, activist and theatre personality Gerson D’Cunha and engineer Sudhir Badami (BTech '71/ MTech '74 CivE), have received no intimation yet from the BMC but have anyway chalked out a proactive role for themselves.

Are Indians the Model Immigrants? They have funny accents, occasionally dress in strange outfits, and some wear turbans and grow beards, yet Indians have been able to overcome stereotypes to become the U.S.'s most successful immigrant group. Media reports routinely profile graduates from one Indian college—the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). This is a great school, but most successful Indians I know aren't IIT graduates. Neither are the doctors, journalists, motel owners, or the majority of technology executives. Their education comes from a broad range of colleges in India and the U.S. They believe that education is the best way to rise above poverty and hardship.

The McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), India, in a ceremony. The MoU encompasses collaborative research activities as well as undergraduate and graduate student exchange programs. Director Ashok Misra of IITB, says, "This will provide a great opportunity to the faculty and research scholars from both institutes to embark on interdisciplinary research collaborations and to extend intellectual ties beyond national borders."

• The Daily Northwestern: McCormick, India Join Forces ...

For someone whose home was a classroom and teaching was a way of life, retirement means very little. Chemical engineering professor S L Narayanamurthy, 65, retired from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay having served for four decades from 1964 till 2003. Felicitated with the lifetime achievement award in 2004, he however keeps returning to his first love and is still associated with the IIT through several education programmes.

"In Spite of the Gods" reviewed by Nandan Nilekani (BTech '78 EE) ... "Rising in a Flat World ... When you are asked to review a book on the rise of India written by a foreign correspondent, it is easy to predict the mix. There will be a bit of the license permit raj and the dead hand of India’s bureaucracy ... Ed Luce has all this and much more. As Ed says rightly in the end, quoting Vijay Kelkar, "The twenty-first century is India’s to lose." It is a tale well told and a great read both for those who know India and for those who don’t.

The latest issue of InsIghT is now available and highlights include an interview with Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia where he is quoted saying that "If I had to choose between keeping IITians in India and sending them abroad for 2-3 years, I would choose the latter." Another article titled "New Kids on the Block" is a survey of the freshman class of 2006. The authors report that 30% of the freshies do nothing in particular other than studies, while 47% plan to pursue an MBA after graduating from IIT Bombay.

Alumni in the news ...

• IBM has named Dr Daniel M Dias (BTech '76 EE) as the Director of the IBM India Research Lab. Dias will be responsible for leading the research units in India, at Delhi and Bangalore, with a focus on innovation, developing and managing the lab's research agenda. Dr. Dias said, "IRL is the youngest of IBM's eight labs worldwide and at the forefront of driving innovation through research."

• An Indian American academic at Harvard is conducting a seminal study of India’s burgeoning fashion industry in a bid to understand what makes it tick. Dr. Mukti Khaire (MM '99 Mgmt), Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, is conducting a study of the estimated $1.7 billion Indian fashion industry.

Mounds of garbage lying unattended in street junctions, is a common sight in many urban areas of the country. Clearly and apparently, such a mass of garbage is both an eye sore and health a hazard. Against this backdrop, the vermin composting technology developed by the Indian Institute of Technology at Mumbai can be profitably utilized to treat urban wastes in an environmentally friendly manner.

The IIT theatre fest will showcase six plays in Hindi and English. All the shows will be held at its P C Saxena Auditorium, IIT Campus, Powai. The IIT Theatre Fest has been organised and mentored by Prof. Raja Mohanty and Ramu Ramanathan. Prof Mohanty states, "It is our intention to promote theatre at the IIT. This is to ensure IIT evolves into a meeting point for our students and faculty, along with artistes, playwrights, directors, media people, others - into a hub-hub of liveliness."

In case you thought that IITians were a houseful of nerds, you're right. In fact now there's even a study to back this. And guess who's conducted the research - the geeks themselves. Students of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay carried out a survey among freshers (first-year students) who got into the Powai campus this year to find that most of them did nothing but study ... a whopping 30% ... said, "Nothing particular, just studies." 

