bits herald summer issue '12

CIMA

GSoC

2 | BITS HERALD | BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus

Contents

21

Hazy Eyed Memories

Dual Degree

6

Getting High...Legally

20

Placements

8

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Busting The Goa Myth..................................................................

3

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Programmes offered at Goa Campus 4

Course StructureDual Degree / A Talk on IS and Goa Campus

Campus Life

Waves/Quark/SpreeCampus Fests ..................................................................

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BITSAA NVC..................................................................

An evening with Lord Meghnad Desai

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Hexapod

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Wikilive

5

9

10

13

14

16

17Humanoid

18

23

22

19Interview - Shantanu Garg

BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus | BITS HERALD | 3

Busting TheGOA Myth The

Editorial

The mere name of our campus-‘BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus’- leads to a multitude of questions. Post-BITSAT, most would know that BITS stands for Birla Institute of Technology and Science. Pilani happens to be a small hamlet in Rajasthan-on the educational map of India for being home to the country’s top private Engi-neering College, BITS Pilani, Pilani campus. In 2004, the BITS Pilani University expanded to include a second campus in Goa- a cam-pus that pays tribute to our late Chancellor -renowned industrial-ist Dr. K.K Birla. This nomenclature being fully explained, readers will be in a place to digest more facts about the college itself.

BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus shares its academic structure with the 50-year-old BITS Pilani university, so it’s a given that the

academics here are top-class. Sin-cere students will always find the means to make great engineers and great citizens of themselves- a claim that has been strength-ened by the achievements of the students of this campus.

Going back to the early history of our young campus, many in the 2004 batch chose Goa over Pilani owing to the proximity of Goa to their homes. And they were not disappointed. It seemed they had taken a big risk, but what they did instead was create a legacy. By 2007 BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus boasted of a first rate tuition and accommodation sys-tem, great campus life and three national-level college fests – while keeping intact the revered Pilani image.

One aspect that assumes monu-

mental importance while discuss-ing the credibility of BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus is that the insti-tute boasts of an admission pro-cedure that is completely merit-based. There isn’t a single student here who does not belong here, who hasn’t set his priorities right and worked hard to get here. As alumni from any premiere insti-tute will tell you, the connections you forge in college will help you through the years.

Other forums will tell you about our curfews and our security mea-sures to keep the students safe. We aim to provide readers with an insider’s view of BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, dispel some of the common myths surrounding the campus and highlight some of our recent achievements.

Programmesofferedat Goa Campus

B.E. ProgrammesB.E. (Hons.) ChemicalB.E. (Hons.) Computer ScienceB.E. (Hons.) Electrical and ElectronicsB.E. (Hons.) Electronics and InstrumentationB.E. (Hons.) Mechanical

M.Sc. ProgrammesM.Sc. (Hons.) Biological SciencesM.Sc. (Hons.) ChemistryM.Sc. (Hons.) EconomicsM.Sc. (Hons.) MathematicsM.Sc. (Hons.) PhysicsM.Sc. (Tech.) Information Systems (4 year Course)



Course StructureBITS is one of the few Indian universities to provide a unique academic structure and flexibilities in the same inspired by the structure of the Massachusetts Insti-tute of Technology, USA.

The freshman year at BITS focuses on ex-posing one to Elementary Science cours-es and Introductory courses to certain domains of Engineering. Courses like En-gineering Graphics and Workshop Prac-tice introduce students to the basics of Mechanical Engineering, while Computer Programming courses equip students with knowledge of basic Structure Oriented Programming.

The new curriculum introduced in the academic year 2011-12 focuses on branch specialization, while retaining the focus on soft skills and overall development. The number of Compulsory Disciplinary Courses (branch related courses) has in-creased. Besides the CDCs, the BITS aca-demic infrastructure provides an array of Elective Courses -courses from vari-ous engineering, humanities, science and management fields to add versatility to a BITSian’s academic profile. For instance, the BITS system permits a Chemical Engi-neering student to pursue a fully fledged course in Cryptography, which is a disci-plinary subject of Computer Science en-gineering.

