Senior corporate marketing professionals drawing from their rich experience shared practical insights about marketing in various fields from film making to consumer products. Ads and Hands-on experience workshop by Roshni Chandra, film-maker at Primary Colours familiarised the students with direction of TV commercials and films. The session brought out insights about the importance and relevance of advertisements in the present times. She briefed the gathering about ancient advertisements and the dramatic change it has seen in recent times to appeal to Gen Z. The students were split into teams and were asked to come up with ideas for promoting Sambar Powder through commercials. The students of the marketing department brainstormed and came up with interesting ideas and showcased their skills by enacting and narrating the ads. Jayashankar Narayanankutty, Group Director at Cadence Design Systems highlighted the Equilibrium of a Sale, speaking about the fundamental aspects of sales and marketing and value-cost relationship. He outlined the ranges in the component of the transaction related to seller, product, and buyer, where transactions may happen at the same level or across levels. He observed, "equilibrium is not a perspective tool but it's a guiding principle" Prasanna Rai, VP and CMO at Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting spoke about The Story of Consistency: Concept-Code-Consistency. Mr. Rai elaborated on the evolution of Santoor as a brand over time. He narrated the changes in the positioning of the brand Santoor. He emphasized leveraging celebrity endorsement and gave instances on how it could impact a product's positioning among its audience. He explained and modelled the positioning flow as Concept-Code-Consistency where each of them has different dimensions and importance. He felt that, "as time changes, it changes need and it is necessary to tweak the proposition of the product maintaining the brand value”. Anjou Joseph, Managing Partner at Quantum Consumer Solutions spoke on Human-centric Approach and Brand Building. Mrs. Anju Joseph talked about the socio-economic issues and problems of the underprivileged and solutions that are successful in various markets. She outlined the different epicentres for an action, being product-centric and human-centric. She gave examples about solutions for the problem of mosquitoes faced by the people in Indonesia and the impact of lucky iron fish on people's health in Cambodia. She spoke about the Titan Raga ad and explained how a human-centric approach can position a brand as part of people's lives. She introduced the 12 archetypes to the audience, through which the meaning of the brand can be understood at the deepest level. Mrs. Anju Josep asked entrepreneurs and startups to build a fan base, as customers need to be lured whereas fans come on their own. Mr. Ashis Majumdar BU Head at Albert Davis gave students an overview of the Indian pharma sector and mentioned India's positions and achievements. He also pointed out that India stands second in number in USFDA certified manufacturing facilities after the USA. He familiarised the students about the sales process in the pharma sector where customers are more knowledgeable and how it poses a challenge to the sales process. He explained price and value differentiation, and the dimensions for a brand to succeed: uniqueness and importance. He highlighted the problems faced with a new product for CKD patients and how the learning is inculcated and reflected in the other products achieving success. The panel discussion featured Ashis Majumdar, BU Head at Albert David, Bhuvana Subramanyan, CMO at Randstand India, Shuvadip Banerjee, VP at ITC Ltd and Prem Kumar, Marketing Director at ANSR. The topics touched upon pre and post-pandemic situations and business management. The symposium proved to be enriching learning experience and preparing them with practical skill sets for career opportunities. The symposium was conducted on Nov 25 and 26 at the RR campus.

Breakthrough ideas in diverse domains marked inGenius 2021, the 10th iteration of the annual 24 hour hackathon hosted by the CSE Department of PES University Electronic City Campus. The hackathon was preceded by #getsetprep, a set of five preparatory workshops and Pursuit, an online treasure hunt, where participants had to clear technical and logical reasoning rounds. The winner, Team BlockOps created a decentralized platform for content creation on blockchain which eliminated most downsides that occur in centralized platforms like data privacy and copyright issues. The first runner-up, Team FAD came up with a system to prevent injuries from exercising with wrong postures or gestures in an effort to promote safety and health while exercising at home. The second runner-up, Team Hive developed a system that aimed to ensure driver safety by using sensors connected to an independent module that monitors driver alertness, checks for intoxication and confirms other safety measures such as seatbelts. Amogh K, Suhas, Niyam Momaya and Adithya R were declared the winners. The jury comprised of alumni from PES University Aravind Subramaniam, Ankit Sinha and Simran Makhija. The hackathon was conducted on November 12-13, 2021.

The participants were introduced to the world of Quantum Technologies followed by a hands-on circuit design workshop. Dr. Gajanan Honnavar discussed the four major pillars of Quantum technologies. He spoke about the miniaturization caused due to the advancement in technology and spoke about the inclination towards Quantum technologies and its significance in the semiconductor industry. Dr.Subhash Kulkarni, Dr.Shashidhar Tantry and Prof Sheyus Gowtham shared valuable insights. Attendees designed a basic ALU using gate level logic. The workshop was held on November 11, 2021.

Bringing together experience, knowledge, and skills of everyone involved is key to building high performance capabilities in the field of sports. Students got an opportunity to understand the importance of ingraining mental toughness, improving self-confidence, handling performance pressure and building sustained focus and discipline as a team at the workshop conducted by Bhargavi Ramachandran ICF Associate Certified Coach. She shared insights from her experience of guiding internationally ranked badminton players and top ranked national players. The workshop featuring insightful team building activities was organized by the Department of Sports Management of RR campus on October 23, 2021.

The workshop focused on curating of classic and innovative mocktails to highlight the health benefits of non-alcoholic beverages. The virtual session for Ford employees across India was conducted by Prof Harish and the queries addressed jointly with Prof Mohan, faculty in department of hospitality and event management on Aug 13, 2021.

PyTorch is an open source machine learning library based on the Torch library, used for applications such as computer vision and natural language processing. The workshop conducted by Prajwal A , Deep Learning mentor and Core lead and Chakita Muttaraju NLP Mentor and Vice lead introduced student developers to PyTorch while not getting intimidated by it’s code structure. The workshop titled A Gentle Introduction to PyTorch was organised by HackerSpace club of PES University.

Students got an opportunity to understand the nuances of grape growing, manufacturing wine and building of the brand Sula. Ms. Kanika of Sula Vineyards walked the students through the informative session organized by the faculty of BBA HEM program on July 7, 2021.

The students got an opportunity to understand the theory behind the use of Arduino, commonly used sensors and how they work. The session on connecting circuits on Tinkercad platform allowed users to make connections using sensors and an Arduino board. Ashutosh Rao who conducted the workshop is a student of ECE program. The workshop was organised by PES Innovation Lab on Google Meet on June 19, 2021.

APIs are driving innovation and the new technology tools are redefining project management. The workshop on APIs, after a short address about innovation in the university by Prof Venkatarangan M J, featured hands-on demonstration by student volunteer Sourav Raveendran on how to build a simple Web API from scratch and monitor requests being made to it. The workshop on Project Planning and Management after a succinct introduction by Professor Rajasekar M was conducted by student volunteer Akshay Vasudeva Rao. The participants got an opportunity to know about the basics of identifying stakeholders, making Gantt charts, and ending with a discussion for doubts and off-topic advice. Moderators monitored the chat to help any students who felt like they were falling behind or had missed any steps due to internet issues. The organisers plan to host more such workshops and upload edited versions of the recordings. The workshop was organised by PES Innovation Lab on May 19, 2021.

The on-line workshop with hands-on experience was delivered by Mr. Uday Deshpande, alumnus of PES and presently Senior engineer at Qualcomm. He shared practical insights in depth over the nine sessions held during Oct 31 to Mar 22, 2021.

The event tested the interest and understanding of the concepts in Data Science and Machine Learning. It consisted of two tracks, the Beginner's Track aimed at introducing freshers of PES to the fast developing fields. The Competitive Track was open to all undergrad students and required skills such as finding the right data, analyzing and understanding it and applying the insights to formulate a conclusion. The problem statements for both tracks were focused on the Global themes of Climate Change and Homicide Prevention. The event also featured guest talk by Miss Usha Rengaraju, the first Woman Kaggle 2x Grandmaster and introductory workshop conducted by Spoorthi UK, third year student. The competitive track was won by team Doge of Hrishikesh Nair, Kaushal Mahajan and Jacob Bosco. Team The Heavy of Srinivasa Raghavan, Jaaswin Kotian and Vihar Devalla and team Blank of Amrit R, Ananth K and Vritika Tuteja won second and third places. The beginner’s track was won by team Hackya of Dhruv Chawla, Aryansh Bhargavan and Aryan VS. Team Trojans on adrenaline of Arnav Kumar, Md Taseen Atehar and Ayush Praveen and team n00bs of Aadithya Krishna Vamshi V and Bhargav Hegde won second and third places. The panel of judges included Nikhil Mishra, Data scientist at fintech Industry, Aniruddha Mysore, Low latency developer at Morgan Stanley, Pranav Manjunath, data science graduate from Duke University and Adish Rao, software engineer at Bosch, all of whom are PES alumni. Tensor 2.0 Datathon was presented by the collaborative effort of the four tech clubs of PESUECC, Techwarts, OnCreate, DSC and ACM. The workshop for beginners was live-streamed on YouTube on February 28, the main event on Devpost + Discord + GMeet and guest talk on MS Teams were held on March 7, 2021.

