Latest news with #FacultyofEngineeringandTechnology
New Indian Express
05-08-2025
- Science
- New Indian Express
SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Tiruchirappalli welcomes Computer Science and Engineering freshers with a grand inaugural ceremony
Tiruchirappalli: The School of Computing, under the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Tiruchirappalli, hosted an inspiring and grand Fresher's Inaugural Function for the Computer Science and Engineering Fresher's Batch (2025–2029) on Monday, August 4, 2025, at 9:15 a.m. in the SRM Auditorium. The event marked a significant occasion to formally welcome the newly admitted Computer Science and Engineering students and their proud parents into the SRMIST academic community. The ceremony commenced with a warm welcome address by Dr. R. Jagadeesh Kannan, Dean, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, who extended heartfelt greetings to the fresher's and their parents. He shared the school's vision, highlighted the importance of academic sincerity, and encouraged students to embrace innovation and holistic development. This was followed by the introduction of the Chief Guest by Dr. R. Deebalakshmi, Associate Professor and Head (Cyber Security), who presented the outstanding professional accomplishments of the guest. The Chief Guest, Dr. S. D. Sudarsan, Executive Director, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Bengaluru, delivered an enlightening keynote address. He highlighted CDAC's technological milestones, such as the development of high-performance computers and the COVID Defender system. He underscored the growing demand for interdisciplinary research and the rising relevance of quantum computing. Addressing the fresher's, he urged them to strengthen their resumes with collaborative, real-world projects and extended an invitation to visit CDAC to explore opportunities in advanced computing. Prof. (Dr.) Md. Sameeruddin Khan, Pro-Vice Chancellor, SRMIST Tiruchirappalli, motivated students to pursue education with discipline and vision. Dr. K. Kathiravan, Director of Admissions, urged the freshers to utilize the vast academic and research resources available at SRM and start their educational journey with commitment and confidence. The ceremony concluded with a Vote of Thanks delivered by Dr. S. Kanaga Suba Raja, Professor and Associate Dean, School of Computing, who expressed deep gratitude to all dignitaries, faculty, students, parents, and the organizing team for making the event a grand success. The function set an enthusiastic and purposeful tone for the 2025–2029 batch of Computer Science and Engineering students, symbolizing the start of a promising academic and professional journey. (This is a press release by the SRM group.)
Hans India
24-07-2025
- Science
- Hans India
Jamia Millia engineering faculty concludes induction programme
New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia's University Polytechnic, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, on Thursday hosted an orientation programme marking the culmination of a week-long induction programme that commenced on July 18, an official said. The orientation programme titled 'The Conclusion' aimed to provide a seamless academic and cultural transition for the newly admitted students of the Diploma Engineering (Regular & Self-Financed) courses. Throughout the week, students participated in interactive sessions, departmental presentations, lab visits, and workshops focused on student support, academic resources, and institutional values, said Saima Saeed, Chief Public Relations Officer.' The event was anchored by Dr. Sunil, Associate Professor, Computer Engineering Section, and Dr. M.A. Khan, Principal, University Polytechnic, highlighted the institution's legacy, achievements, and dedication to nurturing talent. The dignitaries were felicitated by Dr. Khan with mementoes as a token of appreciation and respect. The distinguished guests included Prof. Mazhar Asif, Vice Chancellor, JMI. Prof. Mini Shaji Thomas, Dean, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, urged students to embrace innovation, interdisciplinary learning, and real-world problem-solving abilities. She emphasised the value of leveraging the university's advanced laboratories, incubation centres, and mentoring frameworks. Stressing the transformative power of education, she noted, 'At Jamia, we do not just teach technology - we teach leadership, adaptability, and courage to face future challenges.' She also spoke about the rapid rise of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology, its global academic collaborations, and its mission to produce industry-ready, ethically sound professionals. Prof. Neelofer Afzal, Dean, Students' Welfare, focusing on students' welfare, introduced the broad spectrum of services offered by the Office of the Dean of Students' Welfare (DSW). She emphasised emotional well-being, inclusion, and student empowerment and encouraged students to immerse themselves in campus life through clubs, societies, and support initiatives — especially those designed for women and underrepresented students. Prof. Pawan Kumar Sharma, Controller of Examinations, addressed the students with a message centred around academic transparency, fairness, and student empowerment. He announced the rollout of a Single Window Grievance Redressal System - a digital platform to streamline the submission and resolution of examination-related grievances.
