Shaastra
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Shaastra is the annual science and technology festival of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai, India. Traditionally held during the first fortnight of October, Shaastra seeks to provide a platform for collegiate students to showcase their scientific and engineering talents in a competitive and educationally enriching environment. Since its inaugural edition in 1997, it has grown to become a hugely popular event, attracting participants from all over the country. Shaastra also holds the unique distinction of being the first student managed event in the world to earn the ISO 9001:2000 certification for implementing a Quality Management System.
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[edit] Events at Shaastra: An Overview
[edit] Design Events
Over the last seven years, Shaastra has earned a reputation for conducting innovative and challenging events that encourage creative yet practical solutions. One such event is Engenious, which attempts to provide cost-effective designs for the common man. The problems defined are socially-conscious, and winning entries have been prototyped and subsequently implemented (most notably by the Indian Railways).
Along similar lines is the Industry Defined Problems event, where a major player in the tech industry (General Electric, in 2005) describes a set of problems from a diverse set of engineering disciplines.
Other design events at Shaastra include Robotics, Blueprint (an open hardware/software design contest), Contraption (designing a Rube Goldberg machine), and Aeromodelling.
[edit] Hands-on Events
There are several contests at Shaastra that test the hands-on abilities of participants. Whilst appearing simple at first sight, these events call for skilled workmanship and considerable engineering nous. Project X and Make Things Work are two classic Hands-On events that put contestants to work with simple everyday objects.
[edit] Programming Events
Some of the country’s finest coding talents battle it out at the Shaastra Programming Contest, an event which calls for a deep understanding of algorithmic concepts. Swat the Bug ( a debugging contest) , AI Wars (design and testing of artificial intelligence in a game) and Simulation Championship are some of the other programming events at Shaastra.
In 2006, Shaastra also flagged off an algorithm intensive Online Programming Contest - the SOPC '06.
[edit] The Spirit of Engineering
The cynosure of all eyes at Shaastra, The Spirit of Engineering seeks to serve as the embodiment of everything Shaastra stands for – technical virtuosity, a painstaking attention to detail, and clever innovation.
The Spirit of Engineering is typically one (or sometimes, two) major project undertaken by a team of students at IIT-M for Shaastra. In 2002, the team built the world’s largest paper footbridge, at a height of 5 metres and spanning a total length of 11 metres [1].The 2003 edition saw the construction of a Tensegrity Tower, followed by a Bascule Bridge the following year.
[edit] Miscellaneous
Shaastra 2006 is also home to a host of Quizzes – the Shaastra Lone Wolf Challenge, the Shaastra Main Quiz, and How Things Work. Workshops are conducted every year on a wide range of topics, from Digital Signal Processing to Nanotechnology, which give students an actual working experience on today’s technologies. There are also a number of daily events, puzzles, and videos that keep participants occupied throughout the day.
[edit] Lectures, Demonstrations and Video Conferences
Shaastra has consistently drawn the world’s foremost experts in their respective fields for making guest lectures, either in person or via videoconference. These lectures and demonstrations introduce students to the cutting-edge research happening in various fields, and serve as educational forums that encourage interaction between collegiate students and the finest in academia and industry.
Some notable lecturers at recent editions of Shaastra :
- Martin Perl, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1995
- Shrikumar Suryanarayan, President, R&D, Biocon
- Roddam Narasimha, Former Director, National Aerospace Laboratories
- Rajagopala Chidambaram, Secretary to the Govt. of India, Department of Atomic Energy
- Simon Singh, code expert and popular science author
- Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica
- Kevin Warwick, the human cyborg
- Dilip Chhabria, Automobile Designer
- Gururaj Deshpande, CEO,Sycamore Networks
- Gene Frantz, Principal Fellow, Texas Instruments
- Krishna Bharat, Principal Scientist, Google Inc – Creator of Google News
[edit] Shaastra 2006: A preview
Like all its predecessors, Shaastra 2006 promises to add newer dimensions to the Shaastra brand name. Breakthrough, an annual national business plan competition for budding student entrepreneurs, has been brought under Shaastra’s umbrella. Some of the new events added this year are Modding, SwitchCraft (a circuit design contest), Fire ‘n ICE (a design event based on IC engines), Flash Games, and an adaptation of the classic TV show Junkyard Wars. The main objective of the Sprit of Engineering is to build a radio control aircraft that will take the live videos of Shaastra 2006, and transmit the pictures back to the base station.
Besides the conventional events, highly anticipated this year are the Shaastra Hacks, inspired (in idea, not content) by the hallowed MIT tradition (MIT hacks) of playing ethical pranks that require more than a little technological ingenuity.
Prospective lecturers at Shaastra 2006 include George Andrew Olah (Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1994), Arno Allan Penzias (Nobel Prize for Physics 1978), Parviz Moin (Director of the Centre for Turbulence Research at Stanford University), Hal Abelson (Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, MIT) and Bob Pease (Analog Design guru).
Shaastra 2006 is expected to draw a crowd as large as 30,000 according to reports in the media.
[edit] Trivia
- The word ‘Shaastra’ comes from Sanskrit, and refers, in general, to any of the ancient Hindu treatises (scientific and other) – such as the Vimanika Shaastra which is a manuscript on the construction of flying machines
- IIT-M held its first technical festival ‘Pragma’ in the year 1997. The name ‘Pragma’ was changed to ‘Shaastra’ in 2000, a move that was reminiscent of the change of name of the institute’s cultural festival ‘Mardi Gras’ to ‘Saarang’ in 1996.
- Shaastra’s logo is a loose adaptation of ‘Knots’ (‘Knopen’ in Dutch), an artwork by the celebrated Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher. Topologically speaking, it is a picture of a ‘trefoil knot’ which, in knot theory, is the simplest non-trivial knot.
