Gymkhana

On Sep 4th, 2010, IIT Bhubaneswar held its first Gymkhana Elections for the appointment of its student council. Out of a total of 354 registered students, 332 turned up for voting. The results are as follows:

Vice President : Rai Awani Bhushan

General Secretary (Socio - Cultural) : Anshuman Kumar

General Secretary (Science & Technology) : Surya Vara Prasad

General Secretary (Sports) : Manda Kartik Reddy

Secretary (Music & Dance) : Godaba Hareesh

Secretary (Fine Arts) : Kovuru Siddhartha

Secretary (Literary) : Boggavarapu Sukesh

Secretary (Dramatics) : Chada Sricharan

Secretary (Technology) : TNS Nihar

Secretary (Robotix) : Kalangi Sai Santhosh

Secretary (Web & Design) : Karthikeyan P

Secretary (Event Coverage) : Avvaru Satya Venkata Sandeep

Secretary (Cricket) : P Vinay Kumar

Secretary (Football) : Y Vineel Kumar Reddy

Secretary (Athletics) : CHPR Sandeep

Secretary (Indoor Games) : Palla Gouri Prasad

Secretary (Other Sports) : Poorna Chandra

2010 IIT JEE Qualifiers - Pre Counseling Note

First up, Congratulations to all those brilliant minds who have managed to crack IIT JEE 2010 in spite of all its shortcomings and difficulty. You guys deserve more than a clap on the back and will be duly rewarded with a seat in the top colleges of our country. The time has come for you to decide on what you wish to graduate in. The enormity of the decision may not strike you at the moment, but what you do in college (and what you don't do) will steer the course of the remainder of your life. I urge you to choose wisely and to help you choose (if you are interested) I shall shed some light on a few things about the coveted IITs.

I'm not going to get into the history of IITs as it is retold on all IIT websites, just walk down with me 3 years before this date. 2007.. There were 7 IITs in the country, the oldest being over 50 years of age and the youngest around 13 years. All of them 'established' and having a distinct culture and trend of its own (do note the emphasis on established). Spread over 4000-4500 seats, the system seemed fair on the then brilliant minds who had qualified in IIT JEE 2007. There existed a balance. A year passes, 2008 comes, another batch of qualifiers (myself included :-) ). However, the balance about which I previously elaborated was shattered. 6500+ seats in the offering and 13 IITs to choose from - 6 new IITs. If you are unable to grasp what I just said, grab a cup of coffee/tea (sugarless if you are diabetic) or a soft drink and a bag of pop corn while I spin out another yarn..

6 new IITs - IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Patna, IIT Rajasthan, IIT Ropar - each offering 120 seats over 3 disciplines were announced by the MHRD. The courses offered were lucrative viz. Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering. The effect it had was similar to opening a Pandora's Box and unleashing the demons. It created a wave of confusion as it put quite a few of us in a tight spot. The situation was further enhanced (or decimated) the following year with 2 more IITs being opened (IIT Indore and IIT Mandi). What the new IITs meant was that even a person with an AIR of 4000 would get a chance to pursue his/her under graduation in Computer Science Engineering which is the most sought after branch and had required an AIR of less than 600 (1000 in IIT Guwahati) until 2007 to get into. Isn't that good? Now that would depend entirely on a per capita basis. There is a downside to this, that being the IIT you join. Let's face it, there are innumerable rankings of the top engineering colleges of our country and you would notice that the top 5 spots are occupied (with a probability 0.999) by 5 of the oldest IITs viz. Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kanpur, Kharagpur (order mentioned here is purely alphabetical and not on the basis of any ranking). IIT Roorkee and Guwahati fall in the top 10. If lined up with the top colleges where would the new IITs be? Be my guest, take a wild guess! If you expect the top 15 spots to be IITs then you are either daft or have just traveled backward in time by about 50 years. To put it in simpler words, there are better options available at the moment. 15 years ago, students would have had to take a similar leap of faith with IIT Guwahati which is now in the top 10 and what you are going through now is just the same. History has the uncanny habit of repeating itself. Even though doubt is the absence or incongruence of reason at this point the doubt that you are facing is acceptable and more importantly - valid.

Having spent the first year in an established IIT (IIT Kharagpur) and the second year in so called temporary campus of IIT Bhubaneswar, we are more than aware of the glaring differences. Yes, the new IITs are challenging, and very challenging indeed. At the end of the day, when you sit down and recall, I'm not sure whether the challenges were worth leaving the comfort of the 'establish'ment. And I won't be sure till the first batch gets placed (or misplaced). Only time will tell. This post is not meant to deface new IITs but just to shed more light and show you a part of reality that does not meet your eye. It will take the new IITs a few years (5-6) to setup their own campuses at the earliest, following which their development will be in full swing and in fast forward mode. At the moment, the water is murky. To test it or not to test it, now that is your question.. And again, only time will tell.