“ To B.E. or not to B.E. ? “


Course Structure

Dual DegreeThe most popular (and often, least understood) of the flex-ibilities at BITS is the Dual De-gree Course. BITS offers a MSc. (Hons.) in five disciplines- Bio-logical Sciences, Chemistry, Economics, Maths and Physics. The rationale behind the Pro-gramme is to incentivise Aca-demia and Research careers for the Science students.

Under the Dual Degree Pro-gramme, a student receives admission into one of the five MSc. (Hons.) courses. At the end of the first year, Dualites apply for a B.E degree by giv-ing their preference order for all B.E. degrees offered at their campus. On the basis of CGPA and preference order, the stu-dent receives admission into a B.E. programme. All Dualites are assured of receiving ad-mission into a B.E. (Hons.) pro-gramme, except in rare cases where CGPA at the end of the first year is less than 4.5.

Though the BITSAT score cutoffs for dual courses are usually lower than those for single de-gree courses, the Dualites are on par (sometimes even bet-ter off, courtesy an extra Mas-ter’s degree) with single degree students in terms of academic structure and placements. A Dual Programme does not mean twice the number of courses/working hours per semester. Rather, Dualites who have opt-ed for a B.E. degree have a course structure spanning over 11 semesters (single degree students have 8), including a compulsory thesis semester. However, students may finish their de-gree in 10 semesters by taking up a summer term on campus.


Harsha Konduri...

Speaks on IS and Goa Campus

The M.Sc. (Tech) Information Systems (IS) programme at BITS Pi-lani has always been a cause of major confusion amongst engineer-ing aspirants. Questions on whether it constitutes an Engineering degree, industry recognition and its link with the Computer Sci-ence programme are bound to arise in applicants. We speak to Harsha Konduri of the 2004 IS Batch who has the answers to the questions on the recognition IS and the Goa Campus as well as the Placement scenario.

His Success Story

Harsha passed out of the Goa campus with a very average CGPA in 2007 and a host of non-technical electives, one of which (Supply Chain Management) that landed him a job at Oracle. Most of the 2004 Batch received amazing placements and PG admissions- putting an end to all doubts on the quality of the Goa campus. Harsha, has later gone on to create Vipashyin Labs, that has featured on Outlook Magazine’s list of ’25 Start-ups under an investment of 10 lakh.’

On taking up Information Systems

Harsha was eligible for a Dual Degree and Pilani and many Single Degrees in Goa. Why IS, one might ask? For him the decision was fairly simple. IS offers a programme fairly distinct from the others that focuses on various aspects of software engineering and programming. In terms of course structure, this focus is greater than that of the Computer Science B.E. programme. The placement record is just as good. After 5 years of experience in the industry, he assures us that the nomenclature of the degree does not make a difference, for jobs and college applications. Given all this, he is surprised at the low cut-offs for IS and cites lack of awareness among applicants as the major cause.

Placements


PlacementsEvery BITS applicant will wonder about the Placement scene at the sister campuses of the revered Pilani campus. While there are talks of having centralized place-ments for all BITS campuses, the Goa campus has fared well on its own (despite being a relatively young campus). And with a dedi-cated Placement Unit ( a student-run body that co-ordinates all as-pects of the Placement process) in place, we witness the Placement scenario getting better with each passing semester.

Last semester, 48 companies came to BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Cam-pus, and 21 of these were first-time recruiters. “Yatra.com visited campus for the first time and took 3 students (the most from any campus so far, as told by them). They decided to recruit from

BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus because the team there was very impressed with a Goa campus stu-dent who was at Yatra.com for his PS2,” Vivek Jha, the former Place-ment Unit coordinator tells us.

Sought after companies like Ya-hoo Inc., Oracle and Morgan Stan-ley have been recruiting BITSGians for the last few years. While the most lucrative pay-packages are still received by Computer Science /Information Systems students; candidates from other branches fare well with branch-specific firms such as MRF, CEAT and Tata Motors (for Mechanical students)and Nokia-Siemens, Deloitte and Sun Microsystems (for Electronics students) recruiting from campus. For a full list of past recruiter at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, refer to the link below.

Dualites are eligible to sit for placements in their fifth year when most of them are doing PS-2 in different cities, leaving a small window for visiting the campus for placements. Hence,Dualites rely on PPOs (Pre-placement of-fers) from their PS-2 stations. The last semester saw Dualites receiv-ing cushy PPOs from the likes of Texas Instruments and Amazon.

