Enthused Yet?

Enthuse is a combined initiative by students, faculty and Dean R&D that seeks to promote
the spirit of research amongst students of IIT B by providing them more opportunities to
enter into research early on during their stay here. In the academic year 2010–11, there
were 3 major initiatives carried out under Enthuse – Open Lab visits, Technovation and
Human Powered Vehicle. Also, hostel visits were organized wherein professors would
elaborate upon their research.

Last year

Open lab visits: In this initiative, 3-4 labs from each department were opened up in slots
for student visits. The chief target groups were freshers and sophomores, who gained
immensely from these presentations.

Technovation: It was an initiative taken with the support of IITB’s Technical Council. The
main purpose here was to involve students with robotics and technical projects while they
still have the curiosity and enthusiasm. By providing pre-internship learning opportunities
and open challenges, they sought to encourage freshers and sophomores to make a
presentable product which could, in turn be used elsewhere.

Human Powered Vehicle: The problem statement was to develop a vehicle that runs
solely on human power. The competition was organized by the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and was held in Bozeman, Montana this year from 13th
to 15th of May. A team of 7 students participated in the event for the first time from IIT
Bombay. Our vehicle successfully cleared all the technical and safety inspections during
the competition, completed all the three race events (sprint, speed-endurance and utility-
endurance) and secured 8th position overall, which was commendable as only 25% of the
funding was borne by the institute.

Plans for this year

After an enthusiastic orientation for freshers, faculty visits and talks were conducted in the
hostels. An overwhelming response was received during the program from 25th to 27th
July. Post-midsems, another series of open faculty talks are being planned wherein the
professors would talk about how one can pursue research in his desired field of interest.
These would be followed by the open lab visits.

A research portal has also been setup which can be found at http://gymkhana.iitb.ac.in/
~researchbook/. It aims at being the one-point source for accessing information about
student research interests, current working area, publications, patents, contact details and
any other relevant details. The portal will also be linked with the project vacancies and
the students will be given positions to work in various labs during the next semester and
summers thereafter.

MANU SAHAY