Electric Make-a-Thon, an enthralling technical extravaganza focused on harnessing the creativity and innovation of students in a convention transcending way, was organized by the SELECT department on 11th and 12th March 2016.
It was a first such event of its kind in India – only two such events have taken place over the world, one organized by Ohio state university and other by Caltech University in the United States. This event was convened by Dr. Hemamalini S., mentored by Prof. P Sasipriya and coordinated by students Aditya Sood and Akshay Parihar. The 24-hour event saw 130 student groups compete with each other over problems in the field of electrical, electronics and web development.

The event began on 11-03-2016 with a welcome address by Program Chair Dr. M.Prabhakar, who encouraged students to think and innovate to take science and technology to the next level. Akshay Parihar highlighted the goals of VOLOC (VITC OnLine Open Courseware) and Electric Make-a-Thon. With this, problems were given to the 4-member students groups, which they had to solve in 24 hours. All participants were assisted in their task by organizers and volunteers with the support of the faculty members. The competition was a very healthy one.

As students brainstormed together, the volunteers ensured that the energy remained high throughout by playing music and organizing group activities for students to refresh them. Food stalls set up by Ifake provided a regular supply of food and drinks. There was also an electronics store set up by Ajanta. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were also arranged for the participants.

The next day, participants had to submit their solutions for preliminary evaluation by VOLOC student organizers and department heads. Final evaluation was done by the event’s Distinguished Chief Guest Mr Krishna Moorthy, Associate director, Cognizant, who applauded the effort of the organizers and the ingenuity of the participants. He also complimented the students on completing such herculean tasks in just one day proving how much can be achieved if we put our hearts and minds to it. Further, he encouraged organisation of such events in future. The event was officially closed with a vote of thanks by Aditya Sood.

B.Tech. 3rd year and 2nd year students – Mudit Agarwal, Aryan Adhikari, Anshu Anand, Rohit anand had won first prize in Formula Green, an Electric Car race, organised by Indian Society of New Era Engineers in February 2016.

The team “Road Runners” represented VIT, Chennai in the competition “2016 edition of the JK Tyre BAJA Student India and Formula Student India” organized by the Baja Student India. The competition held at Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida between 22nd January and 26th January, 2016. Over 4 days of a series of static and dynamics events, all the teams were put under technical scrutiny. The Road Runners finished the static event first in the Technical Inspection and Brakes Test. On 24th and 25th January, 2016, the team climbed the podium three times, securing 3rd place in all the dynamic events including Acceleration, Weight pull and Maneuverability events. The Road Runners scored 7th place in the endurance run by completing 27 laps in 4 straight hours. Overall, the team achieved the 2nd prize out of the 50 teams participated. Ashish Prem and Rishabh Pulera, B.Tech. students of SELECT are part of the Road Runners team.

B.Tech. Final year Students, Manisha Mishra and Archana Santhanakrishnan presented a paper titled “Optimum Coordination of overcurrent relays using Dual Simplex and improved harmony search algorithms” in the International Conference on Communication, Information Technology and Robotics (ICCITR) at Dubai in the month of August, 2015.

Few students presented papers at International Symposium of Information and Internet Technology (SYMINTECH) on 26th to 28th January 2016 in Malaysia. Their details are given below.
The paper on Hybrid Prims-Johnson’s algorithm for Shortest Path Identification in Reconfigurable Micro-grid was presented by Tishya Garg, Mudit Aggarwal.
The paper on Shortest Path Identification in Reconfigurable Microgrid using Hybrid Bellman Ford-Dijkstra’s Algorithm was presented by Sumedh Pophali, Shivam Mishra, Nilay Barve.
The paper on Arduino Based Dual Axis Sun Tracking System was presented by Arka Das.

Many of the graduated students from the Electrical and Electronics Engineering program are pursuing their Masters (M.S) Degree programs at reputed international universities. Some of them are
• Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
• University of Michigan,dearbon
• North Carolina University
• University of Stony brook
• University of Toronto
• Virginia Tech
• HEC Montreal
• The Ohio State University
• University of Florida
• New York University,Brooklyn, New York