While we are yet to realize our full potential in terms of Place-ments, what’s reassuring is that the graph has always displayed a positive trend. With more com-panies, fatter pay-checks and in-creased recruitment, ****college name, whatever it may be**** continues to surpass itself on the Placements front.

http://www.bits-goa.ac.in/pu/PU/Resources/Past Recruiters List.pdf

Campus LifeThe four years you spend at BITS will have a lot more than just aca-demics and job interviews. With three top-notch festivals to host, we have a number of Departments to look into different aspects of each festival- be it overall control, Sponsorship &Marketing, Public-ity, Arts & Decoration or Journal-ism & Media Affairs, amongst oth-ers. A majority of the undergrad population is involved in Depart-ment activities, which are headed by third-year students.

Besides the Departments, a num-ber of special-interest clubs func-tion actively on campus- perform-ing clubs such as the Dance Club, the Music Society, the Mime Club, and the Drama Club (which per-

form during the festivals and or-ganize their own Nites) and the other bodies such as the Aerody-namics Club, the Quiz Club, the Electronics and Robotics Club, the Wall Street Society and the Center for Entrepreneurial Lead-ership-to name a few.

Students do find themselves miss-ing ‘home food’, but the campus has no dearth of culinary options. Besides the two messes, we have the Institute Cafeteria (perfect for a quick breakfast in-between morning lectures), Monginis, Nes-cafe, Ice n’ Spice (snack,juices and shakes), Shahi Durbar (restaurant) and Gajalaxmi snacks (the Anda Pav shack). But man cannot live on bread alone, as the cliché goes. We also have a well-stocked li-brary with text-books, reference books and novels. And freshmen can buy almost everything they need at the campus Shopping Complex-buckets, mattresses, curtains, electric kettles, and toi-letries.

For the record, it is not true that the Goa campus has a private beach. But we do have a won-derful view of the Zuari river and the small, but beautiful Bogmalo beach less than fifteen minutes away. While most tourist beaches take over an hour to reach, Major-da and Utorda are relatively close to campus. The town of Vasco da

Gama is easily reachable by bus, while Panjim is a mere 45 minutes away by taxi.

With a beautiful campus located in an even more beautiful state, you’ll be sure to have the time of your life here-whether you’re or-ganizing a fest, studying for exams or watching the Goan sun set over the Arabian sea.



WavesCultural Festival

Waves, our annual cultural festival, is one of the fast-est growing cult fests of the country. From being an inter-hostel fest just six years ago, Waves has made a place for itself amongst the top 8 cultural festivals in the country, overhauling quite a few older and bet-ter established fests. It is one of the few fests in India that is entirely managed by students. Be it sponsorship, publicity, accommodation, special nights or events, we handle it all. With participants flocking in from all parts of the coun-try, Waves has always witnessed an impressive foot-fall. The festival hosts a plethora of events spanning 7 categories including Dramatics, Dance, Fine Arts, Mu-sic, Literary, Quiz and the “Big Four”. In Waves 2011 SeaRock -a battle of the bands attracting some of the country’s best semi-professional bands- went national with eliminations in Pune, Bangalore, Delhi and Goa. Waves also includes a series of fun workshops organised by professionals- Canvas Shoe Painting, Stop Motion Photography, Cookery etc were extremely popular. The less artistically-inclined have the Adventure Zone with a Paintball Tournament, Real Angry Birds and Slip Soccer to look forward to. Events, Workshops and Informals aside, no cult fest is complete without a few kickass performances. Heavy-weight performers like Kailash Kher, KK, Shafqat Am-anat Ali, Parikrama, Thermal and a Quarter, Agam, Something Relevant, Blackstratblues and DJ Suketu have rocked the stage at previous editions of Waves.And we can assure you, Waves is going to get even big-ger and better this year. As they say, Goa is the land of sun, sand and serenity…and Waves.

