TIET is proud to share the impact of one of its kind unique Global Alumni- Student mentorship program, between the alumni and its students on campus. After a successful Pilot in 2019 under a partnership with Mr. Rajnish Maini (Alumnus of TI) today we have 1000 alumni participating in the program guiding the students on personal growth, career development, and specific areas that the students wish to drive. The program is for a duration of three months, one hour each week where the mentor and the mentee are devoting time and resources towards the agenda created by and for the mentee.

Rs. 62.5 Lacs grants from Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt. of India

Dr. Dinesh Goyal, Professor in Department of Biotechnology has received grants worth Rs. 62.5 Lacs from Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt. of India for a period of 3 years. It is a joint collaborative project with IIT, Guwahati on “Lignocellulosic biomass utilization for lactic acid and bioethanol production. Out of the total grant, TIET received Rs. 25.3 Lacs. Lignocellulosic biomass such as rice and wheat straw, rice stalk, rice husk, elephant grass, congress grass, millets is subjected to pre-treatment and scarification and the lignocellulosic hydrolysate is converted to produce lactic acid by bacteria and bioethanol by using mixed cultures with yeasts and develop economically viable process.

ThapSat – Payload Design

ThapSat is the Student Satellite project of our university focusing on remote sensing, with the objective to find the greenhouse gases content in the Punjab region. Our current focus is on finalizing the methodology for hyperspectral imaging which requires baseline values of sensor sensitivity. To attain the same, we formulated analytically the radiative transfer through the atmosphere analytically and focused on MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, NASA) for greenhouse gases as a point of reference. The work also involved a lot of data pre-processing over the HITRAN and openaq database and after many iterations and analyzing graphical inferences from the widely accepted MODTRAN database the result was verified. The Payload development team consisted of one 3rd year undergraduate student from Department of Mechanical Engineering: Parameswaran Sivakumar and four 3rd year students from Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering: Shankho Boron Ghosh, Harsh Pallav Govind Rao, Harsh Agrahari and Ravindranath Prasad Yadav, who were correspondingly mentored by Dr. Mamta Gulati and Dr. Rana Pratap Yadav.

SWAN Antenna Design Challenge 2020

A team of undergraduate students from the ThapSat project was selected among the top 5 out of 39 teams (including teams from IIT’s, NIT’s, BITS, DU and IISER) for the prototyping stage of antenna under the SWAN Antenna Design Challenge, after multiple rounds of assessment and reviews from top antenna experts of the country. The team consisted of four 3rd year students from Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering : Shankho Boron Ghosh, Harsh Pallav Govind Rao, Harsh Agrahari and Ravindranath Prasad Yadav and one 3rd year undergraduate student from Department of Mechanical Engineering : Tushar Chaudhary, who were correspondingly mentored by Dr. Rana Pratap Yadav, Dr. Mamta Gulati and Ms. Deepika Singh. This challenge, organized by Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), required to innovate and become one of the architects of the Indian Sky Watch Array Network (SWAN), by designing a novel broadband dual-polarization antenna element suitable for astronomical observations at low radio frequencies. The antenna designed by the team achieved a return loss of more than 10 dB over 80MHz to 420MHz with special focus on compact and cost-effective design. Further stage of this project would lead to realization of the antenna by ThapSat team along with experts from IUCAA. The prototypes would further be considered for designing the basic elements of a large matrix of such antennas, to realize a combined area of about one square kilometer for radio astronomy applications.

Agreement for Technology Transfer to GloBiotech International, Aligarh (UP)

An agreement for Technology Transfer to GloBiotech International, Aligarh (UP) for the preparation of protein hydrolysate-an amino acids mixture for crop improvement was established between Department of Biotechnology (Principal Investigator: Dr Dinesh Goyal) costing Rs. 1 Lac. The process of converting corn gluten a byproduct of starch industry into a useful soil amending agent for improving plant growth has been developed by Ms Jyotika Chugh, a PhD research scholar in the Department of Biotechnology. This involves production of gluten hydrolysate on commercial scale and its market seeding by the company.

TIET handed over 3 Covid-19 solutions

TIET handed over three Covid-19 related solutions developed by three faculty teams from CSED, ECED, EIED and MED to CIBioD-PGIMER for further testing and approvals.