New Indian Express
27-06-2025
- New Indian Express
Computer equipment stolen from Annamalai University recovered after a month
CUDDALORE: Computer equipment stolen from the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at Annamalai University has been recovered by Annamalai Nagar police, a month after a complaint was lodged by university authorities. The equipment, procured under the Tamil Nadu government's 'Naan Mudhalvan' scheme, had been stored in the Information Technology department's computer laboratory when it went missing. K Selvakumar, Head of the Department of Information Technology and the scheme's coordinator at the university, filed a formal complaint at the Annamalai Nagar police station following the incident. Acting on the complaint, Inspector K Ambedkar registered a case and initiated an investigation under the supervision of Cuddalore District Superintendent of Police S Jeyakumar and Chidambaram Sub-Division Deputy Superintendent of Police T Augustin Joshua Lamech. During the course of the probe, police arrested J Livin Ajay (18), a first-year student of the Diploma in Mining programme at the same faculty. He hails from Arasakuzhi near Virudhachalam. According to police, computer parts valued at Rs 5 lakh — including 15 CPUs and nine monitors — were recovered from the accused. Investigations revealed that Ajay had made failed attempts to sell the stolen items on OLX and to private individuals. Eventually, he concealed the equipment in bushes behind the university premises. Based on his confession, police traced and retrieved the items. The accused was produced before a magistrate and remanded in judicial custody on Wednesday evening.
The Star
10-06-2025
- Science
- The Star
Using AI to track hornbills in Malaysian jungles
FOR years, lecturer Dr Mehran Behjati and his wife would spend their weekends outdoors, taking to the bike trails and cycling into the remote areas and villages of Selangor, and even as far as Bukit Tinggi in Pahang, some 70km away from the Klang Valley. Armed with binoculars, they would keep a lookout for birds, particularly hornbills. 'For us, the hornbill is one of the most majestic birds we have ever seen. Every time I see this majestic bird in its environment, I'm fascinated. I'm excited to see them,' Behjati says during a recent interview at his office in Sunway University's Faculty of Engineering and Technology. Behjati, an enthusiastic birdwatcher, also knows that these magnificent creatures, like much of the wildlife in Malaysia, are increasingly losing their habitat due to deforestation and other factors. 'So I think, yeah, why not? We use technology to protect these animals. Most of the time, researchers are developing systems to help humans but not many researchers think about other species,' he says. With that in mind, Behjati has come up with a way to help not just his favourite hornbills but also other wildlife species. Using his knowledge of tiny machine learning (TinyML) and edge computing – which brings computing power closer to where the data is generated – he has put together a cost-effective, sustainable device to monitor these birds' presence in the dense Malaysian jungle. This is done by first recording their calls and then identifying the species by comparing those sounds against a database. Anyone who has hiked through our jungles will understand the challenges faced by wildlife researchers trying to identify calls amid the din of the forest, or even spotting a bird, what more with wildlife like hornbills which are shy and occupy the more dense areas of the jungle. The land of hornbills There are 10 species of the birds in Peninsular Malaysia, and eight in Sabah and Sarawak. Although globally there are 57 species of hornbills, Peninsular Malaysia is considered to be a stronghold for Asian hornbill species, trailing only behind Thailand and Indonesia, both of which have 13 species. At some sites, such as the Greater Ulu Muda Forest Complex in Kedah and the Belum-Temengor Forest Complex in Perak, all 10 hornbill species can be found in one spot. The Malaysian species includes the great hornbill, the rhinoceros hornbill, and the rare, frumpy-looking helmeted hornbill, valued by poachers for its heavy casque known as 'red ivory'. Dubbed 'farmers of the forest', hornbills play an important role in dispersing seeds, which is crucial for plant diversity. A study of Asian and New Guinean hornbills by the National University of Singapore in 2024 strongly suggests that large seeds are highly dependent on hornbills for their dispersal. However, deforestation from development has massively impacted the local hornbill population. Besides being ousted from their habitat, many hornbill species need tree cavities in which to nest and raise their young – and trees are disappearing. Behjati, who has worked on various environmental monitoring and protection projects in Malaysia over the past decade – including one at Tasik Chini, Pahang – knows how challenging things can get for researchers. 