Sri Ramakrishna Engg College, Coimbatore Emerge Winners at the LT TS's TECHgium 2018

L&T Technology Services Limited , a leading global pure-play Engineering R&D Services company today announced the winners of the second edition of its unique industry academia initiative TECHgium. Covering hundreds of engineering colleges across the country, including several top tier engineering institutes, TECHgium is a first of its kind initiative in India to scout for and recognize the best of engineering talent among the fresher community.

TECHgium ushers in a new generation of engineers with skills and capabilities that the industry covets. The initiative is aimed at imparting engineering students with relevant exposure to the challenges and practical insights for Industry 4.0. TECHgium will also help create an ecosystem that bridges the industry-academia schism by facilitating the participants with an opportunity to work on technologies of tomorrow and enhance their career prospects and simultaneously augment the solution development team of LTTS. 

LTTS invested over 100 working hours to mentor students shortlisted for the PoC round, with subject matter experts from respective industry domains mentoring the students. As a result, the winning teams came up with remarkable solutions around IoT, Machine Learning, Advanced Image Processing and Smart Tools.

The team from Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College, Coimbatore were declared as winners for developing a mechanism for wide angle viewing for diagnostic hysteroscopy products. The students of National Institute of Engineering, Mysore won the second prize for creating a variable valve timing mechanism for internal combustion engine.  The winner of the third prize went to the team from Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College, Pondicherry for their work on Smart tools and integration with IoT platforms. A special prize was awarded to the students of Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology, Aligarh for devising a Multi-camera Multi Target Visual Tracking System.

Some of the other noteworthy POCs demonstrated at TECHgium include active noise cancellation for automobile mufflers submitted by the students of IIT Madras that caters to the Transportation & Commercial Vehicles domain and Artificial Intelligence framework for Microgrids for Industrial Products submitted by the students of VIT University.

The winners of TECHgium were selected by a distinguished jury of industry experts including K.S. Viswanathan, Vice President NASSCOM, Dr. Ranganath Navalgund, Honorary Professor, ISRO and Ganapathiraman, Country Manager, ARC India.

Dr. Keshab Panda, CEO & Managing Director, L&T Technology Services Limited said, “India has always been the nation of innovators and pioneers and the kind of engineering talent that can be brought to light here is unparalleled. TECHgium is our ode to the great Indian engineering potential and we are confident that this initiative will be instrumental in providing the right stimulus to the enormous academic potential of the country. The success of TECHgium would be immensely helpful in LTTS’ endeavor to propel innovation, bridge industry-academia gap as well as solve myriad engineering challenges and help in building digital skillsets among today’s youth.”

K.S. Viswanathan, Vice President – Industry Initiatives, NASSCOM commented “Across the whole spectrum of the industry, skill profiles are undergoing rapid changes witnessing a rising demand for enhanced digital capabilities. India has enormous pool of fresh talents propelled by innovative thinking and attitude to build solutions in key sectors where technology can play a revolutionary role. We are extremely hopeful that initiatives brought out by TECHgium will play an instrumental role in mentoring academic talents in the country, propel innovation in bringing technological empowerment to solve complex industrial problems in the country.”

The second edition of TECHgium received a record-breaking participation from over 17,000 students across 220 engineering colleges signing up for the event. The platform gave aspiring engineering students an opportunity to create concepts, submit abstracts, present technical presentation and showcase Proof of Concept (PoC) on real life technical challenges. Some of the challenges included Machine Learning Platform for Video Analytics for elevators, Augmented/Assisted Reality applications for industrial customers, Video analytics tool for detecting human intentions and Reduction of Emission from Automobiles among others.