technical Festival

Since its humble beginnings in 2006 as an intra-campus technical festival of our cam-pus, QUARK has evolved to carve a niche for itself in the competitive tech fest circuit of the country. A completely student-orga-nized festival , QUARK has witnessed how the brilliant young minds of our country make magic as they innovate in the com-petitive environment of a national level technical festival. QUARK attracts participation from pre-miere institutions from around the globe, including the IITs, NITs and our sister cam-puses. With events spanning over 9 techno-managerial categories, QUARK provides the opportunity to excel in the domain of your choice- be it Robotics, Science, Man-agement or Programming. A technical fes-tival with a social conscience, QUARK has been associated with a number of student-run social and environmental initiatives such as Bhagirath and My Green Idea, the focus being on developing tech-based solutions to pertinent social issues. Besides events, project showcases and technical exhibitions; QUARK also wit-nesses festivities such as Aurora (the Guest Performances), the Techno-lounge and a wide variety of informal events such as Sumo Wrestling and Play Station gaming. Workshops organized by tech giants such as Microsoft, NVIDIA and Cypress Semicon-ductors have attracted large participation in previous editions of the festival. Associa-tions with the likes of Dell, Mahindra Rise and Applied Materials have helped take the festival to new heights.


Quark

SpreeSport is plebeian. But ‘Pure Sport’ a la BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus is elegance. SPREE, the sports festival of BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus is one of the best in In-dia. The festival is completely organized by the students, with different Departments for overall control, sponsorship, public-ity etc. Commanding participation from all over the country, Spree showcases a plethora of diverse sporting talent from the college sports circuit. Spanning over four days in the first week of March, the festival is loaded with Events, Specials and Offbeats. The categories range from the old favourites like Frisbee and Tug of War, to innovative versions of sports like Anti-Chess and C-Pool. Yes, we have the good old traditional versions of cricket ,foot-ball, basketball, and badminton as well. The festival always stood out of the ordinary with past associations like Shadab Jakati, Swapnil Asnodkar and Krishnan Sasiki-ran. With world-class football and cricket grounds and a well-equipped Student Ac-tivity Centre coupled with the renowned Salgaocar Football Club’s association with the campus, Spree has set a mark for it-self in the national sporting map, and has been moving from strength to strength ever since its inception.


Sports Festival


AA

NewVentureCreation

NVC (New Venture Creation) is an innovative course at BITS, which was planned and created by BITSAA (BITS Alumni Affairs Division) in association with CEL (the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership). The course was designed with the idea of educating budding entrepre-neurs in the BITS community about entrepreneurship and enabling them to start up in earnest. It involves all aspects of creating a business venture right from scratch. Student teams are required to come up with their own business plans and ideas for its execu-tion, which involves address-ing various issues involved in creating a startup. They re-ceive guidance along the way in the form of lectures from various successful entrepre-neurs, including the likes of Vinod Khosla (co-founder of

Sun Microsystems) and Raju Reddy (founder and chair-man of Sierra Atlantic). Stu-dents are also assigned an experienced mentor to guide them along the way. The top teams in the course will be awarded a seed fund to help them bring their business plan to life.The whole program is run in close coordination with an-other BITSAA venture called BITS Spark and the Hatch Fund- which provide pre-seed funding. BITS Spark maintains a network of entrepreneurs who can mentor and advise the participants. It also helps by providing angel funding to the student teams at a later stage when the course has been completed.NVC is starting this year at the Goa Campus with an al-ready rich reputation in just its infant stages. In just 3 years

at the Pilani Campus, 24 teams have graduated and there are already a few suc-cess stories to boast of- one of them being Framebench which won the Economic Times Power Ideas Compe-tition. NVC no doubt serves as an ideal entry point into the world of entrepreneur-ship and business, along with the added bonus of brain-storming with some of the best minds from across the world.


An Evening with Lord Meghnad Desai

BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus witnessed an inter-active session with the world renowned economist, author and British Labour Life Peer- Lord Meghnad Desai on 3rd April 2012. He addressed the staff and students at the campus auditorium, followed by an interactive Q/A session, sharing his perspective on everything from the Global economy to Indian politics to the Education System. Lord Meghnad De-sai also granted DoJMA an interview, an excerpt of which follows.

Q: What was your inspiration and prime motive behind join-ing the Labour Party?

A: Well, I was always for the left wing view and the so-cialist view of ‘changing the world for the better’. I wanted to improve the living conditions of ordinary people and try and provide for employment, low poverty, better welfare state and such social and democratic ideals. Even though I am much more pro-capitalist now, I still think those are good things to go for. But, it has to be done differently.

