MU reschedules 76 examinations

REGULAR FINAL EXAMINATIONS OF MOST SELF-FINANCED COURSES WILL NOW BEGIN ON MAY 2

MUMBAI: The University of Mumbai (MU) has rescheduled 76 semester examinations, including final BCom tests and most self-financed commerce courses, and few papers of 27 examinations, to avoid a clash with next month’s Lok Sabha elections.

The 76 examinations, which include sixth-semester exams of BMS, BCom (Accounting and Finance) and BCom (Banking and Insurance), have been entirely pushed ahead by a few days.

Some papers of the other 27 examinations, including sixth-semester BCom examinations, will be held on different dates, which are yet to be announced.

“The university has tried to make minimal changes,” said Vinod Patil, director, examination and evaluation board.

The four phases of general elections on April 11, 18 and 23 and 29 are set to overlap with MU’s examination schedule.

With the colleges doubling up as the examination and polling centres, and teachers assigned various election duties, the university has decided to move all the major papers being held on the polling days as well as the days preceding and following them.

The regular final examinations of most of the self-financed courses, which were to start on April 22, will now begin on May 2.

“The university should have ensured that all the examinations end on April 30 — the last day of the term. The teachers will now have to be requested to work during summer vacations. The academic calendar won’t be affected if the date of commencement of the next term is not extended beyond June 11,” said Asgar Lakdawala, principal, Royal College, Bhayander.

However, Gopal Kalkolti, principal, MV Mandali’s College, Andheri, said, “The revised schedule may delay results and admissions to post-graduation courses to some extent.”

Source: Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition) e paper dated 20 March, 2019

Move IST ahead by 30 mins, save 3.5 billion units of energy: Scientists

Two time zones will create a divide between the eastern parts of India and the rest of the country. Our proposal for advancing the clock will not force people to change their schedules or habits. DP SENGUPTA, Retd professor, Indian Institute of Science

MUMBAI: The country can save 3.5 billion units of electricity every year if the Indian Standard Time (IST) is advanced by 30 minutes, two senior Indian scientists who first proposed the idea of a timezone shift a decade ago said on Monday.

At present, India is five-andhalf hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and among few nations with a fractional shift — in minutes — from GMT. Most countries add or subtract hours from GMT to create their standard time zones.

In 1884, India had two time zones – Bombay time and Calcutta time. On January 1, 1906, British India adopted IST of fiveand-half hours ahead of GMT. Only the Assam tea gardens operate one hour ahead of IST (chai bagan time).

Retired professors DP Sengupta from the Indian Institute of Science and Dilip Ahuja from the National Institute of Advanced Studies (both based in Bengaluru) in a 2009 study funded by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency had recommended advancing the IST by 30 minutes to obtain energy and non-energy gains. They estimated India would save an estimated 2.1 billion units of electricity every year or 0.3% of the annual consumption of 750 billion units.

For 2019, the duo has said if IST is made six hours ahead of GMT, India can save 3.5 billion units from the annual 1,200 billion units of electricity consumed. According to their study, there will be a saving of 17-18% during peak energy time, such as during evenings when there is a lot of power demand.

“India is investing heavily in rural electrification, and therefore energy demands will also increase in the future. With most of the electricity requirements met by thermal power plants, a one-time advancement of 30 minutes will save us from burning coal to produce 3.5 billion units every year,” said Sengupta during a talk at the Observer Research Foundation.

The scientists are opposed to the idea of implementing daylight savings twice a year as is followed in Western countries or two time zones for India as recently recommended by the National Physical Laboratory. “Two time zones will create a divide between the eastern parts of India and the rest of the country, and lead to confusion in travel schedules. Our proposal for advancing the clock will not force people to change their schedules or habits,” said Ahuja.

Five Asian countries that have implemented one-time advancement in their clocks are China, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.

Despite making several presentations to various government departments and bodies between 2010 and 2014 and getting letters of endorsement on their proposal, nothing has happened.

“Governments and policymakers have shrugged their shoulders and moved on. We need individual states on board as stakeholders,” said Sengupta.

Source: Hindustan Times (Mumbai) e-paper dated 20 March, 2019

India Innovation Growth Programme 2.0

The India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP) 2.0 is a unique tripartite initiative of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, Lockheed Martin and Tata Trusts.

Supporting the Government of India’s missions of “Start-up India” and “Make in India”, IIGP 2.0 enhances the Indian innovation ecosystem by enabling innovators and entrepreneurs through the stages of ideation and innovation, to develop technology-based solutions for tomorrow.

Complemented by several implementation partners, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay; the programme aims to build an innovation pipeline in India through a high-impact programme focused on the social and industrial innovation ecosystem.

Launched in 2007, India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP) has been one of India’s longest standing public-private partners. The programme has provided mentoring and handholding assistance to over 400 innovators coming from diverse sectors from across the country; generated over 350 commercial agreements and over $900 Million of economic value for India. (Source: Second Impact Analysis Report by Ernst & Young in 2015).