'In Malaysia's dense rainforests, traditional environmental and wildlife monitoring methods – like manual surveys, remote camera traps, or conventional wireless sensor networks – often fall short. 'These approaches can be expensive, labour-intensive, invasive, and impractical in remote and hard to reach areas,' he points out. But thanks to recent innovations in embedded systems, artificial intelligence (AI), and advanced wireless technologies like 5G and 6G, we now have the essential tools to build low-power, autonomous, and sustainable devices that can 'listen' or 'see' without disturbing or intruding on the environment. 'These intelligent systems can detect animal behaviours, track ecological changes, and deliver real-time insights to researchers – all with minimal human intervention. 'This will empower ecologists, conservationists, and policymakers to make faster, more informed decisions to safeguard endangered ecosystems.' Smart networks Originally from Iran, Behjati has been based in Malaysia for 15 years, lecturing at Sunway with expertise in, among others, wireless communications, nonterrestrial networks, Internet of Things (IoT), edge intelligence, and TinyML. Behjati focuses his research on designing intelligent systems for real-world applications, particularly in the areas of environmental monitoring, smart cities, and digital inclusion. He explains that while most Malaysians would know AI by the popular large language models like ChatGPT, Deepseek, and Gemini that can generate text or images or answer questions, these cannot be applied to real world conservation efforts. 'Why not? Because they are power hungry. They are a centralised system, they rely on Internet connectivity,' he says. While such AI models can be used to implement, say, an air quality monitoring system in Kuala Lumpur where there's telecommunication infrastructure to transmit data captured by sensors to a centralised machine learning system, this is not possible in remote areas where there's no data network or even electricity. The other limitation, says Behjati, is that centralised AI is power hungry, consuming a huge amount of energy to maintain algorithms. 'When it comes to implementing these devices in remote areas, then we need to provide a power source as well. This is very challenging. 'So these limitations are the main reasons that we can't use AI to support conservation efforts,' he says. Behjati with part of the device that will help monitor hornbills in Malaysia's dense, difficult to penetrate jungles. — ONG SOON HIN/The Star But with TinyML, according to Behjati, there's actually a paradigm shift, as it allows AI models to be run directly on ultra small microcontrollers – devices no bigger than a matchbox. Hence the term tiny machine learning. Microcontrollers are small computers on a single integrated circuit chip that are designed for specific tasks. Examples of microcontrollers are the Arduino Nano 33 BLE, which can cost anywhere between RM115 and RM140, a tiny fraction of the cost of a Nvidia AI chip. For Behjati, the hornbill conservation project began with the collection of real-world audio samples of hornbill calls from open source bird sound archives like Xeno-Canto. These recordings were then digitally cleaned up and processed to extract distinct acoustic features using a method called mel-frequency energy, which effectively captures an acoustic 'fingerprint' of each bird's call. 'Next, we trained a lightweight yet powerful AI model – a 1D Convolutional Neural Network – to recognise and classify the calls of five hornbill species: the Oriental pied hornbill, black hornbill, white-crowned hornbill, rhinoceros hornbill, and bushy-crested hornbill. 