Newsletter August 2012

The Office of International Relations

In this issue:

• Live Music Concert by ‘Trio

Arteo’ from France

• Special lecture series in Engi-neering-2012

• Paper presentation at Interna-tional Conference , University of Dundee, UK

• Faculty attends International Conference at Belgrade

• Faculty’s Academic visit to Norway

• Faculty’s visit to Colorado School of Mines

• International Workshop in SMBS

• Special lectures on Cancer Genetics by faculty from NUS

• Guest Lecture by faculty from Univ. of Cambridge,U.K

• Guest lecture by Faculty, Uni-versity of Tours, France

• Presentation on Twinning pro-grammes between QUT & VIT

• Paper presentation by stu-dents of SMBS

• Chinese Language Centre at Pincushion Mont. Intl. School

• Valedictory function

• Internship at SELECT

• Welcome Student Interns

• Welcome new batch of Chi-nese students

• International Activities at VIT Chennai Campus

• Presidential Award for excel-lence in Scholarship

• MoU Signed

Dear Friends, Greetings! We are happy to get in touch with you once again through this News-letter. This issue is quite exhaustive in the range of activities as well as the quality of events. Activities from Chennai campus have also been included in this issue and will be a regular feature henceforth. As always we welcome your suggestions and feedback on the newsletter. With best regards, Team IR

Live Music Concert by ‘Trio Arteo’ from France: The Ranganathan trio, comprising of three brothers Ajay, Ravi and

Theo had their initial classical music training at the Conservatory of

Tours in France, under the expertise of Mr. Xavier Richard and more

recently, Mr. Vincent Lecoq of the famous Trio Wanderer.

They were awarded the first prize that was unanimously decided by the

Jury in 2009 at the regional conservatory. They had earlier performed

in France, Poland, Germany, UK and India.

We were privileged to have the ‘Trio Arteo’ put up a live music concert

at the Anna Auditorium from 6.00 to 8.00 P.M on Thursday, August 02,

2012.

“To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that  respects and enhances the freedom of others”. ………...Nelson Mandela 

Special Lecture Series in Engineering-2012: Special lecture series in Engineering in the School of Mechanical and Building Sci-

ences (SMBS), School of Electrical Engineering (SELECT) and in the field of Biomedi-

cal Engineering, School of Bio-Sciences and Technology (SBST) were organized by

faculty from Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany and Universidad Popular Autó-

noma de Estado de Puebla, Mexico, from 07 to 10 August, 2012.

• Prof. Dr. Casimiro Gomez from Universidad Popular Autónoma de Estado de Pue-

bla, Mexico lectured on the topics ‘Dynamic Models’ and ‘State-Space Design’ to

the students of SMBS on 07 August.

• Prof. Dr. Marius Bonhage, Institute of Dynamics and Vibration Research,Leibniz

Universität, Hannover, Germany lectured on the topic ‘Introduction to Rotor Dy-

namics’ to the students of SMBS on 07 August.

• Prof. Dr. Amos Albert, Institut für Regelungstechnik, Hannover, Germany lec-

tured on the topics ’Internal Model Control’ and ’Introduction to Digital Control’

to the students of SELECT on 09 August.

• Prof. Dr. Birgit Glasmacher, Institut für Mehrphasenprozesse, Leibniz Universität, Han-

nover, Germany lectured on the topic ‘The Human Bioreactor– Introduction to Medical

Process Engineering’ and ‘Life in the Frozen State’ to the students of Biomedical Engineer-

ing in SBST on 10 August.

“ Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes”.                                                                                                              …………………….Mahatma Gandhi 

Paper presentation at International Conference, University of Dundee, U.K: Prof. Dr. G. Mohan Ganesh presented two

papers titled “ Strength and Durability

of High Calcium Fly Ash in High Vol-

ume Fly Ash Concrete (HVFAC)” and

“Microbial Concrete by Partly Replac-

ing Fine Aggregate with Rice Husk” at

the International Conference held at Uni-

versity of Dundee, Scotland, UK, from

09th to 11th July 2012

Prof. Dr. Mohan Ganesh (second from left) with other delegates at the conference

Faculty attends International Conference at Belgrade, Serbia: Prof. Dr. Sunil Bhat, School of Mechanical and Building Sciences, attended the first

International Conference on Damage Mechanics that was held at Belgrade, Serbia

from 25th -27th June, 2012.

Faculty’s Academic visit to Norway: Prof. Dr. Rajam C., School of Bio-Sciences and Technology, attended the course on “Holistic Foundations for Assessment and Regulation of Genetic Engineering and Genetically Modified Organisms” held at the University of Tromso, Tromso, Norway from 29 July to 10 August, 2012.