Students of hospitality and event management program learnt about the importance of mixology in the hotel industry and how menu planning, costing, and cost control make it viable. Mr Ajeet Kumar shared his insights gained during his rich professional career. In another workshop, chefs Raghu and Tiru explained the history of bread and the art and science of bread making. The Bread workshop held on March 2 and Mixology workshop held on March 4, 2021 were organised by the department of hospitality and event management.

The workshop provided an in-depth explanation of the topics related to cybersecurity like common security mistakes, history of the field, and large-scale attacks caused by malwares. The participants learnt more about the types of roles and the suitable training that can help them to build a successful career in the field of cyber security. Mr Sarthak Goyal was the guest for the workshop held on Feb 20, 2021.

Entrepreneurship is about transforming ideas to market ready products and solutions. The E-summit virtual event, provided the participants an exposure to the wide array of skills that are essential to take a plunge into entrepreneurship. The live virtual event coordinated from two campuses reached over 800 students from colleges all over India. Experienced professionals and successful entrepreneurs shared their insights experience in talks, workshops and a panel discussion. Seven companies participated in the event. Five competitions tested the abilities of the participants in striking out on their own. Abhijeet Saungikar, Technical Vice President, 3M highlighted the importance of innovation in the market to succeed. Devashish Vaishnav, Founder of CoachEd and ex-President of ECell shared tips on resume building to convey one's strengths and achievements. Mekin Maheshwari, ex-CPO of Flipkart and founder of udhyam.org demonstrated how students can evaluate and make the most of the entrepreneurship opportunities. Workshop on creating a personal brand by Sezel Lalwani and Tharun Jagateri, co-founders of Fire.fly guided the students on introspecting to identify one's best abilities and highlighting them. Kalpana Ramesh, founder of Rainwater Project spoke on sustainability in entrepreneurship, sharing insights about the role social responsibility in business success. The panel discussion on impact of pandemic on startups in India brought forth how innovative thinking and empathy guides an entrepreneur to convert challenges into opportunity. Panelists, Saahil Kamath, Founder of Marsview.ai, Akarsh Shroff, Forbes India Teenpreneur 2020 and Founder, S.P.A.R.K and Suresh Narasimha, Venture Capitalist, shared insights drawn from their personal experiences as entrepreneurs and investors. The insightful interaction was moderated by Sathya Prasad. The participants got a glimpse of the nature of business competition in the games of Brand wars, Air crash, ad making, and shark tank. Midnight virtual event on crisis bidding got the participants bidding for assets on a dynamic site developed by a student team. E-summit aimed at fostering the spirit of entrepreneurship was organised by PES Entrepreneurship Cell in a virtual mode using Discord, Zoom and YouTube platforms on Nov 7-8, 2020.

Hogwarts, the two day Harry Potter theme based technical workshop covered the basics of two of the techniques ideal for rendering graphics in such films. The Image Processing track covered processes from access of webcam to contour identification. The projects taught were based on the Harry Potter theme like Polyjuice, which was about creating a fake background and The Elder Wand about Continuous detection of an object. The Robot Operating System track covered creation of node, ROS topic list, ROS topic echo, RQT graph, assigning publishers and subscribers and simulating bot moves by publishing linear and angular velocities. The workshop was organised by Rotaract Club of PES University, RR Campus on Nov 3 and 5, 2020.

The Thrift n’ Turn workshop conducted by Ms Amrita Ramesh, founder of moksha.blr, and a PES alumnus featured hands-on demos on up-cycling clothes. She outlined the environmental and socio-economic perils due to the fast fashion industry. The workshop recommended tips and tricks to maintain clothes, maximise their use and up-cycle existing clothes into new and fresh pieces. Methods to remove various stains were suggested. The importance and effectiveness of thrifting were also described at length. Up-cycling ideas like tie-dying, painting, cropping, hemming and bleach-dying were explained. This was followed by a hands-on demonstration of some popular styles of embroidery and patchwork. The Change Makers Society organised the Thrift n Turn workshop on Oct 30, 2020.

The workshop introduced the students to building an application using Node.JS, Angular.JS, Express and MongoDB. The workshop also touched upon security and best practices. The workshop started with the basics of Javascript, followed by programming the front-end and back-end design. It included cloud Database connectivity using MongoDB. The interactive workshop was conducted by Mr. Ravi, Engineering Manager, Solutions Engineer and Mr. Aman and Mr. Eyad, Software Developers at Meltwater and alumni of MCA. The Department of Master of Computer Applications (MCA) organised the day long online workshop for its final year students on Aug 29, 2020.

University research has a valuable long-term impact on students. In the research talk held for students recently, Dr. Gowri Srinivasa shared insights about how to approach the field of research. She answered common queries of students looking to dive into the field of research. She touched upon literature survey, trending topics and areas of a researcher’s personal interest. Dr. Gowri shared her experience about the research projects undertaken in association with Narayana Nethralaya. Participants got to know more about Google Scholar and the general structure of a research paper. The talk was organised by members of ACM PES University EC Campus Student Chapter on March 12, 2020.

The participants got an opportunity to work on AWS in the hands on session and witnessed the power of cloud computing and how it helps make our daily life easier. The workshop covered concepts from servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, to intelligence over the Internet. Mr. Ansari of Linsys Innovations conducted the workshop organised by the IEEE Student Branch of the university.

The first edition of the conference on Empowering Sustainability in hospitality, event and tourism brought together academicians, policy makers, students and practitioners to deliberate and discuss contemporary issues and opportunities for future sustainable development. Mr.Rohit Hangal, founder and Director of Sphere Travelmedia Exhibitions delivered the keynote address. Faculty Best paper was won by Dr. D P Sudagar and Students Best Paper was won by Adithya Jayprakash and Akhil Ajjar. Participants got an opportunity to write and present research papers, understand the impact of travel and tourism in the event industry. The conference conducted by Department of Hospitality and Event Management held on March 13, 2020.

Students of hospitality and event management program got an opportunity to know more about managing funds and investment approach for a successful future. Mr. Dipak Shodhan, an alumnus of PES and founder of Achievers Academy shared his insights about achieving financial success through proper investments at the right time. The event organised by Department of Hospitality and Event Management was held on Feb 28, 2020.

“Time and tide wait for none”, as the saying goes, the students of MCA decided to prove it wrong. It was a new activity on campus that invited students to capture the time and freeze it in the memory lanes of the Department of MCA.

As part of the Extended week day activity, the department had organized the Photography contest. A large number of students came up with their DSLR hanging around to participate. Many of them wanted to try with their mobile cameras. A few of them had even got additional lens to fit in to their mobile camera for the best possible shot.

The theme given to the students for the Photography contest was “The Beginning”. From the large number of photos received, a few were shortlisted. The best two photographs were selected for the top two positions. A consolation prize was also declared which had shared the same number of points.

Two day faculty enrichment program got underway to celebrate National Science Day to mark the discoveries of Indian physicist, Sir C V Raman. Dr. M R Doreswamy, Chancellor, suggested the importance of faculty enrichment programs and the need to learn new things, sharing knowledge and understanding the subject. Prof. K J Rao, Emeritus Professor, SSCU, IISc, shared insights about the Raman effect and the way science works. He spoke about the clusters of galaxies and was proud of India for its contribution to the theory of black hole, and the participation of Indians in Large Hadron Collider [LHC] and LIGO. Dr. C L Shylaja, Deputy Director, PU education, addressed the gathering. The event also witnessed the presence and participation of academicians and resource persons from various institutions. Dr. J Suryaprasad, Vice Chancellor, Prof M V Sathyanarayana, Director, HN campus Dr. A V Chandrashekar , Chairperson, Department of Commerce and Management, Dr. C Narayana Reddy, Principal, PES college graced the occasion. The two day faculty enrichment program was organised by the department of physics, PES institution at PES University, in association with the department of Pre University education on 28 February, 2020.

The students got an opportunity to develop a robotic arm based on Arduino microcontroller. The workshop covered all aspect of robot development from the basics to complex movements. Arduino IDE with servos and robotic arm components were used to develop the robot. The workshop was conducted in association with Vimana consortium, a community of dedicated students, industry professionals, amateur makers and innovators, on 5th Feb 2020 on EC campus of PES University.

The students got an opportunity to develop a game in 3D. The workshop focused on game development using Unity 3d platform. The prerequisites for the workshop were familiarity with Unity 3d and Visual Studio Code. The workshop covered all aspects from coding in C# to the exploration of Unity editor and asset stores. The Unity Workshop conducted by Sourabh Sood, Software Engineer at Moonfrog Labs on Feb 5, 2020.