The Indian government has introduced a controversial affirmative action bill in parliament which aims to increase quotas for lower-caste Indians and other disadvantaged groups in professional colleges. On the streets of Delhi, angry doctors and medical students are protesting against the move. Most of them are elite, upper-class Indians who see the move as a cynical attempt by politicians to gain votes from the influential lower castes who are a dominant force across the country. But those who are supporting the bill - and even in colleges there are many - such as final-year student Raghav Joshi, argue that this is not enough of a reason to deny socially disadvantaged students access to a first-class college education.

Anand and Arya are among the several entrepreneur students of IIT-Powai who have taken to business, while still studying. All thanks to the institute’s Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell) that was set up in 2000. But how sustainable are such ventures? Do they fizzle out as students graduate and move on to other things? Myzus provides the answer. Started in 2000 by Roshan D’Silva and Sandeep Srivastava, then final-year students, this company provides content from websites, newspapers, TV and other sources to mobile phones via SMS or WAP. Six years after they won their funding at Eureka!, one of the business plan competitions at IIT, it’s still running successfully and now makes a Rs 3 crore profit annually.

The proposal to introduce 27 per cent OBC quotas in aided institutions and the decision to stagger it over a maximum of three years has no doubt come as a welcome breather, but at IIT Bombay the worries remain - faculty, number of seats, infrastructure being top priorities. Considering the challenges ahead - IIT-B alone will require another 300 teachers - it has already moved various proposals to the government including okaying foreigners on contract as faculty and more campuses to tackle the problem. "IIT Bombay should ideally have a 1:9 teacher-to-student ratio as against the present 1:12. And the implementation of the OBC quota regime will require more professors due to a significant increase in the number of seats," Director Misra said. The IITs, he said, have around 5,544 students which will increase to 8,000 in the new quota regime, amounting to almost a 54 per cent rise.

The next year's Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) would be slightly modified and would consist of two papers of three hours' duration each, Chairman, Joint Admission Board (JAB) Prof Ashok Misra said. "JEE 2007, to be held on April 8 next, will be slightly different from JEE 2006 and will have a single stage objective type examination consisting of two papers, instead of three, of three hours duration each, to test the comprehension and analytical ability of the candidates," he said. Misra said the JAB reviewed JEE-2006 in detail and found that a total of 2,87,564 candidates appeared for the examination, including 25,465 students belonging to SC and 6209 ST candidates. The total number of candidates who qualified in JEE-2006 was 6343, which included 699 SC and 156 ST candidates.

PepsiCo Inc., which last week named Indra Nooyi as its next CEO, isn't the first global corporation to recognize the caliber of Indian executive talent ... most are products of an investment in higher education the country made more than 40 years ago. Those coming of age in the executive suite often were educated at one of two institutions founded in the 1950s and 1960s, the now seven-city IIT and the six-member Indian Institutes of Management. At least eight of the 500 biggest companies in the world are headed by Indians. Ramani Ayer (BTech '69 ChE) is CEO of Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., based in Hartford, Connecticut.

A visitor from the Soviet Union ... was shocked to learn that only 1,900 students made use of the sprawling 1,200-acre facility (at IIT Kanpur ... the seven Indian Institutes of Technology, one Indian Institute of Science and the six Indian Institutes of Management have given a big boost to India's growing cachet among investors. Nooyi graduated from one of the IIMs in 1976. For every Indra Nooyi that it is helping create, the top end of the Indian education system is turning away several who must be equally talented. And that is a colossal waste, a much bigger injustice than the one the government is trying to fix with its ill-conceived quota policy.

The country’s toy industry is all set to get a technological facelift. The Toy Association of India (TAI) has tied up with IIT-Delhi and IIT-Bombay, in an effort to work on common platforms for research and development of educational toys. The collaboration would see the IITs and TAI working on product lines and designs and enable access to the IITs design facilities and infrastructure for TAI.