'After compressing and optimising the model, we deployed it onto the Arduino Nano, a low-power microcontroller equipped with an onboard microphone,' Behjati explains. By bringing intelligence to the 'edge', where data is collected, the system can function independently, detecting, classifying, and recording wildlife activity in real time, without the need for Internet access or external servers. Once installed in the field, the device continuously listens to its surroundings and identifies hornbill calls in real time, without relying on Internet connectivity or cloud processing. Behjati has detailed the research in a paper titled 'Edge Intelligence for Wildlife Conservation: Real-Time Hornbill Call Classification Using TinyML', co-authored with fellow Sunway University researcher Kong Ka Hing, and published in April; it is accessible via the open access repository arXiv, as well as Behjati's blog. Proof of concept Ultimately, Behjati believes that the system he developed is not limited to saving any particular wildlife and can be applied to broader realms of ecological conservation. The first phase of the project, the proof of concept which corresponds to universal Technology Readiness Level 4, has already been successfully completed. In this phase, the system was successfully tested under simulated forest conditions, confirming its technical feasibility and reliability. 'We are now preparing for broader field deployments in collaboration with local conservation groups and ecologists,' he says, adding that they are especially keen to partner with biodiversity researchers and NGOs that are actively involved in hornbill conservation to scale up the initiative. 'Our long-term goal is to establish a network of these intelligent listening nodes across protected forest areas, enabling continuous, real-time monitoring of hornbill activity. 'By developing a solution that is low-cost, energy-efficient, and open to collaboration, we aim to complement and amplify the important work already being done by Malaysia's environmental community, particularly in biodiversity hotspots such as Taman Negara, Bukit Tinggi [in Pahang], and Sabah and Sarawak, where hornbill habitats face increasing threats,' says Behjati. It's about time that smart technology in the field of conservation in Malaysia takes flight.
The Hindu
09-05-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Sharnbasva University students clinch overall championship at Techno Utsav 2025
Students from Sharnbasva University, Kalaburagi, delivered an outstanding performance at Techno Utsav 2025 organised by Lingarajappa Appa Engineering College in Bidar on Thursday emerging as the overall champions of the intercollegiate tech fest. Competing against participants from various engineering colleges, students from the Faculty of Engineering and Technology (Co-Education) of Sharnbasva University secured the top honours in multiple categories, demonstrating their technical prowess and creative skills. Laxmi Bagodi, a fourth-semester student from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (Faculty of Engineering and Technology - Exclusively for Women), won the first prize in the Data Detoxing event. Her department peers Kadambini, Dharneshwari and Bhargavi clinched the first place in the PPT Presentation competition. Meanwhile, students from the Faculty of Engineering and Technology (Co-Education) secured the first prize in Photography and second prizes in Group Singing, Circuit Mania and Paper Presentation on Women Empowerment, contributing significantly to the university's overall championship. Notable winners included Jagadev Reddy, Vineet Biradar, Sunil, Ambaresh and Sangamesh K. whose innovative approach earned them top honours in the Photography category. Suman secured the second place in Circuit Mania, while Shashank Wali, Sri Giri, and Savita earned the second place for their paper presentation on Women Empowerment. In Group Singing, Sangamesh and Sai Chetan brought home the second prize. Awards were distributed during a vibrant valedictory ceremony held at the host college on Thursday evening. The event was attended by secretary of the Sharanabasaveshwar Vidya Vardhak Sangha Basavaraj Deshmukh, vice-chancellor of Sharnbasva University Anilkumar Bidve and other dignitaries. The eighth Peetadhipathi of Sharanabasaveshwar Samsthan and Chancellor of Sharnbasva University Sharnbaswappa Appa, chairperson of the Sharanabasaveshwar Vidya Vardhak Sangha Dakshayini Avva and Dean Lakshmi Patil Maka have congratulated the students for their commendable achievement.