Students got an opportunity to understand the safety and hygiene standards expected by the government for a well functioning industry. The training helped them know more about the best way to process food and raw materials in an industry kitchen. The training for students of hospitality and event management program was held on Feb 7, 2020

Om Malviya and Jignesh Vasoya of TEZOS India Foundation shared their insights about Blockchain. Tezos, a blockchain that can evolve through self-amendment, aims to drive social, political, and economic innovation on a global scale. The participants got hands-on experience on TEZOS tools. The workshop was organised by IEEE team on Feb 9, 2020.

Khushboo Gupta winner of The Women of Future Award 2019 for her contribution to the society talked to the students about the emerging ideas and trends on how to improve interpersonal skills. She stressed on the preparations students need to do to face interviews. Intuitive concepts such as Johari Window and Elevator Pitch were discussed at length. She emphasised the importance of being able to introduce oneself in an interview with confidence. Extensive information on the various kinds of interviews was shared and a glimpse of how one could approach each kind of interview was discussed. She shed light on how one can represent them better and leave an impression on the interviewer. The inspiring and informative lecture was held at the EC campus on Feb 11, 2020.

Central Library, PES University in association with IEEE organised IEEE Xplore new interface user awareness session. Mr.Subhash Reddy, Librarian introduced the resource person Dr. Dhanu Pattanashetti, IEEE Client Services Manager to the participants comprising students and faculty members. Dr. Dhanu presented the salient features of IEEE Xplore, upgraded version and demonstrated the methods to find relevant information for literature, project, placement support, and innovative ideas from IEEE papers and relevant publications. Dr.Dhanu Pattanashetti emphasised how students can derive benefits from IEEE networking and their association with subject matter experts. The PES University library plans to organise an IEEE technical writing session in the coming weeks. The program held on February 5, 2020 concluded with a quiz and distribution of exciting prizes from IEEE.

The Alcoding Coding challenge, a two-stage coding competition sponsored by Danske IT was inaugurated by the chairperson of department of CSE, Dr Shylaja SS, Prof. Channa Bankapur and Mr Tatha Desigan fo Danske IT. 410 teams with 900+ participants registered for the challenge. After three hours of intense coding the top three teams that stayed ahead and won prize money of 35,000 INR were: first place, Input_he_output of RV College of Engineering; second place, Chaiwaale of National Institute of Technology - Surathkal and third place, Zeta of B.M.S College of Engineering. The event was held on January 2 and 29, 2020.

Developer Student Club in PESU held a workshop on Google’s official program for Machine Learning. DSCs are university based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies. Participants in the workshop engaged in a hands-on activity session that demonstrated the usage and application of ML, QuickDraw by Google. Ms Usha Rengaraju, subject matter expert, engaged the students in a hands-on session using Kaggle to experiment and play around with ML.

PESU I/O had their SME Alumni meet on Saturday, 1st February, 2020. PESU I/O is a peer-to-peer learning initiative in which Subject Matter Experts (Generally, students from senior years in college) teach courses to the juniors in a diverse spectrum of topics ranging from Course-Curriculars to Extracurriculars. 

With over 4000 students, 200+ courses and 170+ SMEs, PESU I/O has conducted 9 slots so far. All the previous SMEs from our slots were addressed by the COO of PES Institutions, Prof. Ajoy Kumar at the prestigious faculty lounge on the 13th floor of Element block. 

The event itself was an invaluable opportunity for our Subject Matter Experts to network and interact with each other, laying the foundation for a strong connect between PESU Alumnus in the future. Our "veteran" SMEs used this event as an opportunity to talk about their industrial experience as well as the new ventures they had embarked upon after passing out from college. This provided useful insights as well as inspiration to SMEs currently studying college. 

With over 80 attendees from diverse segments of industry as well as students from university, this event was a remarkable success and we hope to have more such alumni meets in the future. 

Students got an opportunity to know more about types of licenses, excise rules and regulations, fee structure for various business formats in the alcohol industry and rules related to starting a lounge hotel. Mr. Suresh shared practical insights with the students of hospitality and event management in the program on January 16, 2020.

National Tourism Day is observed on 25 January to highlight the importance of tourism for the economy of the country. Speaking on the occasion, Ms. Meenakshi Gupta believed that tourism in India has amazing potential it is the responsibility of hospitality and event management professionals to build it up to generate revenue. The celebrations at PES University were dedicated towards the 17 Sustainable development goals set by the UN. Vindu 2.0 – a Travelogue was launched in the event. The poster, painting and photography competitions which saw active participation was judged by Mr. Abhishek Dev Kumar an alumnus of 2014 batch. The winners were awarded prizes. The event was held on 24th January 2020.

Members of PES Team Aikya organised an interaction of students of the government school in Bhuvaneswari nagar, Binnypet with Mr Yashwanth, to mentally prepare them for the upcoming the Board exams. Mr. Yashwanth, the guest speaker, started with a small activity for the students telling the importance of concentration, presence of mind and living in the moment instead of worrying about the past and the future. He highlighted the importance of education and motivated them to dream big and work towards realising them. In a very engaging way he answered why, what, when and how of studying and taught simple methods of studying and concentrating more effectively. He also touched upon some vital life virtues and explained how valuable it is to keeping up the trust of the people in our lives. He concluded it with an advice about maintaining calm and facing the Board exams without panic. The students many of whom were nervous about the upcoming examination, found the interaction beneficial useful enjoyable. This was PES Team Aikya’s first event and the volunteers look forward to presenting more such socially useful events. The youth Initiative of The Akshaya Patra Foundation.

The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at PES University, Bangalore completed 2years.

Coinciding with this, CIE in association with Dept of Management Studies is facilitating an experiential 5-day workshop for students – ‘Building from $0 to $20M Startup’ - by BV Jagadeesh (BVJ), Managing Director for KAAJ Venture and serial-entrepreneur from Silicon Valley.

BV Jagadeesh is a Silicon Valley legend - serial entrepreneur, VC, deep tech guru, philanthropist, educator all rolled into one. To list a few of his ventures: Exodus – first datacenter company to IPO in 1998, Netscaler (President/CEO) acquired by Citrix, Scaled Nutanix to $1.2B and took it public, took Yodlee public and more. He also shares his rich experience and knowledge at several prestigious universities: Wharton, Univ of Michigan, IIT and now at PES University!

This 5-day workshop was inaugurated on Jan 27th by PES University Pro-Chancellor Jawahar. This workshop will take the selected aspiring student entrepreneurs on a journey of converting an idea to a startup valued at $20M+ and cover various aspects of creating and running successful startups.

PES University conducted a 2-day workshop on the approaches to Engineering Research on January 4th & 5th, 2020. The workshop was conducted by Prof. Perumal Nithiarasu, the Director of Research at the College of Engineering, Swansea University, UK. 

The workshop contained eight lectures spread across two days and included two tutorial sessions. It was attended by around 50 academicians consisting of PhD students and lecturers from various Engineering disciplines, and also included a few Under-Graduate and PostGraduate students. 

The workshop started with a brief introduction by Dean of Research, Dr. Sudarshan T.S.B about the workshop, followed by an inaugural address of Registrar, Dr. V Krishnamurthy. Dr. Krishna V and Prof. K N Seetharamulu OF Dept. of Mechanical Engineering also were present on the occasion. 

Day 1 

The first day of the workshop focussed on challenges commonly faced by inexperienced research scholars. After an introduction to general terminologies in research and underlining the need for research that ultimately benefits society, Prof. Nithiarasu built a strong case for the importance of underpinning fundamental research, and highlighted the significance of high-risk-high-reward research. This was followed by examples of a few common pitfalls faced by new researchers and how to identify early symptoms of such pitfalls. 

The next session discussed visionary vs incremental research, the importance of both, and how incremental research should be designed in order to make progress towards a larger, more ambitious goal i.e. the vision. The last lecture for the day gave several pointers on identifying rewarding research areas and prioritizing them. The first day concluded with a group activity, with each group identifying one example of visionary research, and two examples of incremental research, which were then presented to the audience. A total of five groups presented their ideas, and a good discussion of each idea followed, concluding with some excellent insight provided on each idea by distinguished guest attendee Dr. Ramachandra, Director at ADA (DRDO). 

Day 2 

The second day of the workshop built upon the foundations laid before, and progressed towards the importance of planning in research, and contained several examples of three and five year research plans, and how to break up the work into appropriate sized chunks. This was followed by a comprehensive discussion of dissemination in research, covering important topics like selecting the correct conference or journal, the relevance of conference papers in today’s world, identifying and avoiding predatory or fraudulent journals and some pointers on writing a good journal paper. The day ended the proceedings by discussing the importance of supervisors in the duration of PhD research, and finding the correct research group for postdocs and building connections with industry and organizations for collaborative research. 

There were several mentions of general do’s and don’ts for research scholars who plan to pursue research as a career post conclusion of their doctoral studies. 

Both days of the workshop were littered with examples from Prof. Nithiarasu’s past experiences which helped the audience relate better to the topics under consideration. The sessions was largely interactive with each lecture consisting of a Q&A session encouraging the audience to narrate relevant examples from their own research work. 

The workshop was unique in that it contained a fine balance of both sides involved in research - student and supervisor, and enriched the audience with a holistic view of research in engineering domains. 