"Winners are like jugglers," said eminent academician and author of several management books, Dr Nitin Nohria (BTech '84 ChE), who pointed out one such winner, a country which he left way back in 1984. "The real opportunity lies in India," said the senior associate dean and director of faculty development at the Harvard Business School. Nohria, who took his BTech from IIT Bombay and PhD in management from MIT of the US, was also critical of the tendency of companies to develop business modules, emphasising that "a company should have a module only if it is able to define it clearly."

The Union Cabinet cleared the politically sensitive legislation providing for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in government-run higher educational institutions, including AIIMS, IIT and IIMs in a staggered manner. However, the Cabinet decided to keep the creamy layer amongst the OBCs out of the purview of quota. Disappointed by the Cabinet’s decision, the Youth for Equality, which has been agitating for "merit" in higher educational institutions, threatened to launch a stir from tomorrow to protest against this decision. The Bill is expected to be tabled on August 25, the last day of the Monsoon Session of Parliament and is likely to be referred to the Standing Committee.

A growing crisis in academic recruitment at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) is threatening to disrupt teaching and research, and could put international collaborations in jeopardy. Scientists say that the nation’s seven IITs need about 900 additional faculty members before the next academic session to counteract the shortfall. At IIT Bombay, for example, where the chemistry department has about 125 PhD students and 27 faculty members, the whole institution loses about 10 to 15 faculty members to retirement each year. Ashok Misra, director of IIT-Bombay, says they now need to employ an extra 140 faculty members to make up the deficit.

Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Friday said India must try for a nine to 9.5 per cent growth, so that it hits for sure the targeted GDP growth of 8.5 per cent in the 11th plan period starting next year. However, the growth has to be an "inclusive" one, as the growth requires to be aimed at bringing welfare to one and all, he said while speaking at the 44th convocation of the IIT Mumbai.

• Webcast of 44th Convocation of IIT Bombay featuring Director Ashok Misra, Dr. Anil Kakodkar (Chairman of the Board of Governors), and Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia (Planning Commission) ... more.

Inspire IITians to involve and transform India’ will be the theme for the IIT Alumni 2006 Global Conference to be held under the aegis of Pan IIT, the umbrella organization of all IIT alumni. ‘The conference will primarily focus on inspiring IITians to involve in a movement for giving back to the nation and networking with the alumni’ The event was likely to draw around 5,000 participants from across the globe. ‘Earlier conferences have seen more than 2,000 IITians participating, According to a press release, 1,000 alumni have already confirmed their participation. Sessions devoted to various issues like ‘Building India into a knowledge economy’, ‘Getting the governance you want’ and ‘Learning from successful entrepreneurs’ will be organized over the three-day period.

The Maharashtra government has asked the Indian Institute of Technology-Powai to shell out Rs. 120 crore for a plot of land the IIT needs for expansion. Interestingly, the 10-acre plot, at the northeastern boundary of the IIT campus, was earmarked for the institute's expansion in the state's city development plan in 1993 since there was just one approach road to the plot, through the IIT campus. "We wrote back saying that we should be given this land at a nominal rate. We are not builders and we won't require FSI or TDR either. But the state now says that the land is owned by a private company," said an IIT source.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the IITs will double their student intake from 38,500 to 60,600 in five years at a cost of Rs. 5,520 crore. This is being done to comply with the annexure to the interim report of the Veerappa Moily committee on reservation in higher education. The figure for IITs, IIMs, medical colleges and central and agricultural universities put together touches Rs. 16,000 crore. The IITs and IISc have said their total approved intake for 2006-2007 was 12,813, which would increase by 7,390. The report recommends relaxation of retirement of the faculty to 65 years, re-employing retired faculty up to 70 years.

In their efforts to become more fuel-efficient, leading automotive companies such as General Motors, Tata Motors, and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) have tied up with Indian institutes of technology (IITs) for carrying out research and development (R&D) work. General Motors has taken up a joint research project with IIT Delhi to develop a bio-diesel version of the Chevrolet Tavera. M&M is working with IITs (Kanpur, Chennai, and Mumbai) for alternative energy technology in vehicles. Tata Motors has partnered with leading IITs for various initiatives including new products and fuel-efficient engine development. Ford Motor Company is planning to tie up with IIT Chennai in the areas of safety and emission norms, fuel-efficient engine technology, and software testing and development. Officials at DaimlerChrysler and Honda Siel Cars India said they were open to a tie-up with IITs for mutual benefit.

