Bits & bytes
IIT-Kharagpur announces Nina Saxena award

In a bid to encourage and promote technical innovation, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, has announced the Nina Saxena Excellence in Technology Award. The award commemorates the spirit and memory of its illustrious alumna Dr Nina Saxena, B.Tech (Hons.), ECE 1992, who passed away tragically in 2005. Open to all technologists who are Indian citizens, the award was announced at IIT-Kharagpur's Foundation Day recently. The award will be conferred every year on the same day to an individual who embodies the drive for technical excellence that Dr Nina Saxena personified.

The award will be funded through an endowment of the Nina Saxena Memorial fund. The award committee will be chaired by Director of IIT-Kharagpur and comprise Deans, selected faculty members and well-known alumnus, based in India and the USA.

According to Professor Chakraborty, Dean, Alumni Affairs, IIT Kharagpur "The award has been set up to keep the spirit of Nina alive and encourage the brightest technical minds in India to come ahead and innovate for India."

Nominations for best application of technological practices or a technological breakthrough will be decided on the basis of the following dimensions and in the following order of importance:

Innovation above and beyond well-known results
Novel application of a well -known result
Societal improvement
Benefit to India
Application of technology to underdeveloped areas and causes — TNS

Project managers’ conference

The Project Management Practitioners Conference -2006 was held in Bangalore recently.

The Project Management Institute Bangalore Chapter and Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce, said about 400 project management practitioners in IT, ITeS, construction, aerospace, space, automotive, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals sectors, among others, attended the national conference.

The theme of the two-day event was “Architecting Project Management”, a statement said recently.— PTI

E-learning module for engg students

The Cochin University of Science and Technology will prepare an e-learning module for B.Tech students from this year to help them enhance their basic skills, Vice-Chancellor, P. K. Abdul Azis, said in Kochi recently.

The engineering students who pass out are lacking employable skills. So, to help them, the modules would be developed which would help them gain skills in communication, and English-speaking, Azis said in his inaugural address at the three-day International workshop on e-learning for Adult Continuing Education and Extension.

If the module succeeds, it can be passed on to other universities, he said.

In his presidential address, Mohandas B. Menon, Educational Specialist from the Vancouver-based Commonwealth of Learning, said efforts should be made to make Kochi the e-learning hub of India and to achieve this the full potential of EDUSAT should be utilised.

Dr V.P.N Nampoori, Coordinator, Centre for Adult Continuing Education and Extension, CACEE, CUSAT, Dr B Vijaykumar, Director, CACEE, Kerala Univesity, were among those who spoke. — PTI