Students of hospitality and event management program got an opportunity to know more about the role and functions of sales in hotels, increasing influence of digital marketing and the importance of interpersonal skills to succeed in services sector. Rohan Bagal, Sales Executive, Ibis City Centre, and alumnus of PESU, shared practical insights about the challenge faced by marketers to sell or communicate services to a customer and how the challenges are overcome.

The three day workshop for the faculty focused on techniques for case writing and research writing for thesis and publishing. Dr.Madhavi, Research Head -Jain University, Dr.Srikantaswamy, Former Additional Director, Centre for Research –Christ University and NAAC Advisor, and Dr. Bharti Gopal, Dr. V.Jaykumar, Dr. Jessey Nair of PES University conducted the sessions. The workshop was organised by the Department of Hospitality and Event Management from 2-4 January, 2020.

The Department of MCA organised a one-day Python workshop for its 4th semester students in association with BITES. The theme of the workshop was “Problem Solving Sessions”. Dr. C P Ravi Kumar, Director, Talent Acquisition, Texas Instruments, Bengaluru, also having worked as Professor at IIT Delhi and IIT Chennai, was the resource person. Dr. Ravi Kumar started the sessions by solving simple mathematical problems. He moved on to working with Lists and various methods on Lists. He raised the real time problems and also provided alternate ways of finding solutions. The handling of Sets and Dictionaries were also made simple to use and implement, deriving at solutions to complex problems. The students also enjoyed working with Functions, Files and Classes which was made easy to understand by Dr. Ravi Kumar. Throughout his sessions, he also highlighted about the significance of indentation in coding, nomenclature of identifiers, purpose of using new editors and more. In the concluding session, he suggested some tips for getting ready for the industry, being open for learning newer technologies, becoming curious for enhancing one’s knowledge and what the industry expects from interns. In a nut-shell, all the students had a great learning experience which also boosted their confidence to work on Python. Dr. K N B Murthy, Vice-Chancellor, PES University and Chairman BITES, gave away the memento to the Guest and also thanked the Dept. of MCA for conducting regular workshops in the benefit of students.

Joy Agrawal a student of 8th standard who showed exceptional talent in designing and building quadcopter is working on state-of-the-art quadcopter system on the campus. Joy happened to meet Dr Sharan Asundi at Shaastra Technical Festival of IIT Madras held in January 2019. Since then he has worked on many projects with Dr. Sharan Asundi, adjunct faculty at PES University. Dr Asundi is also Assistant Professor of Space Systems at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia (USA). Joy has participated in IIT Powai Techfest 2018, IIT BHU Technex, Techfest 2018 in Tata Power Challenge and other prestigious technical festivals. He was an invited speaker at Tedx Dabri New Delhi and on YouthoPedia Talk Show. An avid reader and quizzer, he has filed three patents and is currently writing a book titled, Python an Essential Tool for the 21st Century. Joy designed and built PV-004 system, a patrolling vehicle with manoeuvrable propellers. At PES University, he is working under the mentorship of Dr. Sharan Asundi and Jimesh Bhagatji, Research Associate at CORI, to design and build a quadcopter from commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems and integrate it with a COTS LiDAR for scanning and mapping applications. The ongoing effort at CORI Labs is to advance the COTS-based quadcopter system for surface scanning of structures needing inspection. Such structures could include new buildings, old architecture and large vessels. PES University will be providing all the components and assemblies for building the system. Dr. K. N. B. Murthy, Vice Chancellor and Dr. V. Sambasiva Rao, a former ISRO Outstanding Scientist and currently heading two major research initiatives - CORI and CRSST actively encourage young and talented minds like Joy to work in the PES University labs.

The workshop and hands-on program trained the faculty members, research scholars and post graduate students in various techniques and skills involved in the preclinical experimental Pharmacology. Close to thirty shortlisted delegates of various disciplines across state of Karnataka attended and acquired the skills in the experimental techniques. Chief Guests, Prof Dr. V Murugan, Dean, Dayanandasagar University and Dr. HN Shivaprasad, Technical and Marketing Director, Prakruti Products Pvt Ltd emphasised the importance of preclinical research in Drug Development and asked the delegates to utilise the opportunity to upgrade their skills. The program was presided over by Dr. S. Mohan, Dean, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences with the gracious presence Prof Dr. J Saravanan, DCC, PES University. Dr. S. Mohan, in his presidential address stressed on the significance of practical skills for post-graduate students of pharmacology, essential in the field of introduction of new medicines for which pre clinical studies are a prerequisite. He asked the students to develop interest in deep learning with a passion to excel. The workshop cum hands-on training program on Techniques in Experimental Pharmacology was convened by Dr. Shivalinge Gowda, Head of the Department. The workshop was organised by the Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, HN Campus, PES University, Bangalore on December 19, 2019.

Students got an opportunity to learn about the practical aspects of safety and security in hotels. Ms. Premalatha C, Loss & Prevention Manager at Aloft Hotel interacted with the students on the importance of security measures and consequences of not following safety procedures in hotels today. The talk for students of BBA HEM program was held on November 28, 2019.

Prof. Guilhereme Almeida, Senior Director, Global Engagement office, University of California, Riverside, USA along with Mr. Ramani Ramarathinam, CEO, Fluid Tech Solutions Inc, visited PES University, Ring Road campus on 4th Dec, 2019. The visitors met Vice Chancellor Prof. K N B Murthy and discussed about the opportunities of collaboration between UC, Riverside and PES University. Later, an interaction session with Chairpersons and HoDs of all the departments were held in the presence of Dr. V Krishnamurthy, Registrar. Dr. Sudarshan T S B, Dean of Research extended a warm welcome to the visitors. Prof. Guilherme Almeida gave a brief introduction about UC, Riverside and discussed about various programs and domains in which both the universities can explore collaborative avenues. The Chairpersons and HoDs had a fruitful interaction and the session concluded with a positive note of understanding and to seek further direction to take this collaboration forward. Prof. Guilhereme Almeida, thanked PES University management and faculty members for the excellent hospitality.

The department of MCA, PES University, organised the 7th CAC, Celebrities and Celebrations, in association with BITES, at the MCA Seminar Hall, PES University, RR Campus, on 7th December 2019. The celebrity of the month was Prof. Naom Chomsky, the living legend and the Father of modern linguistics. Dr. Kavi Mahesh, Director, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Dharwad, was the speaker of the day. Dr. Lekha, Professor from the department of Computer Applications welcomed the guests and introduced the speaker. Dr. Kavi Mahesh, started with the Chomsky’s journey of understanding human language and its varieties. He mentioned about Chomsky’s idea of Cognitive learning. He further expressed his views of learning languages among human beings and animals. The snippet of a parrot responding to a human verbally, became a food for thought to discourse on capacities and capabilities of human and animal learning languages. He also highlighted about the cognitive learning study based on Nature Vs Nurture. He went on to explain how Chomsky analysed the concept to conclude that both have an impact on language learning. He also put forward the popular theory of Prof. Naom Chomsky, which believes, there is one Universal language which follows basic principles and parameters. The study on Universal language theory, took transitions based on rules and certain exceptions. He also clearly explained the Chomsky hierarchy of cognitive learning with a clear distinction between context free and context sensitive languages. Mr. Santosh Katti, Professor from department of Computer Applications gave away the vote of thanks. Dr. KNB Murthy, Vice-Chancellor, PES University and Chairman, BITES, along with Prof. Chennabassppa, Director, SIT Tumkur, and former Chairman, BITES, handed over the token of appreciation to the distinguished speaker, Dr. Kavi Mahesh.

Breast cancer awareness programme was conducted in PES University HN Campus on 3rd December 2019 by Student Affairs, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. It is most common for women between the ages of 25 and 39 to focus on breast cancer awareness but girls as young as 15 can develop breast cancer. The Young Survival Coalition, a breast cancer support group for young women, says breast cancer accounts for 15% of all cancer diagnoses in younger women. Breast cancer is not only possible in such young age groups, but it is typically more aggressive and younger women diagnosed typically have a lower survival rate. To educate the girl students and women employees a breast cancer awareness program was organized by Student Affairs, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. 410 students & staff members participated in the event from various programmes (Pharmacy, PUC & Commerce) across the campus. Dr. Mallika Natraj, Breast Oncologist, Sparsh Hospital Yeshwanthpur Bengaluru, created awareness on Breast Cancer, its causes, preventive measures and also briefed the audience on prevalence, incidence, and dietary influence. She rolled out statistics to prove the alarming increase in breast cancer cases in recent years. Demonstrative videos to explain how to carry out Self Breast Examination (SBE) were shown and advised the girl students & women employees on the measures to be taken to protect themselves from the dreadful disease. The programme dismantled all myths and overcame taboos concerning Breast Cancer and gave students the entire spectrum of the topic on basis of factual accuracy. This promoted unity on part of the audience to stand together in the face of breast cancer, creating awareness amongst them and encouraging them to pass on this important and valuable information to their female peers and family members. The programme received overwhelming participation & responses from the participants.