Following 4 TTAFs received Special purpose

certificate in Academic practice from Trinity College Dublin. They received the training during 14th January 2019-1st March 2019.

The program is designed by Thapar Teaching Academic Fellows (TTAF) with inputs from TCD and TIET academics. It focuses on professional development on integrating teaching, learning in an online environment and is research-informed and practice-based. It started on 7th December, 2020 and there were 50 participants in phase I. There are 9 modules on offer to be completed in three months.

School of Energy & Environment (SEE) inked MoU with Centre of Excellence for Competitiveness for SMEs of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in June, 2020 to foster industrial exposure to the students of PG programs in terms of one year internships projects and placements. SEE envisions to effectively disseminate multi-disciplinary knowledge in the area of Environment & Energy Management, which are the two pillars of sustainable and competitive economy. Effective energy management and climate actions are the essential tools in helping to reduce carbon emissions, improve efficiency and cost savings. With the objective of competence development in energy management and climate actions and to create world class leaders into the domain, SEE in collaboration with CII has successfully launched Online Post Graduate Professional Development Program in Energy Management and Climate Action in Dec., 2020. Program will create world class leaders in Energy and Climate Action Domain by facilitating continuing education program to working

Professionals and recent graduates.

The program duration will be two semesters of 16 weeks each. In total, 45 participants have joined this program from manufacturing, energy consultancy, EPC, solar, pharma, agro and chemical industry. Out of total, almost 50% of participants are working in their respective organizations at senior management level (VP/GM level).

The program structure will comprise of virtual classroom, assignments and Industrial Project.

The following subjects will be covered in-depth

TIET team NET-VENT wins at University of Queensland Engineering Design Hackathon 2020

A team of third year Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering undergraduates from TIET, consisting of Aviral Chharia, Shivu Chauhan, and Shankhaneel Basak recorded a smashing victory at the University of Queensland Engineering Design Hackathon 2020, organized by the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, University of Queensland (UoQ), Australia. Around 15 teams from various universities and institutes across India competed in the final round of this hackathon, which began on 8th October 2020 and lasted two weeks. Dr. Erich Shultz, a Senior Anaesthetist at Brisbane and a team of experts in this area, guided the participating teams during this 2-week journey. The winning team was mentored by Dr. Bikramjit Sharma, Assistant Professor, MED. The students also expressed special thanks to Prof. Ajay Batish, Deputy Director, and Dr. Vinay Kumar, Associate Professor, ECED, for their constant support and words of encouragement throughout the course of this hackathon. Team Net-Vent members brought a variety of skills and experiences to the design challenge.

Shivam Goyal bagged internship at Google India

Shivam Goyal, a BE third-year student of Computer Engineering at TIET, got a dream internship offer from Google India. He will be working as an Application Engineer Intern at Google during the summers of 2021. He will work on building smart AI-based applications. He was mentored by Dr. Harpreet Singh, Dr. Neeru Jindal, Dr. Prashant Singh Rana and Dr. Maninder Singh.

Ritwik Mehta got selected at Youth Policy Review and NMGCY Country Leader – India

Ritwik Mehta, student of third year – electrical engineering branch has following research outcomes with their links attached.

• GST: Recent Issues and Reforms Required
  Link : https://myvoice.opindia.com/2020/12/gst-reforms-recent-issues-and-reforms-required/
  https://kreately.in/gst-recent-issues-and-reforms-required/
• Whitepaper on AI in India
  https://policymonks.com/2020/11/13/regulating-artificial-intelligence-in-india/
• Selected as the Columnist at Youth Policy Review – A policy research think tank where he drafted policy research papers for Indian Railways.
• Selected as the UNMGCY Country Leader – India. He will be working on drafting the draft refugee law and organizing consultations on migration issues. The policy paper drafted will be presented in March 2021 in Bangkok.

