The coming weekend is all set to be abuzz with frenetic activity on campus, with not one or two but three major events scheduled for the 15th to 17th of January – barely a week before the Grand Fest Season is declared open. Here is a quick peek at what the weekend-before-SF has to offer us:

Regional Symposium on Mathematics

A debut venture from the Mathematics Department, RSM-2010 has a simple objective – to celebrate and revitalize maths as a discipline. It comes packing with guest lectures from three eminent academicians – Prof. MK Ghosh of IISc, an expert on Financial Mathematics; Prof. Seema Nanda of TIFR, specializing in Mathematical Biology; and Prof. D Banerjee of IIAP, a professor of Astrophysics. Aside from events like Cryptic (a cryptanalysis challenge), Mathlete (a mini-olympiad) and Algorithmik (a fast-paced code jam), the fest also features a Scientific Paper Presentation Contest and workshops on Cryptography and SAS (the latter appearing to be a major crowd-puller with almost 200 registrations).

(more…)

The DBICA presents International Short Film Festival of India, now in its 4th year, is the largest and most highly attended short film festival in Chennai. The 2 day festival presents over 70 International and National Short films from more than 22 countries, to an audience of 42,000. SFFI is best known for its diverse and cosmopolitan balance of film that ranges from variety of genres like drama, documentary, animation, comedy, science fiction and mystery.

DBICA is the parent organization of the SFFI. It is a non-profit Media and Communication Arts organization that presents the best in world’s short film cinema to audiences in Chennai. The forthcoming 4th International Short Film Festival of India 2010 will be held on 13th and 14th February 2010. More Details can be found here (Mission & General rules of SFFI 2010) and here (Application Form SFFI 2010) .

CodeChef, an online programming competition host (akin to an Indian version of TopCoder),  is holding an ACM ICPC style contest for students starting 21st November. With a prize budget of Rs. 3 lakhs, this event promises to be quite the competitive challenge even despite being held in the middle of exam-season.

(more…)

E-Cell, IIT Kharagpur presents four competitions to imbibe entrepreneurship among students and help convert ideas into startups.
Envision : The product design competition, with the assistance of the TePP, feasible products can get upto 30 lacs worth of funding and mentorship.
Eclairez: It is a platform for Social entrepreneurs to showcase their innovative solutions for society’s most pressing social problems. The funding for the start-ups will be provided by Angel Investors. (more…)

This weekend, Spring Fest 2010 will be celebrating its “Grand Preludio“.

31st October

Stand-up comedy: “I Am Serious” by Rivaldo (of IIT Bombay and Love in December fame):
Venue and time: Kalidas Auditorium at 8 pm. Catch all his previous videos here.

1st November

Performance by British Council: Titled “Jaibati Kanya Story” it will be directed by Tapan Das, who has been associated with various international projects including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
Venue and time: Kalidas at 7:30 pm.

(more…)

The Shell Eco-marathon (SEM), a fuel efficiency challenge encouraging technology and innovation among today’s youth, will hold the inaugural Shell Eco-marathon Asia in Malaysia in July 2010. Shell has been running the Shell Eco-marathon in Europe for nearly 25 years. In 2007, the event was brought to the Americas. Having tremendous capability and talent, Asia is ready to take on the same challenge.

Link for more info: http://www.shell.com/home/content/eco-marathon-en/asia/welcome_sem_asia2.html

E-SUMMIT ‘09 is the entrepreneurship fest of IIT Roorkee to be held from the 15th -19th of April. It is being organized by the Entrepreneurship Development Cell, IIT Roorkee to provide a common platform for aspiring, budding and successful entrepreneurs to interact with each other.

The dual aims of the fest are to

1. Inculcate the spirit of entrepreneurship amongst the student community.
2. Help the start- ups in establishing a successful enterprise of their own.