An essential principle in the practice of geriatric medicine is the need to scrupulously and frequently review the patient’s current list of medications. The necessity for this practice cannot be overstated. Very frequently, the causes of a change in a patient’s health status or level of cognition are likely the result of a change in the patient’s medication regimen. This change may result in an adverse drug reaction or may result in the development of a drug-drug interaction. To educate the Pharm.D students PES University, HN campus had arranged a lecture-discussion for students by Mr. Katta Anand Srinivas, Subject Matter Expert, Artificial Learning Systems Bengaluru on the topic “Geriatric Patients Medication Review” on Friday, 29th Nov 2019. The event was attended by 72 students of Pharm.D Program. Various topics like Social and Emotional Issues of Aging, Clinical Syndromes and Health Issues of Aging, Areas and Issues of Pharmacy Practice for Geriatric Patients etc. were covered during the discussion.

The Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GDC) at IIT-Madras completed the seventh cohort under its flagship I-NCUBATE programme recently. GDC has benefited more than 65 startups, enhancing the entrepreneurial capabilities of over 360 participants from various institutions including IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, Pune University, KJ Somaiya College, Mumbai, PES University, Bengaluru, and Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.

“Learning gives Creativity, Creativity leads to Thinking, Thinking provides Knowledge, Knowledge makes us Great….Quiz competitions are always interesting and informative, which provide excitement among the students and also make them aware of current affairs. A mega quiz competition was organized by PES University through Student affairs committee of HN Campus for students from PUC, commerce and Pharmacy departments on 27.11.2019 in the Kuvempu auditorium. Around 168 teams participated in quiz competition. Quiz master Mr. Preetham Upadhya a 4th year engineering student from PES university,current President of the Quotient Quiz Club & winner of 300 quizzes at national and international level conducted the quiz competition. The event was graced with the presence of Dr. M R Doreswamy, the founder Chancellor of PES University who encouraged the participants with his best wishes. Out of 168 teams; with 2 participants per team, had registered for the prelims test & 08 teams were selected for finals. The quiz comprised of oral questions, riddles, audio and visual rounds. Through various interesting as well as challenging rounds, the knowledge of the participating students was put to test in this quiz. The participants as well as the audience thoroughly enjoyed these rounds that tested how proficient they were. The quiz was of a great success. The winners of quiz competition - First Prize: Mr.Girish & Ms. Kalpitha ( 1 st B.Com), Second Prize: Mr. Kanishk Bhandari & Mr.Satyam Atal (4 th B.Pharm) Third Prize: Mr. Chetan H & Ms.Asima kubra (4 th PharmD)

We, the members of ACM PES University EC Campus Student Chapter, under the guidance of Dr. Sandesh B.J, Head, Computer Science & Engineering Department conducted a 12-hour ‘Open Source Hack Night’ in association with Hacktoberfest. Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open source software run by DigitalOcean in partnership with GitHub and Twilio. It is an event to celebrate open source contributions presented by Digital Ocean and DEV. Our main objective was to promote open source contributions and provide a platform for the participants to showcase their skills. The participants were also part of a GSoc panel discussion and a brief on Open Source Projects by members of the Mozilla community. The details of the event are: Duration: 12 hours(19th October 6PM - 20th October 6AM) Number of Participants: 160 Keynote Speakers: From Google Summer of Code(GSoC) - Aniruddha Mysore - Poulami Sarkar - Naveen Naidu - Ayush Jain From Mozilla - Soumya Deb - Abhijeet Singh - Vikram - Abhiram Ravikumar Winners: 1) Divya Satya - CSE 2) Divyam Raj - ISE 3) Svsc Santosh - CSE

The National Seminar was inaugurated on 23rd of November 2019. The program was graced and inaugurated the Chief Guest Shri Amit Deshpande, Advocate High Court of Karnataka who. The discussion centred around the following sub-themes: Socio-legal Implications of Criminalization of Triple Talaq , Mob Lynching: Challenges and Solutions , White Collar Crimes in India ,Use of Technology in Criminal Investigation, Substance Use and Abuse in Adolescents: Need for Intervention, Online Gaming: Prohibition vs. Regulation, Social Media and Crime: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Violence against Women and Children: Contemporary Issues and Challenges ,Criminal Laws and LGBTQ+ and Scaling down of Adultery. A total of over 100 abstracts from students, practitioners, research scholars and academia were submitted for evaluation. Out of them, 70 abstracts were selected for full-paper submission and presentation. The papers were duly presented on 23rd November over a course of three sessions. The discussions were moderated by Dr K B Kempe Gowda (Principal , Vivekanada College of Law), Dr .Aradhana Sathish Nair (Associate Professor , School of Law , Christ University), K L Srinivas (Advocate and Mediator) and Dr Mallaiah M R (Assisstant Professor , School of Law , Christ University). The valedictory function was graced by Dr. S V Joga Rao , Professor, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru on the same day where the winners and runners up were also recognised with trophies and cash awards. The presidential address was delivered by Dr. V Krishna Murthy, Registrar of PES University and the Guest of Honour was Dr. V. Krishna, Dean, Student Affairs and Dr. Sandeep S. Desai , Dean, Faculty of Law introduced the guest.

The intense workshop focused on helping participants learn investing strategies, identifying low risk and high potential entry points for their trade and mingle with the reputed guest lecturers. Mr. Prashanth Sarathy, Chartered Accountant and an IIM-A alumni shared valuable insights into the fascinating world of stock market, investment and the relevance of engineers in the world. The discussion was followed by practical understanding of stock trading with Investopedia. The real-time trading with Wall Street, USA was flagged off at 7.00 pm (IST). Till 2am (IST) in the midst of the intense live trading session, the participants were served dinner, tea and coffee. The rigorous sessions on the basics of stock markets and pit trading were conducted by experts from Stock Market Institute, Bangalore. The speakers from SMI included Mr. Deepak Kumar, Mr. Kishore BS, Mr. Sandeep Kumar, and the associates were Mr. Ajay, Mr. Alok, Mr. Harish Kumar, and Mr. Lokesh. The trading session was followed by performances by college's music bands and by the participants in the open mic session for the rest of the night. Kishore BB, Nirneeth and Akshay Kumar who made the highest profit in the trading session were declared winners. The workshop ended by 6 am morning the next day. This event, co-chaired by Club President Aashuthosh Manchali and Vice President Anubhav Anand was organised by the Entrepreneurship Club of PES University Electronic City Campus under the guidance of faculty in charge Dr SV Satish on September 9, 2019.

Dr. Rekha Srinivasan delivered a talk on designing active learning classroom (ALC) for Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM), a bridge between teaching and learning. She is James S. Swinehart Professorial Teaching Fellow and Senior Instructor in the Department of Chemistry at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Cleveland, USA. Dr Rekha Srinivasan spoke about integrating active learning strategies in the classroom, using some common and simple active learning strategies in teaching and instructional technologies to support the use of active learning and maintaining the student-attention-span. Dr. Rekha Srinivasan mentioned that pursuit of active research enhances the teachers’ ability to teach effectively bringing out the application areas of the lessons learnt. She circulated a learning style questionnaire, to find out what kind of learner each of them was. She explained that there were three types of learners – audio learners, visual learners and kinesthetic learners. She mentioned that it is important to be aware that in a classroom there will be all the three types of learners and the instruction should cater to all the types to keep the whole class lively and involved. She noted that this can be achieved with a proper mix of auditory instructions, visuals and hands on exercises. Dr Rekha Srinivasan also made all the participants to answer a classroom teaching style survey to know what kind of teacher they were: Traditional (teacher centered), Transitional (teacher guided), Transitional (student influenced), Reformed (student centered). This led to an introspection on the type of teacher each one was. She reiterated that each and every type was acceptable and reflected the type of teaching outlook. Dr. Rekha Srinivasan spoke about new learning techniques such as Concept Maps, Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) Classes and JiTT which could enhance the classroom experience. She also spoke about flipped and hybrid classrooms, and the need to involve the students in group activities to enhance the learning outcomes. She stressed on the need for infrastructural and technological support to support the new age teaching requirements.

The students displayed a range of native and indigenous recipes to promote local food and traditional cooking as an alternative to fast food on the University Slow Food Day. Based on the theme of Gandhi and Gastronomy the event aimed to help preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encouraging farming of plants, seeds, and livestock characteristics of the local ecosystem. The Department of Hospitality and Event Management conducted the fourth annual University Slow Food Day with a theme of Gandhi and Gastronomy to commemorate 150 years of Mahatma on Nov 13, 2019.