Piyush Satti worked in the area of hardware architecture and image processing

Piyush Satti, a 4th year undergraduate student at TIET has worked as a student researcher under Dr. Bharat Garg (Faculty, TIET). He has successfully published articles in the area of hardware architecture and image processing. In the domain of hardware architecture, he tackled the problem of approximate multiplier architectures. These are circuits that multiply two numbers with a focus on power efficiency rather than accuracy. Just as the speedometer of your car does not differentiate between 104 MPH and 104.05 MPH, the same way various very low power integrated circuits for special devices do not care about high-precision, however, energy efficiency is key. There are various approaches to energy efficacy that may include reducing the circuit area, a low-precision method of multiplication, or even novel low power arrangements of basic building blocks of such circuits. However, apart from these, his approach focuses only on going fast. Just as a very fast car does not need much energy to stay moving (reduced tyre friction) as compared to the energy required to accelerate to that position, the document proposed a very fast multiplier architecture which increases the power consumption (top speed) but reduces the overall energy consumption (analogous to maintaining speed). So the design goal was achieved, although unconventionally.

In the area of image processing, he worked on noise in images. Unbeknownst to us, there are various different types of noises that your cameras pick up when capturing an image. These may stem from low quality sensors, or even electronic damage. This is prevented with denoising methods and hence we do not encounter such problems in our day to day lives. In this field, various mathematical methods of denoising were proposed, some which offered great image quality using deceptively simple methods. For me, inspiration struck when reading about various techniques artificial intelligence researchers use when trying to simplify a complex problem, they often say: "instead of one good image, use similar but two bad ones". Working on the inverse idea, he proposed a denoising method based on Complementary Min-Max Pooling where two “bad” images were combined into a single “good” image.

Dr. Rajesh Khanna, Professor, Electronics and Communication Engineering department

Dr. Prateek Bhatia developed an online course as postdoc at TIET-TAU

Dr. Prateek Bhatia, Associate Professor, Computer Engineering department developed an online course as postdoc at Tel Aviv University.

War Trade

IIChE TIET organised War trade on December 19th & 20th, an event, which basically demanded negotiation skills, efficiency in maths and most importantly presence of mind to win. The event started with a motivational speech by the General Secretary Mr. Anmol Ghai. This was followed by Megasale1.0, where all the competing countries (teams) bought weapons from USA, who was in financial crisis according to the game play, which was followed by news flash (crisis) which felt over some of the countries (teams) and which was followed by Trading1.0 where the teams traded their weapons with other countries according to their crisis. The first day ended with motivating session by prominent alumni of TIET, Mr. Sanjay Gupta. Second day started with Megasale2.0 followed by Trading 2.0 and ended by Megasale3.0. The event was closed with a session by three musicians, who made the evening memorable. Event was concluded by awarding the top 5 Teams.

Eureka-4.0

For the love of astronomy, TAAS, TIET organised Eureka 4.0, a day-long lecture symposium on the theme “Spectroscopy and Spectrometry in Astronomy”. The lectures were delivered by the prominent astronomers of our nation, namely- Dr. Nissim Kanekar (NCRA, Pune), Dr. Brijesh Kumar (ARIES, Nainital) and Dr. Biswajit Paul (RRI, Bangalore), and were followed by a panel discussion with our esteemed speakers along with Dr. Jasjeet Bagla (IISER, Mohali) and Dr. Harvinder Jassal (IISER, Mohali). E-certificates were provided to the attendees.

Samantha Chandrashekhar Challenge

TAAS, TIET was a proud partner of Public outreach and education committee, Astronomical Society of India and Nehru Planetarium, Delhi in introducing and organising the Samantha Chandrashekhar Challenge. The participants had to measure the angular distance of The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on 21st Dec, 2020 using a handmade cross-staff.

The Wolf of Dalal Street by ECON CLUB

ECON club organised their flagship event of the year 'Wolf of Dalal Street 6.0'.

A two-part session, the first with trading of stocks of domestic companies akin to Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) with coherence with indexes like Nifty50 and Sensex.

