Launching Embryo

I am Shashikant 97A7093. I graduated from BITS almost 4 and a half years back – which actually seems like a pretty long time right now, but interestingly I can still remember my new wing downstairs facing mess, and the pramod redi, and IPC, and the saraswati mandir, and the “other mandir” i.e. the meera bhawan as clearly as if it were yesterday.

What I’m going to tell you today is a new concept that some of us alumni are envisioning for you guys on campus to try and introduce you to cutting edge research topics in different areas.

We graduated from BITS – some of us went for MS and PhD, some others went for MBA. I myself worked for a year or so at INSEAD in France, then did my MS in computer science from Stanford, and am leading the research team in a startup right now. All of us have gained expertise in different areas during these years – artificial intelligence, GPS, internet search, six sigma, optical networks, finance and what not, and we’re looking into our future.

But frequently, when we get together and talk about the good old days, we feel that one of the most important things that was lacking for us in BITS was knowledge about the cutting edge research in the different fields. We all played hard and worked hard, but more or less, we studied and worked on moderately old technology or on what was available. When we went to grad level programs, we were suddenly exposed to a whole gamut of new fields of study. And many a time we wonder – how great it would have been if we had known these things while at BITS! Maybe we would have selected out BE projects better. Maybe we would have apped to higher universities because of better projects. Basically, we would have had a better idea of what our interests are earlier in life.

We don’t want our sidie’s undie’s id-pop’s great grand son having to face the same difficulty again. So, some of us got together and decided to do something about it. We thought we could try and share all the knowledge that we have gained here with you guys through the medium of small talks – video or powerpoint. Every week or so, one of us would talk about his research area, his university, or his experiences. We would also collect these talks and put them up on the BITS intranet where you guys can access it whenever you want to. Most of these are intended for 3rd yearites and psenti-semites, but there is nothing stopping a zesty 2nd yearite from starting early.

This is the project that we’re calling “Embryo”. We’re calling it embryo because we think our talks will act as seeds, which, when its your turn to do research, will grow into tall trees and lead to pushing the frontiers in these fields.

What we will do for you is to give you a high level view of a broad research area in a field – e.g. web search in computer science. What we will not do for you is to teach the topics in detail and bore you like a prof. What we expect from you is that if you have interest, you follow up the topic, research the net, and take up a project with one of your profs at BITS.

So wish you all the best guys, and hope you find this stuff useful.

http://www.bitsembryo.org

Shashi
97A7