The 2020 Hult Prize Challenge was building startups that have a positive impact on our planet with every dollar earned. The team FUZE of Jaidev G, Kirthan Sanjay and Srivatsan H that focused on reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by converting some of it into useful forms of fuel qualified for the regionals to be held in March 2020. The finals will be held in the US in Sep 2020. The eminent jury included Bindu Sastry of Mauverick, Gautham Khot of Brigade REAP, Ramesh Phatak, angel investor, Shobana Rajagopal of Microsoft, Suraj Chawla of Swissnex and Suresh Narasimha of Co-Create Ventures. Twenty four teams competed for the top spot. The first runners up team SupHerb of Arjun M, Prateek Nayak, Danish M E, and Ruthwik H M presented several uses of hemp and make eco-friendly plastic. The second runner up team Smart Mesh of Archana B, Bhargavi G, and Isha P, planned to make a mesh fitted with a Metal-Organic Framework (MOF), that can absorb most of the harmful carbon dioxide emissions. The Hult Prize Foundation, supported by UN and Bill Clinton Foundation is a global movement of young people envisioning a brighter future in the world around them. This competition aims to encourage students to create dynamic and disruptive startups. PES student body supported by the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE) hosted the 1st Hult Prize Challenge 2020 (On-campus round) at PES University on Nov 16, 2019.

Experts believe that climate change is the defining issue of our time and now is the defining moment to do something about it. Vijay Karnataka and Bangalore Environment Trust jointly organised a national seminar on Climate Change. Prof J Srinivasan, IISc in his address outlined the impact of climate change in India. Ms Nirmala Gowda, Trustee-BET described the on ground reality of climate change. Dr H Paramesh, Pediatric Pulmonologist and environmentalist spoke about the effect of climate change on human health in his session. Speaking on the occasion Dr M R Doreswamy, Chancellor PES University observed that the effect of climate change on agriculture for a country like India where 60% of irrigation is rain-fed can be devastating. He added that despite the scant rainfall, 1.4 million people have been affected by the floods due to heavy rainfall in some parts of India this year. He put forth the need to make students aware by introducing the topics related to climate change in the curriculum at school level. The national seminar on Climate Change organised by Vijay Karnataka and BET was held at PES University campus on Nov 22, 2019.

Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, HN Campus organized a Pharma Exhibition in HN Campus on 22/11/2019. The exhibition was inaugurated by Prof.Dr.M.R.Doreswamy, Chancellor, PES University along with Prof.M.V.Sathyanarayana, the campus Director, HN Campus PES University. Fun and Enthusiasm filled the venue where the bubbling students of B.Pharm, Pharm.D and M.Pharm programs made many models both automatic and semi- automatic working models that were depicting recent advancements and research findings in Pharma field. A total of 50 exhibits were exhibited from six different departments of specialization i.,e, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pharmacology, Pharmacognosy , Pharmaceutics, Pharmaceutical Analysis and Pharmacy Practice. To high light a few – synthesized soluble plastics by extracting soluble starch from natural sources like banana, corn, Potato etc. The beauty of this soluble plastic is that it is bio-degradable and will overcome the current menace posed by plastic in environmental pollution. A huge model of Quality Control lab of Pharmaceutical industry showing the microbiology lab with air filters, wet lab and instrumental lab was exhibited. A working models of magnetic stirrer from waste material and purification of smoke by using an air purifier were constructed and exhibited. Alteration and rectification of gene using crispr-cas9 model was made and light was thrown upon its advantages for gene altering to get tailor made species. The students of Pharm.D IV year had also arranged for basic Health check up like Body Mass Index(BMI), Pulse, Blood Pressure and blood glucose level monitoring to the public, students and employees of PES University. The main crowd who witnessed and gained knowledge from this exhibition were PUC students and the general public.

The 2019 Nobel Prize itself has specially been gratifying. One of the winners was born in India. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT and Michael Kremer of Harvard won the coveted prize for their distinctive contribution in the use of experimental methods to learn about the effectiveness of small-scale policy interventions aimed at helping improve the lives of some of the world’s poorest citizens. The experimental method applied by the three winners is called a Randomized Controlled Trial, or RCT. The Nobel Prize appropriately recognizes both the winners’ use of a powerful research technique and their application of that technique to some of the world’s most pressing policy problems. The Welcome Address was given by Dr. Vijay Kumar, Dean, Department of Management Studies, PES University Bangalore. Eminent speakers from esteemed organizations presented their views on the theme. The gist of the talks is mentioned below: Ritwik Banerjee, UC Berkeley Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Scholar, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore initiated on Randomized Controlled Trial: The New Standard in Development Economics. He mentioned the need for RCT in developmental economics. He explained about the causal determinates, causal association and causal relations. He further helped in understanding the mechanics of RCTs with examples such as the Deworming experiment by Mighel and Kremer and the Immunization experiment by Banerjee, Duflo, Glennester and Kothari. He also touched upon the limitations of RCTs and how the external validity plays a role in its drawback. R. Ramakumar, Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai addressed the topic of What ails Randomized Controlled Trial? He laid emphasis on how RCT contradicts its own definition of randomness. He also called the Randomized Controlled Trail a problematic and ahistoric as it disregards the pre-scientific baggage with which the experiments are conducted. He questioned “Is being random equivalent to being unbiased?” He also questioned RCT being regarded as the gold standard of developmental economics. He further suggested that the introduction of stratification will help in making RCT a right choice but the rule book of RCT considers prior information as lethal. Sowmya Dhanaraj, Associate Professor, Madras School of Economics, Chennai elaborated on Running Randomized Evaluations: An Indian Experience. She spoke about the Indian Experience of the RCT implementation. She explained how the experimental study is classified. She mentioned that RCT holds good for evidence based policies and also explained cycle of evidence in understanding policy making. She also talked about the friction between the policy makers and the reaction of the other sections affected by the policy. Surbhi Kesar, Research Fellow, Azim Premji University Bangalore highlighted the aspect of Randomized Controlled Trials: Implications for the field of Development Economics. She talked about the problematic pain points of RCT. She mentioned that there’s a trade-off between precision and unbiased in the design of the experiment in RCT. She also spoke about the normative issue and the desirability of an intervention. She added that RCT is a borrowed technique from life sciences. V. Sridhar, Associate Editor, Frontline explained the topic of Randomized Controlled Trial: Understanding and Misunderstanding. He said that RCT has clouded out other ways to address developmental economics. Also, RCT has become more of a fashion for students to have in their CV to further their doctoral ambitions. He emphasized that RCT works in averages while a country like India which is highly stratified, the data between the averages will suffer from a lot of variations. He mentioned that RCT being a flavor of the day is a serious problem. The audience comprised of industry professionals, academicians and students. They well appreciated the overall concept, theme and presentations done by all the esteemed speakers.

On 18th November 2019 Faculty of Law, PES University organized a special lecture delivered by Hon’ble Justice Shri. V. Jagannathan, Former Judge, High Court of Karnataka on “Facets and Paradigms of Legal Profession” in the presence of Prof. Dr. M. R. Doreswamy, Chancellor, PES University and Dr. K. N. B. Murthy, Vice-Chancellor, PES University along with Dr. V. Krishnamurthy, Registrar, PES University and Dr. Sandeep S. Desai, Dean, Faculty of Law. Hon’ble Justice Shri. V. Jagannathan, Former Judge, High Court of Karnataka, His Lordship started the talk with a brief introduction to the profession and focused keenly on the importance of reading and spending time in the library as one of the most important requisites of being a good lawyer. He stressed the necessity of good communication skills for a lawyer or for that matter any professional. He gave various examples, live scenarios, cases of biography and autobiography of famous people amongst others. In conclusion, he posed a question as to why the legal profession is considered a noble profession and answered the same. His Lordship told that it is noble because one confides his complete self to this profession with utmost trust. Dr. M. R. Doreswamy, Chancellor, PES University, while delivering presidential remarks, emphasized on the relevance of integrated five-year law programs and opined that these five years go a long way in creating intelligent and effective lawyers. Stressing on the vision of PES University i.e., professionally superior and ethically strong global workforce, he called upon the law students strive for a life marked by supreme sacrifice and service and told them to pursue litigation in order to serve the last man on the street.

PES University hosted Bio Quiz 2019 under the framework of India Bio @ Bengaluru Tech Summit on November 12, 2019. It was a Bangalore Regional level finals . The quiz was attended by 126 students from different colleges like PESU, MSRIT, Sir MVIT, St Joseph College, Mount Carmel College, KLE, Rai Technical University and DSU from various backgrounds like BSc, B.E and B.Tech. Out of 63 teams, 6 teams – 2 teams from PES University, 2 teams from MSRIT, one from Sir MVIT and one from St Joseph's College were selected for the final round. The final round was systematically conducted by the Quiz Master Mr. Atul supported by Mr. Akshay. The final winners were Ms. Aditi Lakshmi S and Ms. Varsha Bhat from 5th semester, B Tech- BT, PES University who will compete for state level finals to be held on November 20, 2019 in Bangalore Tech Summit 2019. 1st runner ups were from MSRIT and 2nd runner ups were from PES University. The winners received trophies and certificates from honorable Registrar Dr. V. Krishnamurthy, and Chairperson-BT, Dr. K.N Shanti of PES University. All the participants were given participation certificates. This mega event was coordinated by Dr. Seema Tharannum, BiSEP coordinator and Mrs. Divya Prabha K R, BiSEP Faculty from Department of BT, PES University.

