IIT Kharagpur to inaugurate INAE Youth Conclave on March 23
IIT Kharagpur will be hosting the first round of the INAE Youth Conclave between March 23-25. This is the first time that the Institute is organizing the conclave, initiated last year by the Indian National Academy for Engineering. The idea behind the contest is to engage engineering students from different engineering disciplines in the task of nation-building and, in the process, give expression to their creative talent.
The contestants are presented a few problems that echo many of the current problems faced by the government and the Indian society. Students are expected to develop new plans, innovative technologies or workable solutions to these problems.
The competition is being held this time in two phases. In the pre-conclave on March 23-25, students will be evaluated for their presentation on the problem statements chosen by them. The finalists chosen in this round will be given time from April to July to work on new assignments and improve upon the existing solutions. The finals are slated for August 10-12 at IIT Kharagpur.
More than 650 students from different colleges in the country, including the premier technological institutes like the NITs and IITs, have registered for the first round. The organizers have received 127 submissions for the three broad categories of problems.
In the Academic segment, where contestants have been asked to devise a new curriculum for engineering colleges, the organizers have received 22 project plans. The largest number of submissions has come for a Swach Bharat Abhiyan plan that asks students to find effective ways to segregate and dispose waste in apartments.
The two other problems in this category, named Product Design and Development, asks students to look at the problems of storing newly harvested crops or plan a township. In the third category, Mobile Application Development, students have been asked to devise mobile applications to help patients and farmers.
Around 71 student teams have been shortlisted for the presentations in the first round. Of this, 12 are from IIT Kharagpur. The conclave will be inaugurated on March 23. The presentations over, March 25 will see a guest lecture by Dr. Manish Gupta, co-founder and CEO of VideoKen, an educational technology startup, and the Infosys Foundation Chair Professor at IIIT Bangalore, and Prof. Shirshendu De, renowned scientist and faculty, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur. The list of finalists will be announced on March 25 during an awards ceremony.