The course consisted of 70 hours of lec-tures by eminent scientists and policy makers from different parts of the world, guided discussions and 16 hours of labo-ratory exercises. There were 40 participants from all over the world.

The course provided her new insights into risk assessment and management for GMOs and information about different bio-safety regulations that are followed in dif-ferent countries.

“Conformity is the Jailor of freedom and the enemy of growth”. ……….John F.Kennedy 

Prof. Dr. Rajam C. sharing a lighter moment with other participants of the programme

Faculty’s visit to Colorado School of Mines, Colorado, USA: Dr M Nageswara Rao, Senior Professor Emeritus, School of Mechanical and Building

Sciences, visited the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering (MME)

at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM), Golden, Colorado, USA on 21st June 2012.

This was in continuation of his visit last

year to CSM.

He met Dr Michael Kaufman, Head of

the Department of Metallurgical and

Materials Engineering and Head, Center

for Advanced Non-Ferrous Structural

Alloys (CANFSA), CSM and had detailed

interaction with him and his research

scholars on R&D activities going on at

VIT University and MME at CSM in the

area of aluminum alloys.

It was noticed that there were common

areas of interest and that it would be rewarding to identify subjects for collaborative

research. It was agreed that as a starting point in this direction, CSM would supple-

ment the studies carried out by VIT University with regard to structural analysis us-

ing the sophisticated analytical instruments that MME was in possession of in its

Electron Microscopy Laboratory. Samples would be dispatched from VIT University

for undertaking the studies at MME.

Seen from the left are Dr M Nageswara Rao, VIT University, Joseph Tsai from Taiwan and Ellen Verkler from USA (Research Scholars working in the area of aluminum alloys) and Dr Michael Kaufman, Head of the MME Department and CANFSA at CSM.

International Workshop in SMBS: CO2 Research and Green Technologies

Centre, Energy Division and the School

of Mechanical and Building Sciences

(SMBS) of the VIT University in associa-

tion with the University of Ontario Insti-

tute of Technology (UOIT), Canada or-

ganized a two-day International Work-

shop on ‘Challenges and Prospects in

Power Generation Systems Using

Biomass’ to provide a platform for a

fruitful discourse and deliberations in the

emerging areas of power generation us-

ing biomass on 27th & 28th July, 2012.

Hon’ble Chancellor, Dr. G. Viswanathan

released the workshop proceedings at

the inauguration. In his inaugural ad-

dress, he urged the governments to en-

courage private investment in power

generation to meet the power needs of

the population. Dr. B.V. Reddy, Profes-

sor, University of Ontario Institute of

Technology, Canada, said that while the

total power generation in India today

was 1.4 lakh MW, it is predicted that the country’s power requirements would be tri-

pled in the next 20 years. The focus must be to get power in a cost-effective and

environment-friendly manner.

Shri.Sankar Viswanathan, Vice-President (Admin.) , Shri G.V. Sampath, Vice-

Presidents (Operations) , Shri. Sekar Viswanathan, Vice-President (University Af-

fairs) and Prof. Dr. S. Narayanan, Pro-Vice-Chancellor were also present and spoke

on the occasion.

“ He who has overcome his fears will truly be free”.                ………..Aristotle 

Lighting of the kuthu vilakku at the inauguration

Releasing the international workshop proceedings

Special lectures on Cancer Genetics by Faculty of NUS, Singapore: Prof. Dr. Prakash Hande, National University of Singapore,

delivered a series of special lectures on topics as “Genome

Instability” and “Research Ethics” to the students of II

M.Sc. Biomedical Genetics from 26 to 30 July, 2012.

Dr. Prakash Hande during

the course of his lecture

Guest Lecture by Faculty, University of Cambridge, UK:

Dr. Ashok R. Venkitaraman FMedSci, The Ursula Zoellner Professor of Cancer Re-

search and Director, Medical Research Council Cancer Cell Unit, Department of On-

cology, University of Cambridge, UK visited VIT and delivered a talk on “Engineering

new approaches for the discovery and development of anti-cancer therapies” and

interacted with faculty and students.

Professor Dr. Ashok, who has been appointed this year as the inaugural Jubilee Pro-

fessor of the Indian Academy of Sciences, visited VIT on 10th August 2012 to sup-

port the Indian Academy of Science’s aims of promoting the progress and upholding

the cause of science throughout the country. He had discussions with Hon’ble Chan-

cellor, Vice Chancellor, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Director SBST. The programme was

coordinated by Dr. Radha Saraswathy, SBST.

