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