Through two annual parallel tracks viz. University Challenge and Open Innovation Challenge, IIGP 2.0 identifies and supports both industrial and social innovations through:

• Phase A: Ideation
• Phase B: Innovation

To read more and register, please visit:

http://www.indiainnovates.in/abouttheprogram.aspx (Accessed on 20 March, 2019)

The big deal

ON OFFER Students graduating from the Arts, Commerce and Science streams are being offered hefty starting salaries in campus placements. The big selling points, say companies, are their soft skills and analtyical capabilities

There’s a rapidly growing number of positions that require data crunching or analysis, for which students from maths, statistics and economics backgrounds are well-equipped. DEVASHISH SHARMA, founding member of HR consultancy PeopleStrong

It’s not just engineering, management and law. Highly paid campus placements offers are now being made in fields beyond the professional and technical courses, to students graduating in arts, science and commerce too.

ISTOCK

This year, a final-year Economics student at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College received a salary offer of Rs 38 lakh (all salary figures are per annum); last year a Commerce student from Sriram College of Commerce (SRCC) got a starting offer of Rs 31 lakh. In Mumbai, arts and commerce students got offers averaging Rs 6 lakh, with the highest going up to Rs 19 lakh.

Companies are offering better packages because they would rather hire young people who are easy to train than experienced people who need to unlearn practices and come with a higher price tag, says Smita Sharma, placement advisor at SRCC.

Another big draw is the fact that these students tend to be equipped with good soft skills.

The average engineering student, for instance, is less likely to have good communication skills, says Devashish Sharma, founding member of India’s largest HR Technology and Talent Acquisition solutions company PeopleStrong. “There’s a rapidly growing number of positions that require data crunching or analysis, for which students from maths, statistics and economics backgrounds are well-equipped,” says Soni George, placement convener at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. “Students from other departments are also eligible to apply for these. We have had students from life sciences take up analyst jobs too.”

At both Xavier’s and SRCC, campus recruitment picked up around 2004-2005 and has been growing steadily since. “This year, we added 20 more companies. Some startups have started coming to campus too. Though they don’t offer huge pay packages, they do offer a lot of exposure,” says Smita Sharma, placement advisor at SRCC.

The brighter job prospects in these subjects have now allowed more students to choose freely when it comes to picking a stream. “I chose economics because I really wanted to study the subject. I did not even know whether I wanted to do a job right after college or not,” says Yashovat Saharia, who graduated from SRCC in 2017. He received among the highest salary offers of his year, according to his college, and has worked with that company, Parthenon EY, ever since.

Saharia says he doesn’t plan to study economics further but he’s glad he picked it to begin with. “I now firmly believe that one should study the subject one likes and not look for one with ‘better job prospects’ because it gives you a strong foundation when you specialise in one field,” he says. At Parthenon EY, his job is that of a senior associate; it involves crunching data to explain to companies why a deal or acquisitions is or isn’t a good idea. “My background in economics and my grooming in presentations made me both good with numbers and capable of communicating what those numbers say, effectively,” Saharia says. Economics has been on the top of recruiters preference for a long time but now recruitments in good honours courses in both sciences and humanities have a lot of takers too, says Sharma of PeopleStrong. “Whereas campus recruitment for general science courses are increasing in fields like pharmaceuticals and chemical research, in the humanities and social sciences there is a rise in recruitment from among psychology students, by corporates and institutions like hospitals and schools. Also, the services side of new age Internet companies are employing humanities graduates with good communication skills in their customer support teams,” Sharma adds.

Source: Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition) e paper dated 20 March, 2019.

Usage Statistics of SFIT LIRC

Prakalp 2019 at SFIT

Department of Computer Engineering, SFIT presents the most awaited competition of the year !!

Prakalp-2019 is an Inter-college Project Competition being held successively for the 2nd year. This competition provides a platform for final year students of Computer, Information Technology, Electronics and Telecommunication Departments to exhibit their final year projects.

REGISTRATIONS ARE NOW OPEN!!

Venue : St. Francis Institute of Technology (Borivali West), Mumbai.

Date : 30th March 2019

PRAGATI 2019 AT SFIT WINNERS

Technical Competition:

1st Winner: Complete the incomplete (Vidyavardhini's College of Engineering and Technology)
Sanchitsagar Singh
Shreyans Gosalia
Aditya Manze
Sushmita Mahajan

2nd Winner: Ground Surveillance Rover (Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering)
Raj Gandhi
Aniket Jadhav
Tushar Jadhav
Shivraj Jadhav

3rd Winner: Case Link (St. Francis Institute of Technology)
Ritika Bhole
Manas Acharya
Sahil Nirkhe
Dwayne Fernandes
Sanket Dalvi


Business Plan:
1st Winner: Blue (St. Francis Institute of Technology)
Trilok Dattajirao Sawant
Aakash Ashok Salunke

2nd Winner: Besto
Sarang Jitendra Bora

(Inputs by Dr. Prachi Raut, E-Cell Convener)