Guest Lecture by Faculty, University of Tours, France:

Prof. Dr. N. Ranganathan, Director, Laboratory of Mechanics and Reheology, Francis

Rabelais De Tours, France, delivered lectures on the topics “High Cycle Fatigue

Analysis of Aerospace Alloys” to the Faculty and Students of the School of Mechani-

cal and Building Sciences on 02 August, 2012.

“Freedom lies not in doing what we like , but in having the right to do what we ought”.                                                                                           …………………………...Pope John Paul‐II 

Presentation on Twinning Programmes Offered between Queensland Uni-versity of Technology (QUT), Australia and VIT University: Dr. James Hogan, Professor and Ms. Patricia

Martinez, International Marketing Manager,

Faculty of Science and Engineering, Queen-

sland University of Technology, Australia in-

teracted with the Directors, Faculty and Stu-

dents of SCSE, SMBS and SELECT and enlight-

ened them on the Twinning Programmes of-

fered between VIT University and QUT at the

B.Tech. level in areas as Civil, Mechanical,

Computer Science and Electrical and Electron-

ics Engineering.

Hon’ble Chancellor with Delegates from QUT and IR officials

Paper Presentation by Students of SMBS: Two students from the School of Mechanical

and Building Sciences, Mr. Nikhil Bhatia

(11BCL0104) and Mr. Swetank Pandey

(10BCL0114) presented their work at the Asia

Oceania Geosciences Society & American Geo-

physical Union Joint Assembly in Singapore.

Nikhil presented his paper titled “ANN based

interval forecast for rainfall-runoff model” while

Swetank presented his paper titled “Prediction

of ground water level using support vector ma-

chine” in that conference. Both of them worked

under the guidance of Dr Roshan K Srivastav,

Associate Professor in the Division of Environ-

mental, Water Resources and Transportation

Engineering in SMBS.

Paper presentation by Nikhil Bhatia (Above) and Swetank Pandey (Below)

“ Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves”.                                                                                                          ………...Abraham Lincoln 

Chinese Language Centre at Pincushion Montessori International School, Vellore:

The Chinese Language Center (CLC) started classroom-3 at Pincushion Montessori Interna-tional School in Gandhi Nagar, Vellore on 20 Au-gust 2012. Thirty students were selected for this programme. These students would be taught Chinese Language, Art and Culture and be coached for the ‘YCT’ (Chinese Proficiency Test).

Mr.Subaji, Foreign Director, CLC took the initia-tive to start Classroom-3. The classroom was inaugurated by Ms. Aarthi Murali, Director of the School in the presence of Dr.Sun Peng, Chinese Director, CLC and Prof.J.Karthikeyan, Program Coordinator, CLC.

Through this classroom programmess for school teachers will be organised in near future. Two classrooms are currently functioning at VIT Uni-versity Vellore Campus and VIT University Chen-nai campus.

A time of class-room activity at the CLC Pincushion Montessori International School

Welcome New Batch of Chinese Students: The Office of International Relations, VIT University extends a Hearty Welcome to

the new batch of 71 Chinese students (55 Men and 16 lady) from our partner Uni-

versities in China (Wuhan University and Xianning University), who arrived here on

16 August 2012.

They are here as regular students into a 2+2 programme in B.Com. (Computer Ap-

plications), B.Sc. (Computer Science) and B.Sc. (Animation and Multi-media).

“When you discover who you are, you will be free”. ………………...Ralph Ellison 

Welcome Student Interns:

The Office of International Relations, VIT University extends a Hearty Welcome to

Ms. Bettina Papadopoulos and Mr. Nicolas Thebaud from Fontys University of Applied

Sciences, Netherlands who are here on a three-month Internship programme in VIT-

Business School from 24 August to 30 November, 2012.

Veledictory Function for students from University of Cologne, Germany and students from UESTC, China: A Valedictory function was organized on Wednes-

day,01 August for the students of Summer School

Programme from the University of Cologne, Ger-

many. Our Hon’ble Chancellor addressed the stu-

dents and distributed their certificates.

The students left on

a two day visit to

VIT Chennai cam-

pus before their de-

parture to Germany.

A Valedictory function was organized for the Intern-

ship students of UESTC, China on 23 August at the

IR Office. Dr.V. Raju, Vice-chancellor, addressed

the students and distributed their certificates.

Hon’ble Chancellor distributing cer-tificates to students, University of Cologne, Germany

Vice Chancellor distributing certificates to the UESTC Interns

Internship at SELECT for student from ESIGELEC, France: Miss. GOUBET Lucie, a student of ESIGELEC from

France arrived in VIT University on 3rd, June, 2012 for

three month’s Internship Program. She worked on a

project titled ‘SERIES COMPENSATION ON TRANSMIS-

SION LINE NETWORK’ in the School of Electrical Engi-

neering under the guidance of Prof. S. Meikandasivam and Prof. D. Vijayakumar.

