Mysuru: Today’s research is not society-driven and does not comprise a blend of knowledge acquired from various domains, rued JSS Science and Technology University (JSS STU) Vice-Chancellor Dr. Jawahar Nesen. He was speaking at the valedictory of State-level 24-hour Hackathon organised by Institutions Innovation Council (IIC), JSS STU at SJCE premises, here recently.

Stating that inclusive research would pave way for new innovations, Dr. Nesen said that knowledge sharing from various other domains apart from Science and Technology would help in finding permanent or long-lasting solutions for problems that were prevalent in society. 

Stating that research works could not be restricted to one particular stream or direction, he said that one must consider diverse nature of the society and most importantly the social background. 

Calling upon students to focus on problems at the root level, Dr. Nesen urged students to ensure they visited rural areas, instead of restricting themselves to classrooms, to study real problems of the society. 

Dr. Anurag Srivastava, Chief Operating Officer, Society for Innovation and Development, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, stressed the need to focus on innovation for better future. 

Speaking on the topic ‘Future readiness’ he said “Without innovation, you don’t have future. The whole world has much lesser talent and the amount of talent needed is available nowhere except in this country. In the next 50 years, we should be more innovative; 78 percent of employees are concerned with the growing skills gap. Globally, 500 million skills people are required. There are plenty of jobs available but it all depends upon their skills.”

After hosting successful conduct of events including Ideathon, Know Your Problem (KYP) and entrepreneurial talks at the College and District- level, IIC – JSS STU hosted a State- level Hackathon on Nov. 1 and 2.

The hackathon was aimed to harness the potential of all innovative minds across the State and to get the best out of them. Both hardware and software streams were made available and students were free to choose either of them.  The hackathon focused on aspects including Idea Brain-Storming Phase — Once the problem statements were released to the participants, students were given time to build on their ideas and officials from ‘Star Knowledge’ helped them streamline their ideas; Solution Building Phase — Participants had the freedom to  use various programming languages, software platforms consisting of both front-end, back-end, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Block Chain to build the solution to the problem statements given. 

In the case of Hardware Hackathon, various development boards, and other electronic devices were used to solve problems provided by industrialists; Presentation Phase — Teams were judged on the effectiveness, innovation involved and sustainability of the solution. 

More than 300 participants from across the State from various engineering colleges took part in the two-day event. Interest had been shown in both hardware and software streams  comprising 30 and 35 teams respectively.

 Winners: In the Software category, Ananya Pramod, Dhanush Reddy, Aamir Syed, Sidharth Nambiar from MSRIT, Bengaluru bagged the first prize while in the Hardware category, Nithin M. Banakar, N. Rajeshrahul, Venkateshwara Prasad from R V College of Engineering, Bengaluru were adjudged winners.