STIFKI Seminar 6

STIFKI seminar-6, held on February 19, 2009, was primarily targeted towards the students of Electronics and Electrical departments. The seminar started five minutes later than the scheduled time of 6:15 p.m. The guest faculty members for the seminar were Prof. H.O. Gupta and Prof. R.P. Maheshwari from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Dr. S. Dasgupta belonging to the Department of Electronics and Communication. All the faculty members guided and enlightened the audience through their prodigiously knowledgeable presentations. Prof. H.O. Gupta briefed about transformer designing and electronic devices while Prof. R.P. Maheshwari discussed protection techniques, its various aspects and the present day challenges. Lastly Dr. S. Dasgupta encapsulated semiconductors and offered a silhouette of VLSI designing to the students. The seminar continued for one and a half hours followed by an informal interactive session amongst the students and the faculty members in whom the former came up with sincere questions regarding the presented topics. The seminar witnessed a rich mix of first, second and third year students.

STIFKI Seminar 5

The fifth seminar of STIFKI was held on 28th of January 2009. The seminar was an interactive session with active participation of students in the formal as well as in the informal (refreshment) session. The students were from across different branches and years. The seminar had the following schedule:

1. The seminar started with the presentation on various aspects of 'Natural Purification of Water' by Prof. Indu Mehrotra of Civil department. She also listed further improvements in this sphere. A question answer session between students and herself followed the presentation.

2. Next presentation was given by Prof. Ritu Barthwal (HOD Biotechnology) with two other faculty members, Dr. A K Sharma and Dr. Parvinder Kumar. They gave a presentation on the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, 3D Structure, Molecular Modeling. The presentation included a lot of information regarding the works on NMR and MMR .

3. An informal interactive session amongst the students and faculty members succeeded the formal session. Students were very inquisitive regarding works related to the project which was a refreshing change from the precious comparatively unenthusiastic audience. The students got their queries promptly answered to and their feedback about the seminar was very positive.

FAQ: Frequently asked questions

Q. What happens in a STIFKI Seminar?
Each STIFKI seminar has a focus area (E.g. STIFKI Seminar 1’s focus area was Information & Communication Technologies (ICT)). About 3-5 faculty members who are working in a field related to this focus area are invited to give a presentation on the project. In the presentation each faculty member :

1. Presents the work he is doing in the project/focus area.
2. Offers opportunities to students to come and work under him.
3. Suggests the basic qualities that the students need, and the process through which they can become a part of the project.

Each presentation is followed by a small question & answer session where you can ask and clear various doubts that might crop up. After this, the next faculty member presents his work and so on.

All you have to do is make a note of the opportunities that you are interested in and talk to the concerned faculty (or adopt the process that he suggested in order to be able to be a part of the project). And you will surely end up doing a project of your choice, in the field of your choice and under the faculty of your choice.

Q. Do we have an open option to choose any faculty member we wish for, or is there some kind of restriction or selection procedure?
Ans. The students will have the option of selecting the faculty member, from those who are present in the seminar. Currently we are limiting it to 3-5 faculty members each STIFKI seminar, each of whom will share possible opportunities for students in a particular focus area (E.g. STIFKI Seminar 1’s focus area was Information & Communication Technologies (ICT)). But, as far as the selection procedure is concerned, the faculty member has the complete freedom of devising his own methodology of how, where and how many students he wants to work with. What STIFKI will do, is to provide students the freedom to listen, choose, interact and express interest in the work and faculty members of their choice. Selection has to be at the discretion of the faculty member.

Q. The project work will be provided by faculty member or the student already having some idea can work on it?
As mentioned in the above question, each seminar of STIFKI will have a focus area. The invited faculty members will speak about their work related to the focus area as well as share possible opportunities/project work which can be done by students. So the faculty will generally give some project work from their side, while remaining open to all the ideas that the student have. Since, STIFKI is an open and informal forum; it will give students a chance to share their ideas with the faculty members.(For e.g- After the presentation by Prof. H.K. Verma (Deputy Director, IITR) in STIFKI-1, one of the students shared an idea related to the presentation, which was appreciated by all. The idea might soon see the light of the day, under Prof. Verma’s guidance.)