The second session giving a chance to deal in the international market by following the prices of International companies listed in NASDAQ, S&P500, DJI and the likes

Hult Prize TIET

A. Workshop on Startup Canvas: 9 Steps to Startup Success:

On 19th November,2020 Hult Prize TIET organised a webinar through Zoom. The guest speaker for the webinar was Mr. Surabh Jain, Vice President Paytm & Head - Paytm Build For India. The aim of the webinar was to introduce viewers to the steps involved in kickstarting a startup. Mr. Jain began by introducing everyone to the fundamental steps involved in a startup. First, he talked about the goals of a startup. Explaining viewers, the importance of accomplishing them in order for a startup to be successful. A business can only be successful if it is relevant, and for it to be relevant it needs to solve a problem or create a service that becomes indispensable. He then stressed upon the importance of having self-belief and patience. As one’s business model may not be topping the charts on day one, he emphasised on the need to never give in and believe in oneself. He emphasized on developing social skills, as initially a startup is just an idea and it is the collective hard work of the team that makes it a successful business. He shared his personal experiences at Paytm, and how every company has its ups and downs, and the role a leader plays in keeping a company afloat. The session was then followed by a Q&A round, which too was just as informative as the presentation. For any event to be a success it is very important that the audience feels connected to the speaker. We can say with certainty that the audience was tethered, as an hour-long session went on for two hours. He gave us a very in-depth view of what it is like to trudge along the path, and him drawing parallels to popular movies made it that much easier to understand. His presentation reflected greatly on his experience and knowledge, we couldn’t have asked for a better coach.

B. Workshop on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence To Build Businesses Of The Future:

As a part of the webinar symposium by Hult Prize TIET for the students interested in participating in the challenge, an online session on Zoom was organized on November 21, 2020. The Senior Director of Microsoft, Mr. Surendra Tipparaju joined us for the seminar. The attendees were briefed about Artificial Intelligence and how it fuels the real world.

The guest for the day was Mr. Tipparaju, who has been working as the head of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big Data Analysis division at Microsoft.

Sir is presently engaged with worldwide clients, delivering Al solutions in the areas of Data platform, Deep learning and Advanced Al architectures. He gave the students insights on "Leveraging Artificial Intelligence To Build Businesses’ Of The Future".

Mr. Surendra believes in the idea that Artificial Intelligence is making into our social, enterprise and personal lives faster than what we are expecting and delivered a lecture making the students believe in the power of Artificial Intelligence for the future.

The two hours’ seminar was successfully concluded after Sir resolved all the queries the attendees had.

C. Workshop on Zero To Crypto:

As a part of the webinar symposium by Hult Prize TIET for the students interested in participating in the challenge, an online session on Zoom was organized on November 25, 2020. The Founder of Indian Block chain Alliance, Mr. Raj Kapoor, joined us for the seminar. The session was organized for all the students interested in Block chain and Computer Science. The attendees were briefed about Blockchain and how it is promising for the future. The theme of the seminar was Zero to Crypto: Block chain is the Future. It centralized around the fact that block chain will revolutionize business and redefine companies and economies. This webinar was fruitful for both the rookies as well as the pros in this field. The guest for the evening was Mr. Raj Kapoor, who is the Founder of India Block chain Alliance and the India STEM Alliance. He is on the Advisory Board Member at several block chain companies. Mr. Raj explained everything about block chain and crypto currency, from scratch to top. He also entertained the doubts of the attendees at the end of the seminar after which the 2 hour seminar was successfully concluded.

D. Against All Odds Summit:

The event finals were followed by a trailblazing panel discussion which was the highlight of the on campus programme. The topic of the discussion was Against All Odds - Chasing Irrefutable Success by Reinventing Yourself. The whopping panel consisted of all the corporate bigwigs and ambitious leaders who shared their take on social entrepreneurship. The following judges were present on the panel:

• Surendra Tipparaju, Senior Director, Microsoft
• Radha Abrol, Managing Director, Accenture
• Ritesh Jain, Cofounder, Infynit and formerly Chief Operating Officer and Head of Digital Technology, HSBC Group(London HQ)
• Ashok Ramachandran, President & CEO, Schindler
• Parvez Siraj, Director, Cipla Ltd
• Sandeep Das, Bestselling Author & Director, PwC
• Amardeep Sibia, Founder, Drishya.ai and formerly Vice President, Goldman Sachs
• Rohit Kataria, Senior Commercial Director, Corning Incorporated
• Radhika Batra, Founder, Every Infant Matters; Forbes 30u30

The summit brought such a notable personage together on the same stage. The discussion was altogether an eye opener for the students following the path of social entrepreneurship as it provided them insights into the life of such dignitaries and helped them be acquainted with their struggles and triumphs. The Panel was moderated by Dhruv Taneja, Campus Director, Hult Prize TIET. The summit almost summed up the idea behind the Hult Prize initiative to follow the path of social good while walking down the road of building your own enterprise. The jury discussed how their professional work runs in parallel with the idea of social entrepreneurship and how at the end of the day it's not about how much money you made but how much impact you make on other people's lives. Their constant will power and their drive towards making a world a better place resonated them to Hult Prize's initiative and brought them together to stick for a purpose that is trying to make a change.

