IIT Madras students to organise space tech summit

NEW DELHI: As a part of its technical festival 'Shaastra', the students of Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) will be organising a space tech summit to promote innovation and collaboration in the sector. The fest will be held from January 26 to 29, 2023.

IIT Madras students will be collaborating with space-tech companies such as Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), GalaxEye Space, and AgniKul Cosmos for the tech festival. The fest will bring industry experts together for a series of professional workshops, interactive lectures, panel discussions, and VC pitching sessions, among other activities.

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The workshops will be held on topics such as machine learning, robotics, astronomy and Web 3.0 along with management and finance among others. A mini-fst under 'Shaastra', "Symbiosis 2023' will being experts and enthusiasts from domains of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data science (DS) to discuss and explore topics in the field.

IIT Madras Hackathons

Shaastra 2023 will also be hosting school students in an Institute Open House to give them an opportunity to explore the IIT Madras campus and its facilities. In addition to this, the fest will also host the final round of 'Junior Make-a-Thon', in which school students will be exhibiting prototypes built through the mentorship process.

'Hack-cidents' is a hackathon that will be focused on developing technology solutions to improve road safety in India. This hackathon will be conducted as a collaborative effort by IIT Madras centre for Innovation and Shaastra. The event hackathon is open to all students and start-ups and will be offering the participants a chance to pitch their ideas and receive a support of Rs 5 lakh the prototype development. Meanwhile, the winning teams will be eligible for additional grants of Rs 10 lakh.

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Social Campaign

The fest launched a social campaign called 'Vastra' that aims to provide accessible clothing to all and promotes the concept of sustainable fashion. Along with spreading awareness on the negative impacts of fashion waste, students are educating consumers to upscale existing clothing and encouraging them to donate clothes to the underprivileged and small support groups that can turn them into handicrafts.

Addressing a press conference on the campus today, January 25, 2023, IIT Madras, director, V. Kamakoti, said: “There will be several open-house workshops on the top technologies that IIT Madras has invented which include 5G and Hyperloop. With regard to space technology, IIT Madras looks forward to motivating people on both rocket and satellite development. One of the outcomes expected is on the understanding of what the applications of commercial space are. This can be a seed for startups to help decide what kind of satellites need to be built in the future.”

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Lauding the student's efforts towards organizing this massive event, IIT Madras, co-curicular advisor, Ratna Kumar Annabattula, said: “Shaastra 2023 will feature keynote lectures by industry professionals from Google, Siemens and Subex, among others, as well as workshops and events that allow participants to demonstrate their talents. The event will also host programming hackathons supported by brands such as M2P, Wells Fargo, L&T and Schlumberger, among others, to challenge students' programming prowess as they compete against the brightest minds of the country to tackle practical, real-life problems with original and innovative solutions. The Shaastra team has been relentlessly working on making the whole event a success, and we look forward to seeing their efforts reap fruit. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors for their support.”