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Semester II, 2017-18

INSTITUTE OF EMINENCE

BITS Pilani has been awarded the Institute of Eminence status by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. As one of the six institutes (three publicly funded and three privately funded) in the country which have been conferred on this honor, BITS, Pilani will receive significant autonomy in operations, among other benefits, to help it position itself amongst the world’s top 500 in a decade’s time.

INSTITUTE ACTIVITIES

Convocation 2018

On July 25, 2018 Convocation was held at BITS Pilani, Pilani

Campus in which 1,307

students received their degrees, comprising 1,044 First Degree, 243

Higher Degree, and 20 PhDs.

On September 1, 2018, Convocation was held at BITS Pilani, Dubai Campus in which 458

students received their degrees, comprising 426 First Degree, 30 Higher Degree, and 2

PhDs.

On August 5, 2018, Convocation was held at BITS Pilani, KK Birla Goa Campus in which a total of 810 students received their

degrees.

On August 12, 2018, convocation ceremony was organized in BITS Pilani, Hyderabad

Campus in which a

total of 793 degrees were awarded out of which 689 students

received their first degree, 72 received their higher degree and 32 received their doctorate degree.

NIRMAAN

Nirmaan, Pilani campus organized an eye check-up camp and

blood sugar test camp in collaboration with Sightsavers and Research Society for the Study of Diabetes in India (RSSDI) respectively.

Blood Donation Camp, NSS

Nirmaan, Goa campus took up several initiatives for societal

welfare such as Pehel, Give Back Campaign, Street Plays and Old Age Home projects.

International Robotics Competition was hosted by Dubai

Campus to promote the concept of "Robots in Missions and Expeditions". It challenged children to come up with highly

advanced yet functional robots for various missions conducted by the Army, Navy and the Air Force.

BITsian day was celebrated on August 3, 2018 this year where

BITsians from across the world walked down the memory lane.

Alumni Achievements

The Distinguished Alumnus Award ceremony was held during the convocation 2018 in all the campuses of BITS Pilani. The Distinguished Alumnus Award 2018 was given to the following

alumni in different categories for their significant and outstanding contributions:

Academia and Research

1. Prof. Reena Agarwal, Vice Provost for Faculty, McDonough Professor of Finance & Director, Georgetown Center for Financial Markets and Policy, Georgetown University, USA

2. Prof. Prabhu Pingali, Professor and Director, Tata-Cornell Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative, Cornell University, USA

3. Prof. Arun Somani, Anson Martin Distinguished Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Iowa State University, USA

Corporate Leadership

4. Mr. Ajoyendra Mukherjee, EVP & Head - Global HR, Tata Consultancy Services, India

5. Ms. Prasanna Gopalkrishnan, Executive Vice President, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Boston Private, USA

6. Dr. Anand S Rao, Innovation Lead (Data & Analytics) & Partner, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, USA

Entrepreneurship

7. Mr. Anupendra Sharma, Global VP of Growth & Business

Development, Siemens Healthineers, USA

8. Mr. Tushar Jain, Founder and Group CEO, Automat Industries Ltd.

Mr. Amitabh Chaudhary has been appointed as the CEO & MD of Axis bank and will take over in January, 2019.

Rajesh Ramakrishnan has been appointed as the new Managing Director of Perfetti Van Melle India in June, 2018.

NSS, Pilani campus organized its 37th Blood Donation camp in

collaboration with Indian Red Cross Society during February 17-18,

2018, in which 1100 hundredpeople participated and donated808 units of blood.

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Prof L. K. Maheshwari Foundation Distinguished Alumnus Award

was conferred on Prof Arun K. Somani, Distinguished Professor,

Dept. of ECE, Iowa State University, USA.

Anudeep Durishetty, Hyderabad Campus topped this year’s UPSC exams.

Bangalore-based hyperlocal delivery subscription startup

DailyNinja, founded by BITS Pilani alumni, Sagar Yarnalkar and Anurag Gupta has raised $3 million in funding led by Saama Capital in June 2018.