Q: BITS-Pilani has a unique dual degree system, wherein students pursue a Pure Science degree along with an engineering degree. From the point of view of an economics scholar, how valued is the one year where the Economics dualities students study pure economics subjects?

A: It’s very difficult to answer that question. It depends on what the individual wants to do. Probably, one year in a joint degree system is enough to earn an Economics degree. But to know how academics judge it, we need to know what the individual plans to do. One year spent in Economics would not allow you to do a gradu-ate course in economics. Two years might be required. But, then again it depends on what you learn and how much you learn.


An Evening with Lord Meghnad DesaiQ: We have a club called CEL, which stands for ‘Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership’, which promotes Entrepreneurship. As of now, the world seems to be pro-social Entrepreneurship. Would you say it is a fad?

A: It will just come and go. Eventually, entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship and it means finding a gap in the market and filling it. Facebook is an entrepreneurial activity. Nobody knew there was a gap. But, it provided that gap. Entrepreneurship is about ideas. It is a mental activity with risk-taking. Paradoxically, al-though there is a lot more capitalism, people are shy to speak positively about it. They don’t want to mention profit-making is a good thing. So they talk about social entrepreneurship.

Q: How do you feel that the research and academia scene in India has changed from your time?

A: There is much more research into academia now. But I feel far too much research is government-spon-sored. There aren’t enough private-research foundations or funding, that are enough to sustain really good critical work. I feel most of the research centres are concentrated in Delhi, due to this reason.

Quark Open Showcase


Student Project|Hexapod

Robotics enthusiasts at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus have always found plenty of avenues to showcase their projects through the ERC club at the IEEE chapter on cam-pus. The Hexapod is one such project that has successfully leveraged campus avenues to make it big. The bot imple-ments an algorithm for in-telligent autonomous robot walking, and has received ex-ternal sponsorship of upto 10 lac INR from the DRDO (The Defence Research and Devel-

opment Organization, Govt. of India), who’s been taken on as Contract Researchers.

“The Hexapod project was born out of the enthusiasm of the ex-ERC Co-ordinator, Avinash Kumar (2008 Batch). It started out as an ERC proj-ect and the entire club was extremely supportive, while the IEEE branch allowed us to work in their lab,” says Rohit Sant, a part of the Hexapod team, “Besides Avinash and myself, Varad Gunjal, Priyans

Murarka ,Ninad Kulkarni , Ai-nesh Bakshi, Salil Kapur and Kratarth Goel were a part of the team. “

The terrain parameter used by the Hexapod- a hexagonal projection of the geometry of the configuration of the robot – is something that’s never been used before in this field, thus capturing the interest of a premier insti-tutes like the DRDO, Rohit tells us.

Quark Open Showcase

Student ProjectHumanoid

Shatruddha Kushwaha (2008 Batch, BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus) had a dream. He wanted to make “a human-oid which can interact with the world and learn things on its own”. His motivation behind this project was the fact that it was a multi-disciplinary project, involving appli-cations of Mechanical Engineering, Electronics and Com-puter Science. Lack of external sponsorship did not deter Shatruddha from his goal. He obtained free samples of ICs and made his own circuit board to cut costs. He also saved money by making his own connecting bars and structure for the 25 actuators required, which would otherwise have cost him 50K INR plus 20K on customs duty . But as Shatruddha proudly tells us, “No one can tell that the structure was hand-made by looking it.”All this hard work did pay off. “Saksham (yes, the robot has a name) can now stand on its own, walk and even mimic human ac-tions!” he exclaimed. Shatruddha showcased Saksham at the Open Showcase of Quark 2012, the technical festival of BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus and received rave reviews for his brilliant work.Shatruddha now has a team of 20 students from various branches working on the Humanoid Project and plans to mentor more stu-dents in the future. He has also worked on a tri-copter project aimed at aerial surveillance and photography.

Here are some video links of Sha-truddha’s projects in action:

http://www.youtube.com/user/shatruddha/feed?filter=2


The CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) Global Business Challenge 2012 (an international level Case Study competition) saw a team from BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus making it to the National finals the second time in a row. The BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus team (named Plan B) comprised of Akhila Mal-lavarapu, Raj Patel, Debajyoti Datta and Indu Ra-jeev, all from the 2010 batch.

