13th Nat’l Frontiers of Engineering Symposium Hosted At IIT, Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: The inaugural session of the two-day 13th National Frontiers of Engineering (13NatFoE) Symposium was held at IIT Bhubaneswar on Friday .

The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) organised it in association with IIT Bhubaneswar.

INAE president, Dr Sanak Mishra was the chief guest and IIT, Bhubaneswar Director, Prof RV Raja Kumar was the guest of honour.

INAE vice-president, Prof Indranil Manna was also present at the symposium.

The aim of the symposium was to bring together young and outstanding engineering professionals, aged between 30 and 45 years from the industry, universities and research organisations to deliberate upon emerging and leading-edge research and development work in the domain of engineering and technology.

Convening engineering professionals and technologists from various fields were provided a platform for brainstorming on contemporary and futuristic issues related to frontiers, areas, cross-disciplinary translational research and innovation.

The overall purpose of the symposium was to interact and achieve synergy at distinctive scientific levels through presentations and discussions in thematic areas like

• Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR & VR)
• Smart Grid
• Advances in Materials and Manufacturing Technology
• Next Generation Transportation Systems

Prof RV Rajakumar emphasised the need for cross-disciplinary research and development to fulfill the needs of the industry. He touched upon the science and technology challenges facing the nation and the world and talked about the importance of the thematic areas of  Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Smart Grid, Next-Gen Grid, Micro & Additive Manufacturing, IOT and 5G communication for serving the needs of the modern society. He also briefed about the research activity taking place in the institute in these areas. He called for coming up with energy efficient systems to reduce the carbon footprint, paving the way for environment restoration and energy saving.

About 60 professionals from various institutes and R&D labs, industries and start-ups attended the event and shared their contributions.

A large number of research scholars and faculty members of IIT Bhubaneswar also attended the symposium.