The jury put forward their thoughts about the topic of discussion and stimulated the audience on the importance of hardwork and perseverance. They put out on the table their own views about the startup culture while captivating the audience with the glory that surrounds it.

The panel discussion proved to be the focal point of the whole event gathering attention from the media as well. YourStory, India's no 1 and Asia's leading media platform also featured the programme on their website:

To conclude the International Stress Awareness Week from 2-6 November, 2020 and raise awareness about stress prevention, Thapar Institute Counselling Cell (TICC) and Rotaract Club of TIET had joined hands to release a comprehensive ‘Guide to Battle Stress’. As stress and mental health problems have never been more important than now, and the challenges they present, never more acute than in the wake of the ongoing pandemic. Stress reduction thus holds a central position in dictating a healthy and happy life. Click here to read more.

Centre for Training & Development (CTD) took the following initiatives under its various categories of programs, for the year starting January 2021:

Corporate Readiness Training Programs (CRTP): The Centre launched an annual online placement training drive, ‘CAMPUS TO CORPORATE (C2C)’, for students in different years of study. The program, being delivered through the Telegram app, crossed 1000+ registrations within a day of its launch. For UG First Year, focus is on General Management & Communication Skills; for UG Second Year, focus is on Aptitude Skills; for UG Third Year, focus is on Placement Readiness. Inputs are being provided on a daily basis (with the exception of Sundays), and will continue throughout the year. Apart from this, a daily coverage of Current Affairs marks the beginning of the day! The program will also be introduced for PG branches in a short while.

Career Support Programs (CSP): The Centre launched online coaching for IELTS which was enthusiastically acknowledged by over 100+ registrations on the first day itself. Coaching caters to all 4 sections of the test and is a viable platform for students targeting higher study programs abroad. The Centre also resumed online GATE coaching for UG 2nd/3rd year mechanical, civil, electronics and electrical engineering students.

Career Assessment Programs (CAP): The Centre introduced international admissions consulting for students seeking admissions in MS/MBA programs abroad. Specific assistance is being provided for helping students to draft statement of purpose (SOP)/ letters of recommendation (LOR).

Certificate Programs (CP): On popular student demand, the Centre introduced an online course for UG first year students, ‘Finance for Engineers’. The course has been designed keeping in mind the fact that financial services companies like JP Morgan Chase assess students on financial sensitivity during the campus placement process. Students received the course with bubbling excitement with over 150+ registrations.

My virtual college life experience

Life is an unpredictable series of events. All the students my age around the world who were privileged enough to go to school and had plans to attend college had a pretty plain expectation of college life, new friends, teachers, environments, experiences, perspectives, etc. But no one expected any of it to be completely virtual.

In school, I never had to use technology to the extent that I have to now. Covid 19 has made technology the need of the hour and thanks to Covid I have learnt a lot about operating computers than I ever would have had otherwise. I never imagined that one on one education would ever be conducted virtually and one percent if it ever did, I doubted it would be successful. To my surprise online education is not as bad as I thought it would be. I know that it can get a little difficult especially when the poor internet connection interrupts either you or your teacher, but it is the spirit of enthusiasm and commitment from both the teachers and students which keeps the class alive.

My thoughts were no different about making friends online. I used to think that online friendships could not be taken seriously as it lacked the element of real connectivity. Even though I have never met any of my college friends in real life, the connection that we have with each other is very real, because after all you are talking to a real person and so what if they happen to be on the other side of the screen?

Now –a- days, a teacher is just an email away and all your questions are answered and a friend is just a phone call away and your day is made.

(Simrat Kaur, First year, TSLAS)