Given the intense competition, then team was skeptical about their chances of making it to the next round, much less the National Finals. We concentrated on making the report as profes-sional as possible and post-submission, forgot all about it. It was a wonderful surprise when we qualified for the Western Zonals,” says Akhila. The Western Region finals were held at the Hy-att Regency in Mumbai, with 7 teams participat-ing. Plan B made it to the next round yet again, jointly winning a special prize for the Best Case

Study report along with NMIMS.For the National Finals, the team made a video on CIMA from scratch, helped by Sai Phaltan-kar(2010 batch).The national finals took place soon after, at the JW Marriott, Delhi. Although the BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus team didn’t qualify for the Global Finals, the experience, they tell us, is one they will always cherish. “Through CIMA, we made some amazing friends and devel-oped a great network with students from some of India’s premiere institutions”, says Akhila.

For the Most Popular Video award after the Na-tionals, the foursome had the entire college be-hind them, with people taking time out to ‘like’ their video on Facebook in spite of exams. The immense support they received from BITSians helped Plan B win closely against another CIMA team from IIT Delhi.


InterviewShantanu Garg“The BITS alumni network is as strong abroad as it is in India. I met a number of BITSians at Stanford, who constant guid-ance and support helped me make the most of my time there “, says Shantanu Garg. Shantanu pursued his un-dergrad in Electronics and In-strumentation at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, followed by a Master’s degree in Management Sciences and Engineering from Stanford University. He plans to work in the US with the Boston Consulting Group as an Associ-ate Consultant.

“The exposure I received at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus has helped me immensely. One of the advantages of being in a young campus is that you can carve your own path, you have the freedom to experiment; while on older campuses one is limited by a more rigid approach,” he says. One of the founding members of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (one of the country’s leading Entrepreneurship cells) as well as two intra-campus stu-dent bodies( the Department of Sponsorship and Marketing and the Department of Creative Works, Shantanu has carved not one, but many paths for other BITSGians to follow.

Making the most of the opportunities available on campus and developing a strong network with fellow BITSians, is Shantanu’s advice to the next generation of BITSGians.



Getting High...Legally

The Aerodynamics Club of BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus is in a constant quest to defy grav-ity, all bounds of speed and manoeuvrability by continuously improving upon their designs. The club builds everything from acrobatic planes to pylon racers, from VTOLs to micro air vehicles. And they’re always on the lookout for more en-thusiasts.

Mr. Moss (a glider), YAK54 v1 (a tough to fly 3D plane with insane aerobatic tricks up its sleeve), Corostang (a scale down version of the P-51D sports flier Mustang), Spadet LC-40 (easy to fly box plane), Snoopylution (a biplane), a hover-craft, Tricopter V2.2 and SCAR (Sub-Coordi’s Aerial Raconteur- designed to equip new mem-bers with the basics) are just some of the crafts they made last year. Building around three to

four crafts every month, the club boasts of an impressive inventory of projects and models they have worked on.

Aerial photography, videos and night time flying with LEDs on planes keep the members and non members alike perked up with greater expecta-tions. “The possibilities are endless, just like the sky which you fly in”, says Sagar Bose, Club Coor-dinator. “Just like a small gust of wind offsets the path of an airplane by humongous amount, ev-ery individual reading this is capable on his own, to bring up a storm of revolution and change, knowledge and understanding. With numerous projects to boast of, and a lot more on the land-ing approach, we plan to stay true to our motto for a long time to come. ‘Get high legally!’”

We arrived at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus with mixed feelings. A sense of achievement at having made it, anticipa-tion of living in Goa, and apprehension at the expected rag-ging But as we soon discovered, getting into college got you practically nowhere and ragging in BITS is a joke. And as for the beaches- if you’ve seen ‘em one, you’ve seen ‘em all. And so with our shattered illusions of college life we began our freshman year at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus.

The desperation to be part of a club/department was evi-dent with some 300 hopefuls turning up for inductions to the most popular institutions on campus. While some De-partments took in a decent proportion of the inductees, only a handful of talented freshers managed to make it to the performing clubs.