BITS Pilani alumni Nishith and Geet Garg, Bangalore-based logistics platform Locus has evolved into a B2B enterprise

platform, recently raising $4 million in a pre-Series B round.

Vijay Sharma and Rishabh Kaul, alumni of BITS Pilani and founders of Belong.co were awarded the Fortune 40 under 40 award for 2018.

Raghavendra Suryavanshi and Akshat Tyagi, M.E. graduates from BITS-Goa founded Sustainable BioSolutions LLP, an environmental engineering firm that provides technical solutions in the field of solid and liquid management.

ACCOLADES AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Prof Suman Kapur, Hyderabad

campus was awarded with “National Technology award” for Start-ups for 2018 bestowed by Honorable President of India at

Technology Development Board, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. She was also conferred with “Life

Prof Anil Kumar, Pilani Campus and Prof Srinivas Krishnaswamy,

KK Birla Goa Campus were awarded with Prof S Venkateswaran Faculty Excellence Award and Prof I J Nagrath Faculty Excellence Award, respectively.

Prof P. Yogeeswari, Hyderabad campus received ‘Outstanding

Research Faculty Award’ for the academic year 2017-18 certified by Careers 360 in Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics discipline as one of the top 10 knowledge producers in India.

Dr Sharan Gopal, Hyderabad campus received Early Career

Research Award from SERB-DST for 2018 - 2021.

Dr Arshad Javeed, Hyderabad campus was the first round of winner of BIRAC Innovation Challenge Award, SoCH under the theme ‘Platform technologies for Reducing Disease Burden’

(Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases).

Dr Anil Jindal, Pilani campus, was conferred with Eudragit Award 2017 in Indian region for the best research paper in the award ceremony held on July 27, 2018.

Prof Arya Kumar, Pilani campus was awarded with Distinguished Research Award in recognition of ingenuity and ground-breaking research in the International Conference on Business and Economics (ICBE2018) and also in the KODISA International

conference in Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea, during June 25- 27, 2018.

Dr Bandhan Majumdar, Hyderabad campus was awarded with the GCRF (Global Challenge Research Fund) as ODA-Partners from

India with Cardiff University in May, 2018.

GUEST LECTURES/ DISTINGUISHED VISITS

Prof Mart Stewart, Fulbright Senior Scholar at K.K. Birla Goa campus and Professor of History, Western Washington University, USA conducted a workshop on ‘Writing’ at K K Birla Goa campus on April 7, 2018.

Prof Brendon Larson, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies in the faculty of environment, University of Waterloo, Canada conducted an interactive session on ‘Biodiversity-Why it matters to the Human Well-Being’ at Dubai campus on April 17, 2018.

Dr Lisa Roy, Max Planck Institute for chemical energy conversion, Germany delivered a talk on ‘Unraveling the Mechanistic Intricacies of Transition Metal Mediated H2 formation, CO2 reduction and C-H activation’ at Hyderabad campus on April 19, 2018.

Prof Subhas Mukhopadhyay, Macquarie University, Australia delivered a talk on ‘IoT and WSN for Health and Home Management’ at Hyderabad campus on April 23, 2018.

Dr David Nelson, Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University, Abu Dhabi delivered a talk on ‘Genomics of newly isolated euryhalophilic and halophilic desert green algae’ at Dubai campus on May 2, 2018.

Prof Jean Louis MARTY Laboratoire BAE, University of Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD) Perpignan, Cedex, France delivered a talk on ‘Biosensors and the Ideal Bioreceptor: Where Does The Recent Research Stand’ at K K Birla Goa campus on June 2, 2018.

A delegation from the Chhattisgarh Government visited Dubai Campus on June 20, 2018.

Prof Padmini Swaminathan, noted economist and visiting Professor, Council for Social Development Hyderabad, delivered a talk on ‘Capitalist Globalization: Consequences for Labour and Environment’ at Hyderabad campus on August 29, 2018.