At a press conference in Mumbai, 1st August , Rajat Gupta, senior partner, McKinsey & Company Worldwide, and Ashank Desai (MTech '74 ME), Chairman, Mastek, announced that the IIT Alumni Global Conference will be held in Mumbai from December 23 to 25, 2006. The attendees will include none other than the President, A P J Abdul Kalam, who has confirmed his presence, and the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, who is yet to confirm. The Advisory Board membership list for the upcoming event reads distinguished IITians such as Vindi Banga, R Gopalakrishnan, Shailesh Mehta, Victor Menezes, Nandan Nilekani, Manohar Parrikar, and Jairam Ramesh.

CA has named Dr. Ajei S. Gopal (BTech '82 ME) as senior vice president and general manager of its Enterprise Systems Management (ESM) business unit. Gopal joins CA from Symantec Corp., where as executive vice president and CTO, he was the global technology leader for the company, responsible for strategy, investments in emerging technologies, including the Symantec Research Labs, and the development of the patent portfolio. He also led cross-product shared services, such as localization and usability, and was responsible for managing the company's significant technical and product operations in India and in China.

IMAGINE not having to wait half a day for your dahi to settle or shaking up a glass of flavored yogurt in five minutes flat. The Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) is all set to enter the ready-to-consume food market with flavored yogurt powder and an instant dahi mix which will be easy on housewives and snack outlets that serve lassi. However, at present, IIT-KGP has developed the products only on a lab-scale. Commercial production will begin only after the institute has sold the technology to a food company.

IIT Chennai would be setting up a Research Park at a cost of Rs. 100 crores by February 2007, which would at par with international standards. This park would provide space for participating innovations by faculty, students and industry. The Park will be conforming to international standards and would be at par with such ventures in the UK and the US.

The Economist magazine describes a paper by Amar Bhidé (BTech ´77 ChE), which argues that worries about America losing its global lead in technology are overdone, as ¨marvelously contrarian¨. He thinks that good managers may be at least as valuable as science and engineering graduates. The most important part of innovation may be the willingness of consumers, whether individuals or firms, to try new products and services, says Mr. Bhidé. In his view, it is America's venturesome consumers that drive the country's leadership in innovation. The full text of Amar Bides paper is available at http://www.bhide.net/bhide_venturesome_consumption.pdf.

Welcome to the world of nanotechnology-or nano-materials to be precise, in this case. Research is currently under way to explore integrating such fancy value add-ons to consumer products, among other things.And, an initiative that should give fillip to this area of research, is a proposed collaboration between two reputed institutes in the field,Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and University of Waterloo, Canada.“We seek tie-ups where our synergies match, where each of us has different strengths,’’ says Prof Pradipto Banerjee, Dean, international affairs, IIT-B.

15 member delegation of Youth for Equality ... to carry forward their Samata Yatra which began from Mumbai on 19 July ... and has reached Chandigarh via Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana ... and conclude at Delhi.  Vivek Vijay from IIT Mumbai says, "I feel the greatest success of the movement lies in the fact that it is getting a patient hearing. Though the government has laid out a proposal to exclude benefits for the creamy layer but why at all have any such discrimination for higher education. If benefits are to be given, let them be given at grass-root level."

Guess what’s coming to town next July? Ahmedabad’s very own Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). With this, the city, which already houses premier educational institutes IIM and NID, also gets a renowned engineering institute. The land for the proposed institute will be allocated by September, and construction completed in two years. The initiative for this was taken by Chief Minister Narendra Modi himself last year, as part of his project to develop a knowledge corridor in Gujarat. Talks were held between an IIT delegation led by IIT Powai Director Ashok Misra and Modi here at Gandhinagar in connection with the project that envisages a satellite campus of the prestigious technology institution.

