MSRIT: Creating Real world Problem Solvers

 Sandeep Sen
Real workers are problem solvers. They are given tools only to supplement their knowledge to solve the problems. The vast majority of graduates from India may not be able to solve any real world problems according to the recent National Employability Report. However, not all institutes are willing to bow down to the overarching present scenario. MSRIT (M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology) is one of them. "MSRIT is recession resistant" claims the principal of MSRIT, Dr. S.Y Kulkarni. The institute has been hitting the 100 percent placement mark for many years with a staggering 142 companies visiting the institute for campus recruitment this year alone. These 142 companies include all the major names in the industry such as Adobe, Accenture, Amazon, Biocon, Cisco, Citi group, Cognizant, Decathelon, Deolitte, Ernst & Young, JP Morgan, HP, Goldman Sachs, Google, Oracle and many more.

What makes MSRIT so magnanimous?

MSRIT lists alumni members such as Sajjan Jindal, Chairman and MD of JSW Steel, Anshuman Singh, CEO & MD, Future group, Aravind Jatti, Chairman, Jatti Motors, Rajendra Prasad Maganti, Chairman, Soma Enterprises, Vivek Yadav, Vice President And Director, Schneider Electric, New Delhi. Alumni of MSRIT have excelled and acquired positions of eminence in every discipline under the sky from engineering to finance to management to arts and humanities. They have also acted as instruments of change wherever they have been and apart from sincerity, hard work, brilliance, they have demonstrated social responsibility. "Our alumni are of the highest caliber and repute. We always recognize our alumni who have distinguished themselves through their work and have done the Institute proud. Our alumni students have secured challenging and highly paid positions in top ranking organizations in India and abroad. Their abilities are well attested by the excellent reports from the recruiting companies," says Dr. Kulkarni.

These names are of the college alumni who have made a mark for themselves as people of importance in their respective organizations. However the question begs to be asked as to how the institute prepares such people to live up to their grand roles? To this the principal says, "Students in our institute are trained from day one. We identify their talents and push them towards their designated area(s) of interest. This gives them ample time to specialize their skill in the given discipline and excel at any cost."

"The students are given unparalleled exposure to the industry. Professional education today is all about working in synergy with the industry to ensure maximum fit with their requirements and expectations and MSRIT has been working towards achieving that objective. The college has established close working relationships with some of the world's leading names in technology."

The institute has an The Intel Centre of Excellence, that is used for training in multi-core architectures and parallel programming, an Adobe RIA (Rich Internet Applications) lab, for the use of web-related applications for CS, IS, and IT on Web 2.0 and Rich Internet Applications. EMC2 has a knowledge center that provides MSRIT's ISE Department, access to relevant materials, demos, white papers, videos and books on Information Storage Management and 'Storage Area Networks'. The Department offers Information Storage and Management as one of the electives for the 6th Semester autonomous B.E. degree program. Aside from these, IBM and Schneider Electric have their centers of excellence for knowledge transfer and placement opportunities. What these facilities do is create a real working scenario for the students to view and gain experience from. This cuts down on the crucial training period that organizations today are so wary of. The institute also offers certificate courses from these giants (IBM, CISCO and EMC2) and trainings in various competitive examinations such as GRE, TOEFL, GATE and civil services examinations.

The institute also boasts state-of-the-art facilities that are required for every discipline. Well equipped laboratories, high tech auditoriums, air-conditioned study halls, high tech conference halls, dedicated sports complex, Canteens serving hygienic food, and excellent hostel facilities for boys and girls. The college library is fully automated and predominantly related to Engineering, Technology, Management and allied subjects. The collection comprises of 1,42,089 volumes of Books with 37,512 Titles, 146 National & International printed journals and subscribed by VTU Consortium to 6197 E-journals (Full Text) from IEL, SpringerLink, Taylor and Francis and ProQuest with 13139 full text E-Books are the major E-resources . In addition there are 4000 Bound volumes of journals, 3500 Compact Discs (CD's), 75 Video Cassettes & 1421 IS Standards. All the Operations of the Library are automated using Libsys 7 (Release 1.0) software.

Progress is a test of Adaptability and Flexibility

Since Aug 2007, MSRIT has been academically autonomous for both Under Graduate and Post Graduate Programs. While VTU still awards the degrees, the college has academic freedom in framing its own schemes of study, curricula and student evaluation. This allows ample space for a quick change as and when the need arises. "Having realized the need to reinvent the education curriculum by offering academic programs that were impactful to students and would put them on a solid footing in the corporate world, MSRIT started innovative courses to suit today's requirements," says Dr. Kulkarni. "Our curriculum has been tuned to fit the global standards with its fundamentals in the home soil for all courses. This is what makes our students real life problem solvers," he adds.

MSRIT has truly stood out as one of the finest institutions in its league, with its circle of industry affiliations and its list of student achievements. The institute is definitely the right place to be in.

Student Milestones

The highlight of the institute's list of achievements remains to be the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) designed by the students of the institute. A five-member student team from MSRIT developed an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) with an autopilot system. The autopilot system developed by them does not require a remote control to maneuver the electrically driven aircraft which can fly at speeds between 15-25 meters per second. The five member team was made up of R Prasanna, Prateek Khanna, Srikanth Singh, Rahul Rajarsee and Vishnu BV. The team's efforts were aimed at participation in the Eight Annual Student Unmanned System Competition in Maryland, USA. The team went on to win the prestigious competition.

Aside from this The MSRIT robotics team are accredited to have developed In 2012, an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) named "Moksha", capable of following a prescribed track while avoiding obstacles in its path, to reach a set of specified GPS coordinates. The project also attracted sponsorship from various organizations.

In 2011, Students of MSRIT developed a system that can capture the brainwaves of a person and can be used as an authentication mechanism for personal identification.

In 2010, the college was part of a consortium of 7 Indian colleges that developed a satellite known as StudSat for Indian Space Research Organization in 2010. The pico satellite was launched by the PSLV C-15 on 12 June 2010 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The camera on board had a low resolution of 90 meters. The panchromatic images were designed to provide terrain information during the satellite's short lifespan of six months to one year.

Apple Authorized Training Center

MSRIT has integrated training on OS X and iOS Development into its existing curriculum as open electives. The course provides course outlines established by Apple for OS X Certifications and instruction material are available in the college library for these courses. The courses are tutored by Apple Certified Trainers who meet up to the expert standards. The training centre offers training on both the course and administers the exam for Mac OS X, thus distinguishing the students of the institute as experts for prospective employers.

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