Padma Shri Dr Vasudevan Gnana Gandhi, ISRO delivered a talk on ‘Propulsion Technology at ISRO: Challenges Faced and Future’ at Hyderabad campus on September 19, 2018.

SIGNIFICANT PROJECTS

S.No Principal Investigator and Name of the

Department Title of the Project Funding Agency Amount

1. Dr K Naga Mohan (PI) & Dr Kumar Pranav

Narayan (Co-PI), Dept. of Biological Sciences, Hyderabad campus

Combined genetic and epigentic analysis of oral cancer for prognosis of patients

DBT INR

1,38,82,400

2. Dr Shamsher Bahadur Singh (Co-PI), Dept. of Civil Engineering, Pilani Campus

Structural Health Assessment and Rehabilitation

Framework based on Cyber Physical System, (Multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary project)

DST, New Delhi INR 70,00,000

time achievement in Biochemistry” by Viva International Women Award 2018 for her contribution to science and field of biochemistry.

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S.No Principal Investigator and Name of the

Department Title of the Project Funding Agency Amount

3. Dr S. Murugesan, Dept. of Pharmacy, Pilani Campus

Development of novel anti-leishmanial analogues loaded with novel nano-formulations

DBT INR 60,00,000

4. Dr Anupama Mittal, Dept. of Pharmacy, Pilani Campus

Umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells derived

exosomes as biogenic nanocarriers of miRNA

and chemotherapeutic drug for reversal of chemoresistance in breast cancer

DST-NANOMISSION INR 56,44,000

5. Dr Richa Singhal, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, KK Birla Goa Campus

Mechanistic approach to design composite metal-

carbon nanofiber oxygen electrodes for high-performance metal-air batteries

SERB-DST, Early

Career Research Award

INR 51,13,000

6. Dr M Srinivas (PI), Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Hyderabad campus

Sustainable technology solutions for energy efficiency in the jaggery industry (STEEL)

Royal Academy of Engineering

INR 48,00,000

7. Dr Srikanta Dinda (PI), Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Hyderabad campus

Cracking of hydrocarbon fuel for a possible heat sink applications

DRDO INR 40,65,000

8. Dr Deepak Chitkara (PI) Dr Anil Gaikwad (Co-PI), Dept. of Pharmacy, Pilani Campus

Peptide-decorated pH-sensitive nano-conjugate

hybrid micelles for co-delivery of temozolomide

and an autophagy inducer, rapamycin, for treatment of glioblastoma multiforme

DBT Nanobiotechnology

INR 38,32,600

10.

Dr Souvik Kundu (PI), Dept. of EEE,

Hyderabad campus and Dr Kannan Ramaswamy & Dr Harihara Venkatraman (Co-PI), Dept. of Physics, Hyderabad campus

Investigations of the effects of Photon Up-

Conversion materials on the Electrical performance of Ferroelectric /Semiconductor Heterojunction Photovoltaic Devices

DST INR 35,63,997

11. Dr Ruchi Jain Dey (PI), Dept. of Biological Sciences, Hyderabad campus

Harnessing mucosal immunity towards improved resistance against tuberculosis

DBT Ramalingaswamy

INR 32,50,000

12. Dr Vivek Rangarajan, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, KK Birla Goa Campus

Formulation of bio-functionalized cosmetic

emulsions using biosurfactant and essential oil as green ingredients

DST-SERB INR 30,27,000

STUDENTS ACTIVITIES

Achievements and Awards

Team BITS, a collegiate team from Pilani campus with a vision of

making fuel efficient cars with zero emissions participated in a fuel

efficiency challenge, Shell Eco Marathon Asia, one of the world’s

leading energy efficient competitions with 120+ teams from 18

countries. It has made the first Indian car to run on 100% Ethanol

which has been presented at Changi Exhibition Centre, Singapore

during March 8-11, 2018.

Palash Dhakar, Pilani campus was selected to represent India at

Microsoft Build which was held in Seattle, WA from May 7-9, 2018.

