3-day knowledge carnival begins at VIT
The tenth edition of the annual event ‘GraVITas’ began on October 12
VELLORE: One of the biggest festivals in educational institutions in India – GraVITas, the annual technical and management festival and knowledge carnival began at Vellore Institute of Technology on October 12. P Ravichandran Purushothaman, President of Danfoss India inaugurated the three-day event and Mohamed Maliki, Morrocan Amabassodor to India was the guest of honour. Dr G Viswanathan, Founder and Chancellor of VIT handed over the Young Achievers Award.
The annual event, is a platform for students of engineering and management to demonstrate their capabilities. GraVITas'19, the tenth edition, will be held till Sunday. On the occasion, Dr Viswanathan handed over the Young Achievers' Award to J Kishore Patel and Santhosh Kaveri, VIT students and also released a special edition of a souvenir to mark the inauguration of graVITas '18.
Address the gathering on the occasion, Dr Viswanathan said that graVITas served as a platform for students to carry out research and make new inventions in the areas of agriculture, industrial sector, and management and service sectors.
Through this, VIT was serving the cause of the country's development as well as welfare of the society. He said that last year, VIT stood first for publishing scientific papers.
In his address, Maliki said that the theme of graVITas this year was technologies for non-technologists and welcomed this initiative.
He said that Morocco was the world leader in the production of chemicals and fertilisers and world renowned companies were operating there. The Moroccan University was among the oldest in the world, he mentioned adding, they gave a lot of importance to generation of solar power. He said that 40 per cent of the total power generated in Moroco was through renewable solar power. Stating that agriculture was one of the most important sectors, he lauded VIT for giving importance to agriculture.
Purushothaman presented a cheque of Rs two lakh to VIT student Mary Sebastian for the best project report. In his address, he said that research and inventions were the most important objectives of engineers. Most of the countries in the world were facing several challenges towards growth and development, especially in the industrial and agricultural sectors. He pointed out that while production was in one place, the beneficiaries were situated elsewhere and it took a lot of time and money for beneficiaries to receive the produce. If this had to change, it was the role of engineers to devise new methods to set right this problem.
The President of Danfoss India said that the country faced a severe water scarcity and most of the rivers in the country were highly contaminated and there is a need for a plan to rid this contamination. While on the one hand, there were problems caused by flooding, elsewhere people faced acute water scarcity. Purushothaman said that Danfoss India was implementing a lot of projects with the student community and this included cash rewards for the best projects.
GEEDS India Mechanical R&D Director, at Valeo IndiaJaji Vijayaraman, G V Selvam, Vice President of VIT, Anand A Samuel, Vice Chancellor, Pro Vice Chancellor S.Narayanan, graVITas Convenor Devendranath Ram Kumar, Rishita Koneru, Students Convenor and Shashank, student, also spoke on the occasion.
More than 15,000 students from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, Rwanda, United Arab Emirates, France, Japan and United States of America are taking part in the three-day event. In addition to 125 events, over 40 workshops and lecture demonstrations will be held over the course of three days.
A unique feature of graVITas is that one of the components of the knowledge carnival and technical, management festival is the International conference on innovative and emerging technologies for farming, environment and environment – water.
Over 100 project reports and research papers will be presented for evaluation. Competitions on robowars, robotic challenge, remote control will also be held.
A total grand prize of Rs. 15 lakh will be handed over to the winners. Jahwan Ahmed, leading Scientist in the Ministry of Defence will take part in the valedictory function on Sunday and hand over prizes to the winning students.
