AICTE Chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe has stressed on the congregation of the new initiatives of AICTE and Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE) to encourage innovation.
The AICTE chairman, while speaking on the Centre’s measures aimed at prompting innovation at the 2nd Indian National Academy of Engineers Youth conclave held on 12th August at the IIT Kharagpur, said many important schemes have been initiated by AICTE to improve laboratory condition of institutions – and, under one of those, the research fellows will now be provided travel grant for presenting their research paper at conferences and distinguished fellows can now visit other centres for a full semester and claim reimbursement.
In a message to the organiser of ‘Smart India Hackathon’ initiative launched by the AICTE and MHRD, he said, the ‘Smart India Hackathon’ was aimed at solving challenging problems of different government departments and ministries and state governments and engage with young students for creating world’s largest open innovation model.
“Many countries such as Canada, Australia, South Korea and Singapore have shown a keen interest in participating under this banner. Certainly, these exercises help bring awareness and fundamental skills among students and help build the foundation for future innovation and skill development,” he said.
Speaking at the conclave, IIT KGP Director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti mentioned that the current era is an era of convergence where people from different sectors need to work together to solve complex problems.
Students from different institutes competed in six sections at the Youth conclave which ended on August 12. While the School of Aeronautics, Neemrana, won the top prize for ‘Optimising Food Chain Aspects’ in which students were asked to devise a product to store farm produce, Future Institute of Engineering and Management, Kolkata won the first prize in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan category in which students had to segregate household waste. The IIT KGP team lifted the first prize for ‘Town Planning. In the Mobile Application Development category, IIT KGP won the top prize for both healthcare app development and digitisation of agriculture.