Six teams from Pilani Campus including twenty students have

been selected by the Rajasthan Government for the Silicon Valley

startup, a competitive educational exposure program organized

during August 25 to September 10, 2018 at San Francisco, USA.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a prestigious global program

wherein students from all over the globe come together for open

source software development. With 53 students, BITS Pilani stands

at third position in terms of student selections in the program all

over the globe.

GnomikX, a healthcare startup,

Pilani Campus, was selected as the

winner of 2018 edition of Empersario.

Surbhit Johri, Raja Shukla, Aditya

Chauhan, and Dr Attya Omer, a

scientist at MIT, USA are the founder

members of GnomikX.

Animesh Jain and Satyam Bhaskar,

Pilani campus secured the second

runner-up position and were awarded

with Rs. 30,000 in Schaeffler India,

Open Inspiration Challenge.

Team “Umang”, Pilani campus

comprising of Paresh Deshmukh,

Neil Sarkar, Shaily Bhatt and

Siddhant Dwivedi won the Case

Study Challenge 2018 in the

prestigious Indian Road Safety

Campaign.

Team of Rishank Pandey, Himanshu

Goyal and Ruddhi Prasad, Pilani

campus was selected as one of the

Top 5 International Teams in

the World Finals of Hilti IT Competition

2018 during March 28-30, 2018. They

presented their prototype on-site

and won the People’s Choice Award.

Chhagar Rohnit Singh, Pilani campus

was awarded with the prestigious YES Future

Ready Scholarship on March 23, 2018. The

initiative seeks to identify 30 exemplary scholars, and provide them with a scholarship

of Rs. 2 lakhs.

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Sanya Khanna, Pilani campus participated in ‘Interview Question

of the year 2018’ contest organised by PInterview and won the award titled “Winner of interview question of the year 2018” during

July 13-25, 2018.

Piyush Sharda, Pilani campus was made a Lifetime Fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS) in July 2018. He was also made a Student Member of the European Astronomical Society in

April 2018 and is one of the only 3 Indian members of the Society. For his off-campus thesis in EEE at the Australian National University, Canberra, he worked on testing star formation laws at

sub-kiloparsec scales in a high redshift galaxy. For his off-campus

thesis in Physics at the University of Exeter, UK, he worked on creating a new analytic model of viscous accretion around young T Tauri Stars. The Harvard-led project in which he is a Co-Investigator, was approved by NASA and the Chandra Space

Mission Directorate recently, and has received a funding of $211220 (INR 1,48,19,892) from NASA/CXC.

Rewant Verma, Dubai campus

secured the 1st place in NYUAD

International Hackathon held at NYU, Abu Dhabi during April 27-29, 2018 with his application known as Dawa to tackle counterfeit drugs in

the region using blockchain based pharmaceutical distribution.

Alina Zaidi, Dubai campus along with the rest of her team, secured

the 3rd place in NYUAD International Hackathon held at NYU, Abu

Dhabi during April 27-29, 2018 with her project known as MedLughati, a platform that assists refugees and asylum seekers in communicating with healthcare professionals using machine learning and natural language processing.

Ameena Mohammed Sulaiman, Gulamaliwala Juzar Hatim, Shaik Afreen Aarza , Dubai campus won third prize for their

project ‘IoT based autonomous watering and manuring for plants’ in an event called Show and Tech 2018 conducted on May 5, 2018.

Mihir Prabhudesai, Dev Gupta and Mridul Bhandari, Dubai

campus won Falcon Hack Challenge organized by BECO on April 21, 2018. They received a one-on-one mentorship with the Microsoft Global Head of AI - Dr Wee

Hyong Tok along with incubation and internship opportunities at BECO Capital.

Sarthak Sethi Dubai campus secured first position while Shaleen

Bengani and Mihir Prabhudesai secured second place in

Computer Engineering and IT section of 6th Undergraduate Research Competition conducted by Abu Dhabi University on April 30, 2018.