The participants in the workshop were inspired to come up with innovative solutions to the prevailing social problems. The exercise helped them overcome the fear of public speaking, hone interviewing skills, try divergent thinking, and work as a team. Mr. Hemanth Gorur, Ms. Nisary Mahesh and Mr. Sunil from Bumblebee academy shared insights about the 5 phases of Design thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Every team came up with creative ideas and solutions and prototypes to prove their realistic approach to solving social problems. Dr. KNB Murthy, Chairman, BITES and Vice-Chancellor, PES University, encouraged the students to carry their enthusiasm to aim higher in their career. The department of MCA in association with BITES, Board for IT Education Standards organized the 3-day workshop on Design Thinking for MCA students from Nov 11 to 13, 2019.

Students got an opportunity to understanding different types of glassware, cutlery, crockery, and new trends in equipment used in the hotels and catering business. Students of BBA HEM program visited Bharat Glass & Crockeries on Oct 23, 2019.

Students of MCA program had two days of enriching sessions that prepared them for the academic rigour ahead by refreshing their approach to learning. The participants found the visit to Ravishankar Ashram, personality development sessions, group discussions, Yoga and quiz useful in support and direction for their regular learning. The program was organised by the Department of Computer Applications on Sept 20-21, 2019.

Reeth Abraham shared insights about opportunities, protocol, challenges and mitigation approach essential for the success of sports events with students of BBA HEM program. Reeth Abraham is currently the world and Asian Champion in the Triple Jump and winner of Rajyotsava and Arjuna Awards. The session was held on Oct 9, 2019.

Inspired by Plogging, volunteers from PES and the event partner hotel covered the area around 2.5 km of a busy roadway in the city and collected close to 150 kg of dry plastic waste. The participants also created awareness about the proposed ban on single use plastics. The Plogathon near Marthahalli was organised by HEM department in partnership with ACCOR, Ibis-Novotel, Bengaluru.

Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is important for study of life sciences, evolutionary biology and clinical progresses. The workshop started with the quality control of a sample sequence followed by trimming of adapters. Next, the sample was aligned with the reference genome and identifiers were added. Through the use of tools for SNP and indel callers, a Variant Calling Format file was generated, whose data was analysed and annotated by matching the SNPs against the NCBI database. The designed pipeline provided a holistic and realistic experience of how sequence analysis is used in the industry. The workshop was conducted by Ms. Shivangi Desai, Ms. Priyanka H.L. and Ms. S. Sneha from LeucineRichBio on Oct 17, 2019.

PES University and SBX Corporation plan to conduct joint research and development on projects in fields of mutual interest that includes Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Students and faculty of PES University will participate in training and exchange programs in the areas of computers science and engineering, with technology focus on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and applications focus on healthcare, bio-medicine. PES University and SBX Corporation plan to jointly organise conferences, workshops and seminars. The MoU covering the proposed initiatives was signed by Prof Jawahar D, Pro Chancellor on behalf of PES University and Dr Sucheendra Kumar Palaniappan, Director Engineering on behalf of SBX Corporation, Japan on Sep 28, 2019.

Students of BBA HEM program got an opportunity to interact with Ms.Bhavana Alvares, Executive Housekeeper, Taj Bangalore and understand the business aspect of the housekeeping trade. The participants interacted visited three Taj hotels over three days, Oct 21-23, 2019.

Students got an opportunity to know from Mr Mr. Shivanth, an experienced executive about career opportunities and roles and responsibilities that go with the positions in the hotel industry. Mr. Manjunath shared different styles of making mixing cocktails.

On the occasion of World Pharmacist Day students of PES College of Pharmacy organised a free health screening camp covering BP, Blood Sugar and BMI checks and patient counselling. The camp was conducted at Vivekananda Park, Bengaluru on 25 September, 2019.

The program to identify Leads for the India Mobile Congress 2019 was hosted by the MCA department in association with Qogno Solutions. The 4 day highly interactive program drew participants from across colleges in Bangalore. Each day featured sessions conducted by corporate executives; Mr. Avijeet Dutta, Managing Partner India, TenX2, Mr. Amitabh Nag, Head, Digital India, HP, Mr. Kuttappa, Vice-President, ARM India, Ms. Priya, Vice-President, IDECK. They interacted with the students on topics of 5G technologies, future technological projects and Smart cities. They shared insights about the working of start-ups and its requirements. Mr. Gururaj Nayak, co-founder and CEO, Qogno solutions addressed the students and explained how students would gain from the exposure and opportunities at IMC 2019. Qogno solutions and PES University co-sponsored the program and expenses including travel to New Delhi, for the Leads and a few faculty members. The students are excited to fly to Delhi and be at the forefront of IMC 2019 expo and interact with delegates from leading global companies.

Students got an opportunity to use PRAYOGeek platform to learn electronics with a hands-on design based approach. The workshop covered building analog and digital circuits on breadboard using PRAYOGeek hardware and Android APP. The learning enables applying inter subject concepts to build a project and solving real world problems. The workshop was organised by department of Electronics and Communication Engineering in association with AltiLOGIC Technologies on September 18, 2019.

Workshop on clinical research and current regulatory affairs was held on Aug 29 -30, 2019 in association with Samahita Research Solutions under the Biotechnology Skill Enhancement Programme, supported by the government of Karnataka.

The five day national workshop on Modelling and Analysis of Nexus between Renewable Energy, Electric Storage and Electrical Vehicle outlined the trends and research opportunities for students in this fast developing field. The inaugural function laid down the objectives of the workshop and the road ahead in the national and global perspective. The attendees were welcomed by Dr. B.K.Keshavan, Chairperson Dept. Of Electrical Engineering and Electronics. Dr. Venugopal. N, Convener said that the motivation for the workshop is about creating a platform for industry, research and academia to discuss and take up research projects in the field of electric vehicles. Dr. K.N.B. Murthy, Vice Chancellor addressed the current scenario in the state and nation about energy conservation and impact on the environment. Mr. Mustafa Wajid, Managing Director and CEO MEHER group of companies, explained the concepts of conventional technology for petrol vehicles in comparison to electric vehicles to conclude that electric vehicles are more economical and environmental friendly. Present on the occasion were Dr. V. Krishnamurthy, Registrar and Dr. K.S. Sridhar, Dean Placements, PES University. Dr. M.J Venkatarangan, thanked PRDC for their association in conducting this workshop. The workshop was held from July 22 to 26, 2019.

Students got and opportunity to learn from a celebrated chef about authentic Rajasthan cuisine, plate presentation as per industry standard and use of native ingredients. Chef Sanjay Tyagi, personal chef of our Prime Minister during his international visits conducted the workshop.The Parv cuisine workshop held on campus on January 29, 2019 was organised by the department of hospitality and event management.

A one day workshop “PCB Design – Altium Designer” was organized by BITES in collaboration with PES University and GSAS Microsystems for the benefit of faculty members and students on Dec 21, 2018. The industry experts gave an overview of processes starting from schematic creation till generation of the files compatible with the fabrication process. About 40 students and 30 faculty members from different colleges in and around Bangalore got an opportunity to know more about truly unified design made possible by Altium Designer. The automation tool bridges all facets of the PCB design process to keep designers seamlessly connected to every aspect of your design — at all times. The workshop conducted by resource persons from GSAS Microsystems and IPC, India covered PCB design using Altium and use of simulation tools to test circuits, in a software environment to generate the outputs required for fabrication. Dr. KN Balasubramanya Murthy, Vice chancellor PES University and Chairman, BITES welcomed the dignitaries and participants and talked about how the organization is serving as a catalyst for nurturing IT educational institutes and improving employability of graduates. He emphasized on the importance of quality of faculty work in an education system. Mr. Satyanarayana, MD, GSAS Microsystems talked about the importance of understanding protocols and enabling more hands-on sessions in the education system. He also brought up the necessity of learning PCB design and how working on Altium Designer would enable students to improve their employability and prepare them for the challenges ahead. GSAS Microsystems offered licenses of Altium Designer for a limited period for all registered participants on request. Dr. Keshavan, Chairperson, EEE and Dean of Faculty concluded the workshop thanking the key resource persons and indicated that more rigorous session can be planned as a follow up for all interested participants. The Board for IT Education Standards is a non-profit society set up by the Karnataka Government, in association with IT industries and educational institutions, in order to enhance the quality of IT education and help build quality manpower for the IT industry. Altium Designer is a leading global product used in Electronic Design Automation. GSAS Micro Systems is a team of technical experts adept in identifying and providing end to end solutions in the electronics industry in India. PES University is committed to creating professionally superior and ethically strong global workforce.

Guest Lecture on importance of learning for professionals in hospitality industry Career development in the rapidly changing retail domain and restaurants business demands continuous learning and development. Pooja V B who heads the regional training team for a master franchise of leading global retail brands and Santosh Muruganantham, founder and CEO of Kolapasi, a chain of takeaway outlets in Chennai shared their insights about realizing ones potential through learning in a highly competitive market. The guest lecture was held on Nov 11 on the campus.