I hope you have finished your drink and pop corn by now and more importantly I hope you found this post useful. Tune into this web space over the coming weeks as we guide you through the Counseling and Admission processes. If you have any queries, do post them here or shout in the Shout Box or email us! Until next time..

SPIC MACAY Chapter

Fourteenth of November (Children’s day) was aptly chosen for the inauguration of the IIT-BBS chapter of the Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth. The event was held at the auditorium of the institute on Saturday. The event started with a talk by Dr. Kiran Seth, one of SPIC MACAY’s founders on their attempts to encourage young men and women who were more interested in western music to return back to the deep-rooted melodies of their ancestors. Even though their initial achievements were not very encouraging, the organisation blossomed and now stands tall with many branches across the world. The hallmark of the event was most certainly, the concert by Ustad Abdul Rashid Kahn, the 102 year old veteran musician whose presence that day made the event more memorable. His singing created a transcendental atmosphere, while leading the audience through his experience of music as it should be. His expertise in singing dhrupad, dhamar and thumri made the day a truly blessed experience etched permanently in our minds. His troupe, which included his grandson on the tabla, supported him well. The event concluded with a request to the students to attend classical music concerts and imbibe in themselves the good moral values the Indian value system has to offer. Everyone left; feeling contended that their valuable time was invested at the perfect place.

-- Sricharan R

Novus - 2009

In the autumn of 2009, The Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar organised its first ever student symposium– NOVUS.

The young aspirants, for the first time, got an opportunity to showcase their latent talents. The first symposium in IIT Bhubaneswar was just the perfect outlet for the student’s ideas to prove their mettle. Novus-09 was the brainchild of Prof G .Panda, Head of School of Electrical Sciences.

As a new trend, the nomenclature of the symposium was left to the students as an open competition, and thus the event got the tag "NOVUS"- meaning ‘innovation’ in Latin.

NOVUS'09 was organised at the campus of IIT Bhubaneswar. The events in the symposium included paper presentation on any topic from the field of Science & Technology, but outside the IIT curricula. The symposium also consisted of an E-Magazine competition and Student Database designing aimed to enhance the software skills of the students.

The paper presentation was an intra-department competition that included both the first and second year students, in which one group could have a maximum of 2 students of the same department, whereas the e-magazine and database competition was conducted irrespective of the department and the team size was restricted to 4.

The Director, Prof Madhusudhan Chakraborty inaugurated the two day event with an inspiring speech followed by the four head of schools giving an overview of the event. This was followed by the students elucidating their papers, exploring various topics ranging from illustrative “Special theory of relativity” to innovative “Witricity” and engineering marvels like the “Bandra Worli sea link”. The interactive quiz sessions, in between the presentations, added an extra shade to the whole episode. Moreover, the guest lectures by eminent personalities added to the glamour of the event.

About a week later the results were announced and all the prize winners awarded.

Chronicling this as a significant start, we shall move on with hopes for another year of diligence, and conclude greater works to put down in our archive of success. The event will be back next year with greater events and prizes!

Winners:

Event Title Competition : Sujit Bharti (3^rd Semester)

Event Poster Competition : Himanshu and Yalla reddy (3^rd Semester)

Event Webpage Design Competition : Pradosh Kumar Sahoo and Raghav R. (3^rd Semester)

Paper Presentation: -

School of Infrastructure

1st Prize: - Anurag & Nimish Shrivastava (3^rd Semester)

2^nd Prize: - Mudit Sharma & Pradosh Kumar Sahoo (3^rd Semester)

3^rd Prize: - Rushendra Kumar & Praveen Kumar Reddy (1^st Semester)

School of Electrical Sciences

1st Prize: - K Krishna Chaitanya & Rohit Patnaik (1^st Semester)

2^nd Prize: - Mihir kr. Roy & Sumeet Keshkar (3^rd Semester)

3^rd Prize: - K Sai Santosh & TNS Nihar (1^st Semester)

School of Mechanical Sciences

1st Prize: - Shikhar Srestha & Pritish Astik (1^st Semester)

2^nd Prize: - Raghav R & Koustav Bandyopadhyay (3^rd Semester)

3^rd Prize: - Sukesh & Karthikeyan (1^st Semester)

E-Magazine Competition : - Sai Santosh, Benny Stephen, TNS Nihar, Krishna Sumanth (1^st Semester)

Student Database Competition: - Utkarsh Srivastava (3^rd Semester)

-- Rohit Khattar

Diwali Dhamaka!

