BTech Computer Science and Engineering

Mayuri Mane and Trisha Sharma, 4th-year BTech CSE students secure first position in AABtonics, an international GIS competition organised by AABSyS IT.

The project started out as a research and development project (R&D project) in the sixth semester of BTech Computer Science and Engineering at NIIT University (NU) with the mentorship of Dr Thota Sivasankar. The aim of the project at that stage was to simply build a predictive model for crop classification using Sentinel-2A data. After the completion of the R&D project, the curiosity of the topic and hunger for innovation motivated the team to search for the most suitable machine learning model and optimise it to the best level of accuracy.

The team has two members with a mentor. The first member of the project is Mayuri Mane, a BTech CSE student in the 4th year of her engineering. She is specialised in data science and has been working as the implementer of the project since January 2021. She performed the analytic calculations and numerical simulations. The second member of the project is Trisha Sharma, a BTech CSE student, also in her 4th year of engineering and specialising in data science, who is the shaper of the project. She has been working on the technicals as well as sorting useful and arbitrary details to come up with a big-picture perspective.

Under the aegis of Startup India and MSME, Hillytech Starter runs a unique online hackathon. Students are expected to come up with innovative solutions to the industrial and societal problems faced by people living in hilly areas. The competition covers different themes such as science, technology, networking & business, electronics and even the pandemic.

One hundred and twenty teams from across the country participated in Hillytech Hackathon 2020. The criteria for evaluation included the novelty of the idea, feasibility of the implementation, and whether it will sustain in the current market. Prizes ranged from internships to job opportunities, apart from cool gadgets and gift hampers. NU’s Team Bugsmashers secured the first position with their unique ‘Outdoor plant monitoring and tracking system’ that monitored weather, automated irrigation, measured soil quality, organised plant care and sent reminders about fertilisers and pest control.

NASA Space Apps Challenge 2020 was organised by NASA in collaboration with Hacker’s Tribe Foundation. The event saw the participation of over 26,000 people from nearly 150 countries. ‘The Bug Slayers’, who represented NU, received the Global Award Nominee in the Phase 1 Universal Event.

The team proposed a specialised algorithm that suggests sleeping slots and the number of sleeping cycles for a user to work at maximum efficiency. This will help the user rest properly and balance their busy schedules. Further, depending on the user’s entered activity status and programme, the algorithm would also provide a daily customised calorie requirement and proposed carbohydrate, protein and fat intake.

The Hult Prize Foundation is a global learning platform that enables new generations to deliver social change through education and entrepreneurship. A partnership between Hult International Business School and the United Nations Foundation, the Hult Prize is presented by Hult International Business School.

An international idea-pitching competition, the Hult Prize competition is a year-long event with multiple phases – the campus round, regionals, an accelerator programme and the final round. The global programme provides an opportunity for students to suggest startup ideas which they believe can bring about social or global change. The theme for the 2020 competition was ‘Food for Good’.

The OnCampus event was organised in NU on 5 December 2020 by a team of NUtons, led by campus director Aman Gupta. Forty students in ten teams participated in the event. NU’s Team BioPure was the winner, going on to represent NU in the Regional Round, held in various destinations across the globe.

BioPure is a new-gen packaging start up that aims to revolutionise food packaging for Indian farmers. A vast quantity of food is wasted every year due to moisture, rodents and the fragility of packaging.

BioPure’s winning idea was to produce biopolymer food storage packaging based on nanotechnology. The durable, affordable and reusable packaging ensures effective food packaging and storage, reducing overall wastage. At BioPure, all packaging is sourced responsibly, and is designed to be effective and safe throughout its life cycle, thus making it a valuable resource for subsequent generations.

i4C Blogathon, a platform for upcoming writers to showcase their technical writing skills, is jointly created by The Inter Institutional Inclusive Innovations Center (i4C) and Smart India Hackathon. The competition involves writing a technical blog article on one of three suggested themes. It is open to undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students.

i4C2020 received over 350 entries from all over the country. Anushree’s article, in the Student Innovation category, was based on health care innovation. It secured her the first runner up position in her category.

Please read her article here

Smart India Hackathon, a nationwide initiative, provides a platform for students to solve some of the most pressing issues mankind faces in their daily lives. NU’s SpaghettiCoders worked on ‘Enhancing the online shopping experience by supporting it with augmented reality’, a problem posed by Pepperfry at the event. They won the first runner-up position at an event that saw the best minds competing in a grand finale.

NUtons – Uddalak Bhaduri, Sarthak Tripathi and Shreyas Sanghvi won second prize at ‘Junction 2018’, Europe’s largest hackathon held at Aalto University, Finland. The event saw the attendance of 740 students from 105 nationalities. The team received €1000 Euros and a six-month funding for their idea at Finland if they decided to continue. They also worked at Espoo City Challenge under the Office of Mayor, Espoo City, Finland.

Hitesh Mittal (BTech CSE), along with ECE Faculty Dr Nitin Bhatia, submitted their paper titled ‘Broadcasting a laser using Bragg grating for free-space optical communication’ to PHOTONICS 2018, the International Conference on Fiber Optics and Photonics.

Their submission was accepted for Poster Presentation at the conference. PHOTONICS 2018 was held at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. In their paper, the authors demonstrated a technique for broadcasting a laser source in free space using a Bragg grating. The multiple diffraction orders are used as multiple receiving points. They also show that cascaded gratings would increase the number of receiver points. This method is easy to implement, low-cost and scalable to a large number of receiver points.

HackHarvard is a 36-hour hackathon hosted by students from Harvard University. Shreyas and Sarthak’s project ‘No-BrainR’ secured first place in the ‘Best IoT Hack Using a Qualcomm device’ category. The prizes were awarded by MLH (Major League Hacking).

You can read more about it here and here

Rishi Pisipati, now pursuing a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University, participated in the HACK THIS. HELP KIDS Hackathon, sponsored by the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation. His team, ‘Thirsty Scholars’, won the top prize of $5,000 for their innovative solution for storing and delivering breast milk. Using a holistic approach to software, hardware and processes, Thirsty Scholars designed a hardware and software solution that ensured infants would receive the correct milk at the right time and at the right temperature. Pisipati had participated in hackathons when he was an undergraduate student at NU.