Post inductions, fresher parties and CSA elections as the ini-tial excitement of campus life began to wear off; we were gripped by the Pre Waves fever. But Waves ’10 came and went, leaving us with a few leftover cans of Cloud9, even fewer bars of Snickers.

After five fests (let’s not forget the inter-hostel Slam and Zephyr) and six exams spread over ten months, we finally have enough leisure to reflect over the last year. For the av-erage BITSGian the year did not go by in a string of drunken orgies at Goan beaches, nor was it exactly productive. But freshman year at BITS is worth remembering for the friends made, nocturnal trips to the mess, pulling all nighters to avoid a ‘D’, the mad rush to Monginis after a boring lecture. With two more months of the holidays to go, I’m already missing college. And despite the intimidating second year courses, hectic lab schedules and the added pressure of planning a ‘career’ I find myself eagerly anticipating sophomore year at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus.



One of the many student-run tech innovations at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus is Wikilive, a Wikipedia instant search engine. Developed by Deepanshu Mendiratta, a second year Chemi-cal Engineering student, the website was developed as a solution to the necessity of browsing through a number of Wikipedia pages to obtain search-relevant data. With just 5 hours of coding, the website was ready to take off. Wikilive.in opens all probable Wikipedia pages as tabs allied to the search topic. “For example if one types “Sony”, the site pops up tabs related to the “Sony” like “Sony Corporation”, ”Sony BMG”, ”Sony Entertainment” …and so on. “Sony Corporation” being the closest query result, has its Wiki page displayed alongside the other tabs”, explains Deepanshu.

WikiLiveThe Wikipedia Live Search

The website owes its speedy searching to AJAX requests to connect to Wiki servers and fetch-ing the required data. Since its release, some changes have been made to aid easier searching like direct searching through the web browser. If one wishes to search for ‘Soccer’ he can directly type ‘ http://wikilive.in/#Soccer’ or ’http://wikilive.in/Soccer’ into the browser address bar.

“I sincerely hope budding programmers develop faster and better algorithms; and build entire codes rather than copy pasting portions of it from the net, even if they are available”, says Dee-panshu, the site developer. He also advises budding web developers to avoid free lancing during their initial years as it would limit their ability to experiment.

Google Summer of Code is an annual program by Google Inc. that offers students pursuing higher studies a chance to code the summer away through various open source projects. Selected candidates are offered a stipend of 5000 US dollars. Since its inception in 2005 the program has steadily grown to have accepted 1,212 proposals in 2012. Out of the 1,212 pro-posals accepted worldwide BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus boasts of 17 students accepted at GSoc 2012. They will have a chance to work under the 180 open source organizations chosen by Google. To put things into perspective, 2011 saw 1,115 accepted proposals over 175 organizations. The most successful Indian college over the history of the competition and the third most successful worldwide of that year, IIT-Kharagpur, accounted for 14 of those.

Such a performance in one of the world’s foremost Open Source Development programs reflects in the excellent placement records of its Computer Science de-partment.

Following are the students who got selected in the Google Summer of Code 2012 : Mudit Raj GuptaRajat Goyal Chetan BansalAbhishekRitisha LDebajyoti Datta Neil DhruvaDhanajay SatheP. SelvamShivansh Srivastava

BhaavanShruti GuptaMayank SinghRachee SinghDhruva TbAnant KamathJay Rambhia


+91-8584973796 | +91-9604435637

Department of Journalism And Media AffairsBITS, Pilani - K.K. Birla Goa CampusNH-17/B Zuarinagar, Goa - 403726

Radhika ParikFrancis JamesAkshay VikasAbhijith AsokRenuka Pai

Anjali SrivastavaSakshi PratapVaibhav BajajPranshu GuptaBhavul Gauri

Harsha KoneruVishakha GuptaHarman Singh

Prasoon MehtaAnkit SharmaNikita Raina

Seerat BindraMohana Bhattacharya

Anshul JainSanjukta Krishnagopal

Soumya ChauhanAnurati Srivastva

Deepankar SharmaNikhil Khadilkar

Chantal de Souza

Thanks to : DoPY(Special thanks to Sarath Menon)

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bits herald summer issue '12

Documents

lord meghnad

student receives

birla goa

single degree

goa campus

computer science

young campus

goa myth