A certain dark night that witnessed a splendid sparkle of flickering flames and fireworks, a certain Diwali that shall remain a fond remembrance!

Diwali ‘09 was the first student managed event organised at IIT Bhubaneswar. Celebrations commenced on the eve of Diwali. That evening began with an invocation to the Lord above, as everyone geared up for a night of surprises. The dramatics society, ‘Fourth Wall’, presented a street play “Nukkad”, that triggered a laughter riot in the audience, as it subtly delivered its noble message of a smokeless, noiseless and a cracker free Diwali. An excellent portrayal of a diya and a cracker bickering, it was the noiseless diya that gives itself away, quite unselfish as it exhausts, which ultimately won a deafening applause. A series of melodies that followed made the audience all the more retrospective, the place buzzed with anonymous hums as people revelled in the songs. Onlookers were dazed by the rhythmic moves of dancers from our Dance society which put up the next show. “Minute to fame” a programme meant to involve the spectators, had an overwhelming participation, toddlers and kids with oodles of confidence climbed up the stage to show off their talents. Just toning the cheer, making fun funnier, the game “Just like that” kept the confusion sustained. It had everyone wondering “just like what”, even as it was an engaging game!

Yet another night ended, the young and old rocked the dance floor, inebriated with an unbridled festivity of life.

The festival day invited its own essence. Our Fine Arts society held a mass Rangoli competition. One concluded life indeed is a symphony of colours, while watching rangolis taking shape. Each one had an inherent theme to ponder about. A magnificent illumination highlighting our institute logo was the charm of the evening.

Every year, Diwali shall remind us of this manoeuvre, rake up our memories to remind us of the scent of oil lamps, flickering flames that we persevered to save from the breeze and the exact festive moods that we bore. Ah! How well we shall remember!

-- Lipsa Bharati

What's Cooking?

First up, extremely sorry about the delay in not having kept you all up to date with the many happenings at our college. But I guess you'd understand that we were all busy and involved in it all!

The first sem at BBS has passed. And whew! What a fun filled and hectic 4 months did we have?! And meanwhile, we've been cooking up something big. We have tried keeping it under cover all this while but that is no longer possible as the aroma has started spreading out and people all around are picking it up! Hold your breath and take a deep whiff! Aahh...

Come 2010, brace up to be knocked over. It's huge, and it's getting bigger by the minute. IIT Bhubaneswar proudly presents -----> The first inter collegiate extravaganza. Yes, we are about to take out our first Big Step. From the biggest brand in Odisha, be assured that you are going to witness the biggest Festival of this part of the country! Hold no bars for your imaginations and let them run amok, for this is going to surpass them all. Keep watching this space from time to time to know about our latest updates! And meanwhile, do gear up and shed your inhibitions as you are all invited!

Welcome to IIT Bhubaneswar

24, Jun 2009

The results of JEE counselling are out and IIT Bhubaneswar is about to get 120 new entrants. I remember the time when I had appeared for the counselling the previous year. I was under a lot of confusion, a not so great JEE AIR, but options open left and right in BITSAT and AIEEE counselling. On Jun 30, the verdict was - E11 (Electrical Engineering, IIT Bhubaneswar).

I spent the next week, trying to dig up stuff about IIT BBS, as I was about to be part of its first batch. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much available on the net or anywhere for that matter. On July 23rd, I registered myself as a student of IIT BBS. And ever since then, there has been no looking back.

One year since..

I must admit, I did have my misgivings when I took up IIT Bhubaneswar. But, it was like a challenge where the odds were stacked against you, though only slightly. It was an enjoyable and a definitely memorable first year. I can count more highs than lows in it. One of the best and the worst part was, living in the huge Kharagpur campus. That enabled us to enjoy the highly hyped 'Campus Life', and mind you, it is worth all that hype! And it is also the worst part, coz we were to let go of it after just a year! But again, new challenges await. IIT BBS is all set to kick off from Bhubaneswar come July 2009!

If you are a BBS fresher, shake off whatever misgivings you may have, put a broad grin on your face and join the bandwagon

WELCOME FRESHERS - 2009

A world of opportunities await you, congratulations on making your choice!

PS:Check our blog thoroughly and feel free to reach us for any clarifications.