Indian student Vikram Buddhi, who was jailed in US in April for allegedly threatening US president and vice-president on the Internet, was finally granted bail on Tuesday. Hammond district magistrate Andrew Rodovich released Buddhi on a bond of $100,000. But Buddhi was ordered to stay in Indiana with father B K Subbarao who had flown there from Vashi to defend his son. The IIT-Powai alumnus was also refrained from using the Internet. In a short e-mail from the US, Subbarao told TOI he was pleased with the release of his son who, he believed, was innocent.

Seattle has Bill. Bangalore has Nandan (BTech '78 EE), thus begins celebrity columnist Thomas Friedman his Time magazine profile of ‘100 People Who Shape Our World’. Tech legend has it that our man walked one fine day -- after graduating in electrical engineering from IIT Bombay -- into the office of a certain NR Narayana Murthy, then heading the software group at Patni Computer Systems. The journey towards a $2-bn dollar dream called Infosys began somewhere subsequently, and now, as Nandan officially takes over the official reins from Mr Murthy, his task is not as much to build repute, but something more daunting: To further enhance the image - and the bottomline too - of a firm that’s already the most admired company in India.

Alumni in the news ...

• ArchPro Design Automation has named Vinay Srinivas (BTech '89 Aero) its new vice president of engineering, responsible for managing the company's global R&D workforce and technical relationships with customers. ArchPro is a leader in the development of EDA products for solving power management design challenges in IC/SoC designs at 90nm and below.

Vikas Joshi (BTech '85 ME), an IIT Mumbai graduate of 1985 came to entrepreneurship fairly quickly. After graduation, Joshi, like several IITians decided to go to the US for his masters, but unlike others, he did not stay back and came back to start his own business. Swati Ketkar ... and Vikas joined hands to start Harbringer Technology to develop software products for companies looking at automating their internal training systems. The company which they established in Pune has, after 16 years, touched revenues of Rs 11 crore, for the year ended March ’06. And is targeting revenues of Rs 18 crore this fiscal. It has more than 180 employees, and plans to add another 100 more over the coming year.

The Red Hat Scholarships Awards 2005-2006, called the Lord of the Code Contest, was evaluated and made public by the Open Source software company Red Hat and Project eKALAVYA of the KReSIT, at the Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay. Ankur Badola and Sharad Maloo of IIT-Bombay, the winners of the top prize, worked on a 'P2P DHT for large scale information sharing' project. Their work focussed on building an 'overlay for routing, searching and publish-lookup information sharing'.

The IIT fraternity in North America held its annual North American Regional Conference in Toronto recently. Rabiz Foda (BTech '73 EE), a graduate of IIT Bombay and chairman of the conference, spoke with Gurmukh Singh about the outcome of the two-day event ... over 400 IITians from Canada, the US and India came to discuss the theme 'Knowledge and Skills: Creating Values Beyond Borders'. The theme was chosen in recognition of India's contribution to the knowledge-based economy and with respect to the increasing interconnectedness of nations, economies and individuals. IITians are India's new brand.

Since well before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., Indians have been learning how to live with bouts of terrorism. The key lesson, say those who have lived through attacks, is that even if markets go down and political temperatures go up, life goes on. By yesterday morning, Mumbai's trains were resuming their routes as lines were cleared of wreckage. Investors defied fears of a sharp selloff, driving the Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex index up 3%. The resilience emboldened people from juice salesmen to top government officials. "We have seen this in New York, Madrid and London. Lots of countries today are dealing with terrorist attacks," Mr. Nilekani (BTech '78 EE) said in an interview. "The people of Mumbai are especially resilient."

The bomb attacks on Bombay's commuter trains sent shock waves Tuesday through the Bay Area ... Balaji Srinivasan (BTech '93 ChE), 34, of Fremont grew up in Bombay, which he describes as "always bustling, alive, no matter what time of day." "India has a lot of very different cultures, languages and affiliations, and Bombay is one place where they all meet," said Srinivasan, director of software engineering at tech startup Intruguard and president of the local alumni chapter of the Indian Institute of Technology, one of the country's top engineering schools, which has 750 members in the Bay Area. Srinivasan spent hours Tuesday trying to reach his in-laws and extended family.

