Author Archives: Sukanya Vijayakumar

eConnections – looking back and looking ahead

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Most of us remember the times at Pilani when the IPC was our worship destination; the place you go to connect to the world, proud to use that ubiquitous BITS email address on that black hole of a unix screen. Unix had a very speedy and easy interface to use, geeks would claim. The email system called pine was similarly simple – you could ‘d’ for delete, ‘b’ for bounce and ‘n’ to read next emails. And then on ‘prithvi’, you could secretly ‘finger’ people and ‘talk’ or ‘write’ them. Oh, and you got to browse the www by ‘lynx’ing, then imagining where text would go and what sequence they would be in. All this if you found a spot in the 300-computer IPC. There was the beloved S9, of course, where you could pay days in advance to secure 30 min slots to check your gmail, print apps to MS & PhD programs, download journals and papers for your psenti-sem project or simply to savor the need for an electronic mouse.

Uses of Neuron
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What does your Old Boy Network do?

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This week, the BITSAA Leadership had yet another opportunity to celebrate the success of some of BITSAA International’s flagship programs.

 

 

Rajiv Ranjan Singh
Rajiv Ranjan Singh

Prof Rajiv Singh teaches Embedded Systems Design and other CS/EEE courses and is a doctoral candidate at BITS. He had recently been invited to George Washington University to attend the Intelligent Transport Systems Conference held by IEEE in Washington, D.C. The prestigious conference promised great visibility not just for Prof Singh’s work, but also BITS, Pilani, which is resetting its focus on research.

Prof Singh was confident of availing UGC funding through the Institute, a grant of Rs 48,000. But the conference registration fees of $650 and estimated air fare of Rs 70,000 was steep. Prof Singh was also waiting to hear back from other organizations, such as Microsoft Research India Tarvel Grant, DST, CSIR and INSA for additional funding.

Mayank Mathur (’06, E&I), who has been in touch with Prof Singh, found out that the high costs of travel was threatening Prof Singh attendance at the conference. Mayank, himself a BITSAA Leader, swiftly rallied others to evaluate how Mr Singh could be helped. BITSAA runs several programs to help improve alumni student and faculty access to resources. Two of them – BITSAA Miles and BITSAA Credit Card – seemed apt applications in this case. Continue reading →

Houston’s Indo-American History

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Trust a BITSian to be the first and most vocal voice of passion. 

Krishna Vavilala's Oral History Project

Krishna Vavilala's Oral History Project

The Foundation for India Studies (FIS), headed by Mr Krisha Vavilala (’56, EEE) is undertaking a massive oral history project to document Houston’s transformation into a cosmopolitan and multicultural city that harbours and nourishes a large Indo-American population. While Indians constitute only 1.5% of Houston’s metropolitan population, their contributions to society are significant. Unfortunately the experiences of the first wave of immigrants have been lost to time. Continue reading →

BITSAA Leadership updates – marketing/ chapter relations

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On a similar note, BITSAA is also excited to have a new CMO who has already broken several internal records in leading the BITSAA Global Meet core team. 

Abhisheak Iyer -CMO

Abhisheak Iyer -CMO

In the last year, Abhisheak Iyer created from scratch a global  team that organized the first-ever BITS Pilani Alumni Global Meet. He has influenced, “shaken” and earned numerous kudos worldwide from people across the board  and within BITSAA. Abhisheak’s network and personal relationships within the alumni leadership extend from Pilani to Palo Alto, from Hyderabad to Houston, from Delhi to Denver and so on. Continue reading →

BITSAA Leadership updates – tech

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Spring brought BITSAA International a fresh crop of enthusiastic leaders and the transitions have promised us some exciting and path breaking ventures in the future. You’ve probably read about our new Chairman already. Over the next week, we want to introduce to you the gears of the BITSAA machinery. 

Suresh Sajja

Suresh Sajja - CTO

The sheer complexity of the technology infrastructure backing our efforts is not just the basis of, but one of the principal achievements that proves how formidable BITSAA is. In the words of Anupendra Sharma, “the Chief Technical Officer position has always been so strategic, and gives BITSAA the chance to be one such organization, that can influence the lives and direction of 30,000+ alums and 5,000 students on campus – who in turn can create organizations and products that will make the world a better place.”

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