Students got an opportunity to understand organic terrace farming, organic retail concept and building sustainable organics restaurant business and interact with Mr.Jayaram, founder-Greenpath. The visit to Greenpath restaurant on Nov 14, 2018 helped the students of BBA HEM know more about an organization that successfully runs eco-initiatives including organic farms, stores, eateries, eco-stays and workshops.

Students got an opportunity to participate in the Akshaya Patra program and attend workshop on Mind and Body.At Gurukula Vidya Peeta, they distributed books, clothes, and stationery and basic coaching in mathematics was conducted by the faculty.Students participated in the activity on September 29, 2018 as part of the Boot Strap program of department of computer applications.

The workshop saw the presenters sharing their experience of successfully using the Vedic approach in their own professional and personal lives with excellent outcomes and as a form of service to society, in India and the world over. Dr P.R. Mukund Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, RIT, Rochester, New York and Dr. Ananda Gopalan, CTO, VeldonycLidar, USA participated in the event. Dr. Veena S, Chairperson, Dept. of Computer Applications, PES University was present on the occasion. The three traits of human being were compared to sathva, rajhasa and tamasa to induction, resistance and capacitor. Process of learning was demonstrated by shravana, manana and nidhi dhyasana. The speakers talked about DECATRAIT approaches related to knowledge, passion, attachment and detachment, awareness of the self, absorption, confidence, conviction. The importance of balance, vitality and strength for attaining success, position, fame and for personal growth was highlighted. Over 75 faculty, principals and institutional nominees, over 100 students from various institutions and over 100 working professionals attended the workshop held on July 26, 27 and 28, 2018.

A hands-on experience of IoT and sensors brought forth the immense opportunities this domain offers in solving practical problems quickly and cost effectively. The workshop covered IoT related: physical and logical design, enabling technologies and levels, domain specific applications and platform design methodology. Participants also learnt about setting up, booting and using Raspberry Pi and got a quick overview of Python. The two day workshop held on Aug 10-11, was inaugurated by Dr.Mrunalini P, Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Applications, MSRIT and Dr.Veena.S, Chairperson, Dept. of Computer Applications, PES University was present on the occasion.

The brainstorming event saw PES University students of engineering and design, competing with peers globally for real-life implementation of innovations selected by Honda. Connected cars based on concepts of 5G communication, autonomous car and ride sharing, and emotion-based service provisioning are changing the ways cars are being used. Xinova on behalf of Honda conducted the event to seek innovative ideas from student innovators on application of emotion-based personalized services for the connected car. The interactive session saw the participants come up with inventive ideas. Experts from Xinova, Chris Buntel, Issac Pek and Ramakrishnan Vaidyanathan did a rapid fire screening and guided them on how to select-reject-improve ideas. The participants then submitted their solutions highlighting why Honda should select their solution. Xinova was appreciative of the ideas presented by the students in a short span of time. Xinova is a collective of 12000+ innovators working with large companies to help them solve their research and product development challenges. The day long Ideathon was held on July 14 on the campus.

Students participated in a two-day Workshop combined with one-day Hackathon to learn and implement smart solutions using IoT at PES University. Over 60 students participated in the event held from June 22 to 24, 2018 in CIE Studio at PES University. This program provided a unique hands-on experience of sensors and actuators, edge computing and cloud environments. The program was conducted by Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), Center for Information Security, Forensics and Cyber Resilience (IFSCR), Computer Science and Electronics & Communication Departments in association with FluxGen Technologies. On Day 1, participants worked with sensors and actuators, interfacing circuits, programmable controllers and associated hardware and tested their programming basics working on 9 projects. Day 2 covered basic communication protocols, wireless communication, Cloud setup & communication, cloud Analytics and Android app development and systems integration working with 5 projects. Day 3 tested the skills of the students as they competed in a 3-stage Hackathon solving real problems.

Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Makerspace, the place to ideate and bring ideas to life, provides the setting for people, ideas and action to come together. The space was inaugurated by Dr. K.N.B. Murthy, Vice Chancellor and Prof. Ajoy Kumar, COO, PES University. CIE Bootcamp, a residential weeklong experiential learning session was held for students to gain insights into the landscape of tech entrepreneurship and take an idea to a pitch using contemporary methodologies and frameworks like design thinking, effectuation, Business Model Canvas and Agile. Eight teams comprising of 4th and 6th semester Engineering students from PES University presented ideas, qualifying for the final pitch, which had Dr S Raghunath, Prof at IIM-Bangalore as the chief guest and juror. The first prize, sponsored by Vantage Agora, was won by “End-to-end Energy Management start-up” ideated by the team of Shrushti, Kalandhar, Mohammed Sadiq and Sumanth. Student volunteers from the Management studies and Hospitality programs at PESU assisted in the smooth conduct of the Bootcamp. The event was held from May 28 to June 3, 2018 on the PES University campus.

A workshop and session on Emotional Intelligence was conducted by Dr.V.Jaykumar for the managers and supervisors of Novotel and Ibis, Accor Group, as a part of the university’s industry interface. The session delved on importance of Emotional Intelligence at workplace, as a tool to improve productivity, and as a key driver for customer engagement.

The BBA Hospitality & Event Management department conducted an Oriental Cuisine workshop with special emphasis on Chinese Cuisine on Aug 10-11, 2017. The demo and workshop, an alumni Initiative was curated by Pavan (2007 batch), Sous Chef, Leela Palace, proved to be a great experiential learning opportunity.

Inspire 16 was an opportunity to know more about how entrepreneurship can be a powerful tool that is capable of changing the world for the better by focusing on reducing inefficiencies found in the system. The event featured Mukesh Singh, founder of ZopNow and Siddharth Rao, Legal Counsel of Sequoia Capital India who talked about entrepreneurship as a journey towards creating lasting change in the society. Mukesh Singh spoke about understanding the inefficiencies present in the system and coming up with a solution before competitors can spot the inefficiency. Siddharth Rao shared insights into the thought process of the investors before they invest in a company. He stressed on the fact that the investors look for potential in the founder and the founding team over the product or service idea itself. The speakers highlighted the importance of collaborating with others for a startup. They talked about practical examples of how knowing the market realities saves resources and improves efficiency and operations. They felt the need to get proper legal support for protecting Intellectual Property the team creates. Physical and mental health alongside passion for work was crucial for success according to the speakers. The event held on 4th November at Tech Park Seminar Hall was managed by the team of: Chaitanya Premkumar, Hardik Surana, Gautam Bala, Varun Kotak, Gayatri Anand, Vignesh, Smaran Mahesh, Siddharth Suresh , Chandher Shekar, Shruthi Shankar, Aman Anjan Bhat, Rajath Nandan.

DCPECS 2016, the national workshop on Digital Controller for Power Electronic Converters and Systems was held on the PES University campus from April 11 to 14, 2016. The workshop, organized by the department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering in association with NaMPET was funded by TEQIP. National Mission on Power Electronics Technology (NaMPET) facilitates research, development, deployment and commercialization of power electronics technology by enhancing the indigenous expertise and infrastructure in the country with active participation of academic institutions and industry. Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) is an initiative of government of India for transformation of the technical education system. The inaugural session was presided over by Dr. M R Doreswamy, Chancellor, PES University. The delegates were welcomed by Dr. B K Keshavan, Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. The first day featured Mr. Srikhanth Nagaraj, Director – Application Engg., Microchip in the keynote session. He presented an overview of the subject of the workshop and issues related to power and applications. Dr. Sivakumar, Asst. Professor, IIT-Hyderabad conducted three technical sessions. He elaborated on the basic programming and architecture of advanced DSP processors. He explained controller applications on multilevel inverter and power converters, which was followed by technical demonstration of microcontroller kit. On the second day Dr. V Somasekhar, Professor, NIT – Warangal, delivered a talk on suppression of zero sequence current in open end winding induction motor drives and discussed power quality issues with induction motor drives. Dr. Sanjay L, Associate Professor, MSR University of Applied Sciences, talked about generation of polygonal voltage space vector for IM using DSP, and its mathematical analysis applicable to space vector modulation techniques. Dr. L Umanand, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Science, conducted two sessions. He spoke about digital controller basics, methods, algorithms and their applications to DC-DC power converters and inverters. The third day proved to be informative with the technical support of NaMPET and Dr. Z V Lakaparampil, Head, Power Electronics Group, Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC). Mr Sekar S, Scientist – C, CDAC, spoke about NaMPET products especially in domain of digital controllers of Power Converters. He covered applications of power converters with digital controllers. Mr. Jayan P P, Scientist – C, CDAC, talked about full spectrum simulators, miniature version for educational institutes (FSSMini), a simulator functionality, its applications in digital domain and its usage in laboratories and academic organizations. Mr. Ajeesh A, Scientist – CDAC, spoke about System On Programmable Chip (SOPC), the new programming technology in digital domain and SOPC, its importance, functionality and applications. The three day workshop was attended by faculty and post graduate students of PES and participants from institutions across the country.