Red Hat has announced the winners of the Red Hat Scholarships 2005 - 2006 programme, an open source programming competition ... the first prize worth Rs 2 lakh was given to a two-member team from IIT Bombay. The second (RS 1.5 lakh) and third (RS 1 lakh) prizes went to all-women teams from the Cummins College of Engineering for Women, Pune, and Shri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering, Mysore, respectively.

For the first time IITs have cancelled the allotment of courses to around 4000 students who came for the institute's second round of counselling. This, because of the wrong information given by the institute on the seats and courses available across IITs. "We have committed a mistake and we will rectify it. It will have a cascading effect on all students ranking above 1600," said Dipan Ghosh, Dy Director at IIT Mumbai. A glitch in the software resulted in students being handed out seats that were shown as unavailable. Those students who had forgone thier seats at the other institutes after they had been alloted courses of their choice at the IITs are now left with a worrisome prospect.

Pan IIT Foundation for Rural Transformation writes to PM, EC ... an organisation of IIT alumni wrote letters to the Election Commission and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding action against Health Minister A Ramadoss for his alleged interference in the functioning of AIIMS. "The entire knowledge community is shocked in the manner in which the health minister has tried to undo the autonomy given to the institute of the eminence of AIIMS," the pan IIT Foundation for Rural Transformation said in a letter to the Prime Minister.

The new Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) pattern has helped the first timers to get through the coveted Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) more than any others. Apart from the first timers, the new entrance pattern has also benefited students hailing from small towns and villages ... the proportion of successful candidates belonging to small towns and villages has increased to 30.67 percent. The year also witnessed a 50 percent increased in the number of students appearing for the examination. A record 2,99,288 candidates registered for the examination, with participation of the girls taking to engineering also taking significant strides.

Motorola Inc. announced that it has signed a MoU with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mumbai, to strengthen its research and development (R&D) initiatives in India and support its vision for the emerging markets. This MoU will allow Motorola researchers to work with the Institute's faculty to boost R&D initiatives on application of Next Generation Technologies. Motorola has also established a post-doctoral fellowship through the Motorola Foundation, U.S.A. Firdose Vandrevala, Chairman - Motorola India said, "Motorola and IIT Mumbai are renowned for best-in-class talent and skills and have led technological change in their respective areas." Motorola and IIT Mumbai have also set up a council to enhance/align long-range research between the Institute and Motorola, besides training students of IIT Mumbai.

Gujarat may soon get an Indian Institute of Technology. And this is how: IIT-Bombay (Powai) campus is likely to set foot in Gujarat next year. Seen as an extension of the Powai campus, this proposal could be a fallout of the decision to increase in student intake once the 27 per cent OBC reservation is implemented. A meeting of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and state education department officials with Dr Ashok Misra, director of IIT Bombay, is scheduled to be held in Gandhinagar on July 21.

IIT and IIM alumni associations are increasingly becoming more than just a convenient way of keeping in touch with batchmates. These associations are now serving as platforms, that enable ex-students to contribute to their alma mater and the society as well ... the IIT Bombay Heritage Fund, a non-profit organisation set up by the US-based alumni of IIT-B , has helped raise over $20m over the past 10 years. The IIT Bombay Alumni Association paid for the infrastructure costs of setting up the Village Knowledge Centre near Bangalore which helps empower children and villagers by equipping them with a library, computers ... Citibank offers a zero annual charge IITBAA affinity gold card.

Alumni in the news ...

• Interest rates may remain benign ... retail banking has been the buzzword for bankers in the past two years ... but it is not the El Dorado that public sector banks think it is, says Professor T. T. Ram Mohan (BTech '79 MetE) of IIM Ahmedabad. Prof Ram Mohan ... graduated in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Bombay and then went to IIM-Calcutta for his MBA. He did his doctoral programme at the Stern School of Business in New York.

• Wireless World - June 2006 ... "It is heartening to see success stemming from age-old values with a touch of poetry ... Suvitech is an IT Service company incorporated in Thailand with ... Subin Bhatia (BTech '94 EE), MD and CEO ... is bullish about the Thai market in terms of economic development in general and IT sector in particular.