Ms. GOUBET Lucie in the Lab.

Paper presentation at International Conference, Hong Kong: The paper titled “A New Technique of Embedding Multigrain Parallel HPRC in

or1200 a Soft-Core Processor by Prof.

Maheswari.R and Prof. Pattabiraman.V’ -VIT

University Chennai Campus, India was pre-

sented at the International Conference on Ma-

chine Learning and Computing (ICMLC) -

2012, Hong Kong on March 11-12 2012.

ICMLC 2012 is organized by International As-

sociation of Computer Science and Informa-

tion Technology (IACSIT). The outcome of

the conference explored multi-disciplinary,

inter-disciplinary areas of Machine learning and Computing both inward and outward

research. All the accepted paper got included in the ASME digital library and in-

dexed by Ei Compendex and Thomson ISI proceedings.

“ If there is everyone thinking alike, then there is no one thinking”.                                                                                                         ……………..Benjamin Franklin 

International Activities at VIT-Chennai Campus Faculty from University of Massachusetts visits VIT-BS, Chennai campus: Dr. Angappa Gunasekaran, Professor and

Chairperson of Department of Decision and

Information Sciences, University of Massa-

chusetts – North Dartmouth, USA visited VIT

Chennai on 14th August, 2012.

He delivered a lecture on "The Future of Op-

erations Management: An Outlook and Analy-

sis". The lecture was based on a global re-

search done by him on the same topic. Dr. Angappa Gunasekaran during the course of his lecture

Special Lecture by Faculty from Universidad Popular Autónoma de Estado de Puebla, Mexico:

Prof. Dr. Casimiro Gomez from Universidad Popular Autónoma de Estado de Puebla,

Mexico visited VIT Chennai campus on 16 and 17 August. He held a discussion on

Academics with the Director and Faculty of SMBS.

He lectured on the topics ‘Dynamic Models’ and ‘State-Space Design’ to the students

of SMBS.

The ICMLC 2012 in progress

Introduction to HSK Exam at VIT Chennai Campus: Chinese Language Center (CLC) classroom-2 organized a special program on

“Introduction to HSK exams”. Prof. Saradha Rajkumar faculty coordinator CLC,

Chennai Campus delivered keynote speech on need for international certification in

Chinese & Opportunities for Indian students with Chinese knowledge in MNC’s.

Prof.J.Karthikeyan, Program Coordinator, CLC explained about different levels in

HSK exams and how to go about it. Dr.Sun Peng, Chinese Director, CLC gave infor-

mation regarding the need for additional training for HSK exams. 300 students have

registered for Basis Chinese course in Chennai Campus (CLC, Classroom-2).

“No one can be at peace unless he enjoys freedom”. …………………………...Malcolm.X 

Summer Internship at Dublin City University, Ireland:

Mr. Sohit Chhabra (10BME1094), Mr. Zeon Trevor Fernando (10BCE1113) from the

VIT -Chennai campus and Ms. Priyanka Sadananda(09BEC043) from VIT-Vellore

campus had been to Dublin City University, Dublin Ireland for 7 weeks, starting

28th May 2012, to undertake summer internship. This was partly sponsored by

Dublin City University.

Students of Summer School from the University of Cologne visit VIT-Chennai campus: Seven students from University of Cologne

Germany who were attending a Summer

School Programme at VIT University, Vellore

visited the VIT- Chennai Campus on 2nd Au-

gust 2012.

The Director Dr. Kalyani Rangarajan

introduced VIT Chennai to the visiting stu-

dents. This was followed by a faculty interac-

tion and a group discussion with the 12 selected VIT Chennai students who would be

visiting University of Cologne in October 2012.

Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarship: Shashank Sriram from School of Mechanical and Building Sciences, whose area of

interest was Industrial Engineering and Quality Management had been to the West

Virginia University, USA for the Semester Abroad Programme.

In recognition of his achievement in earning a perfect 4.0 Grade Point Average for

the Spring Term, 2012, he was given a certificate for the Presidential Award for Ex-

cellence in Scholarship.

Students engrossed in a discussion

MoUs Signed:

VIT University

• Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with University of Applied Sciences,

Ingolstadt, Germany (HI) on 08 August, 2012

• Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Brain Korea 21 Education Pro-

gram foe Environmental Informatics and Center for Environmental Studies,

Kyung Hee University, Korea on 23 August, 2012.

• Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with University of Technology, Sydney,

Australia on 28 August, 2012.

“Freedom is the best road to progress”. ………...John F. Kennedy