Q. Is it possible to miss a seminar and catch up with it later or if not, then still have an option to attend the later ones?
Ans. Yes. You can attend the later seminars, irrespective of the ones that you might not have been able to attend earlier, as each seminar is independent of others. As far as catching up with the missed seminar is concerned, it is absolutely possible. We are planning to post the opportunities/projects that were offered in STIFKI Seminar-1 on this blog (and later on a website, as we further develop STIFKI ONLINE) along with the skills required (E.g. - Knowledge of FPGAs in one of the opportunities offered by Dr. Patnaik in STIFKI-1) and the process to be adopted to get the opportunity to work under the faculty member (E.g.- A faculty member may ask interested students to walk into his office the next day and interact with him or float a small problem which the students can solve to become a part of the project).

Q. I do not have interest in working in ICT? How can I get some opportunities?
Each STIFKI will have a focus area and different faculty members. If STIFKI-1 was on ICT, STFKI-2 would be on something else. But that would be decided by your feedback & suggestions. Please send in what you would like to see as focus area in the next STIFKI. Which faculty members, you want, should offer the opportunities? Post your suggestions as a comment or a shoot a mail to iitr.rahul@gmail.com / ashish.iitr@gmail.com.

Q. When will be the next STIFKI?
We cannot put a date to it, but it will happen very soon. Keep an eye on this blog and your notice boards for updates.

Further queries are invited from student, so that we can further expand the FAQ and make sure STIFKI benefits each and every student.

Regards

TEAM STIFKI

STIFKI SEMINAR-1 on 22nd August: Updates

STIFKI Seminar –I

Focus Area: Information & Communicaton Technologies

DATE & TIME: 6:15 pm, 22nd August, 2008

Venue: DOMS Multipurpose Hall

Faculty members who will offer opportunities:
1. Prof. H.K.Verma, Prof. Vinod Kumar and Prof. Vinay Nangia
2. Dr. Amalendu Patnaik

Introducing: STIFKI

IIT Roorkee is on the move to catch up with the leading institutes of the world. This movement could be considerably enhanced through focused interaction between the students and the faculty. These interactions have contributed significantly in harnessing the research potential of an institute - as observed in leading institutes like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) - which depends on the extent of involvement of students with faculty members in research and innovation activities. We are trying to achieve an enhanced interaction between these two key stakeholders through STIFKI or the Student- Teacher Interaction Forum for Knowledge & Innovation.

STIFKI

STIFKI aims at enhancing interaction between students and faculty members for improving research & innovation culture in IITR. STIFKI’s two primary objectives are:

• To help in identifying areas where commonality of interest may help faculty members and students to get together to work within and across the departments.

• To provide opportunities to students to get exposed to ongoing research and innovation activities so that they may participate in these activities.

Different features of STIFKI:

I. Forum for Weekly Seminar & Face-to-Face Interaction:(Current phase)

This forum will provide opportunity for a face-to-face interactive session between faculty members and students. The faculty members will introduce the research and consultancy projects on which they are working through a seminar talk and suggest a preferred mechanism through which students can participate in the research and innovation activities.

II. STIFKI Online (Coming Soon!!)

STIFKI would also allow electronic interaction between:

• faculty members currently involved in research & innovation activities

• those students who want to get involved in research & innovation activities

The most important features of this online platform would be

Ø a database of skills,

Ø fields of interest and,

Ø other relevant information of students as well as faculty members.

It will be like searching, say an image on a search engine, which would allow the user, say a faculty member, to look for profiles of those students who possess required skill sets. The user can locate either students or faculty members with similar interests. This would allow faculty to find not only the right students but also a fellow faculty member with similar or complimentary areas of interest according to the need.

Your views, feedback and queries are invited.