Juzar Gulamali, Neel Patil, Shivnarain Ravichandran, Nishank Singhal, Mihir Prabhudesai, Shaleen Bengani, Ayesha Yusuf Aishwarya Krishnan, Dubai campus secured best paper award in

their respective categories of 3rd AEIT Research Conference held

at Manipal University, Dubai during April 11-12, 2018.

BPDC Student Sarthak Sethi, Dubai Campus has won the James

Dyson Award UAE Competition for the project "Smart Biometric

Ring" and secured 2nd position at an award ceremony in Dubai on

September 5, 2018.

Team Grease Monkeys, Goa campus secured 32nd rank at the

annual SAEINDIA BAJA competition and 21st rank in design round. 363 teams from engineering colleges from all across India

participated in SAEINDIA BAJA 2018.

Project Sand Submarine topped in Central Zone Round of DRDO Robotics & Unmanned Systems Exposition. A Team

consisting of Abhinav Gupta, Rohan Godiyal, Siddharth Kumar and

Ashutosh Kumar Gupta, Goa campus, participated in the DRUSE (DRDO Robotics & Unmanned Systems Exposition) organised by DRDO (Ministry of Defense).

Aman Dalal, Goa campus has been awarded with the Holland

Scholarship from the Dutch Ministry of Education and Delft Faculty Scholarship to pursue his MSc in Integrated Product Design at TU

Delft, Netherlands.

Heer Joisher, Goa campus has been awarded with the Khorana

Scholarship 2018 sponsored by the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF)

and WINStep Forward.

Honey Jain, Jaychandran Padayasi and Devvrit, Goa campus

have been awarded with Mitacs Globalink Research Internship 2018 sponsored by Government of Canada.

Nissim Gore-Datar, Goa campus has been awarded with Summer

Undergraduate Research Fellowship of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech SURF 2018).

Rachith Aiyappa, Goa campus has been awarded with Charpak

Research Internship Scholarship 2018 sponsored by the French Government.

Suparno Pal, Goa campus has been awarded with the DAAD

WISE Scholarship 2018.

Patil Siddhant Vitthal, Goa campus received the BITSAA Mantra -

Innovator of the Year 2017-18 Award.

Ms. Dhavala Suri, PhD student, Goa campus has been appointed

as Postdoctoral Associate at Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT).

Ms. Medha Tripathi, PhD student, Goa campus received Erasmus

Mundus Scholarship for research in Gent University, Germany.

Ms. Aditi Sharma, Hyderabad campus received a summer

research internship under the DAAD scholarship to work under the guidance of Prof. Nicolas Gauger at TU Kaiserslautern, Germany for the period 20 May - 20 July, 2018.

Srujan Jha, Hyderabad campus won the 1st position at India

stack- innovation and secured 4th and 9th ranks at the TRAI Hackathon and Microsoft build the shield respectively.

A team from BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus has won the KPIT

Best Innovation Award at the grand finale of the Smart India Hackathon-2018 organized by ISRO at Ahmedabad center on

March 30 and 31, 2018.

Gajraj Rathore, Hyderabad campus a fourth year undergraduate in

B. Pharm has recently completed summer internship from University of Sherbrooke, Canada through MitacsGlobalink

program.

Cultural, Technical and Sports Fests

APOGEE 2018: Revolving around the

theme of ‘A Cybernetic Vision’, APOGEE 2018 at Pilani Campus

brought about a full technical experience during February 21-25. The Chief Guest for the event was Commodore Indrajit Dasgupta.

INTERFACE-2018: Interface, the

41-year old pan-India management fiesta of Department of Management, BITS-Pilani, Pilani Campus was held during March 23-25, 2018 with the

theme “Into the Future”.

JASHN 2018: A 4-day cultural festival of Dubai Campus was held

during April 16-19, 2018 with the theme #LaComicFiesta and brought everyone a chance to witness Sunburn Festival, one of the

biggest music festivals.

Contact us: editorbitscan@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in

Cultural Fest: Pearl 2018 of Hyderabad campus with 'Memories

of the Mile' as its theme, was organized from March 23-25, 2018

with a net footfall of around 6000.