Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology (MAIT) conducts Short Term Training Program on IoT

With an aim to provide a wider scope of Internet of Things (IoT) and its applications, Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology (MAIT), Department of Information Technology recently organised a six-day long, Short Term Training Program (STTP) on IoT. As many as 80 participants were provided hands-on training under this program. The participants were faculty members from Delhi-NCR colleges as well as IT industry personnel.

Although the industry is moving at a fast pace with the technological advancements, there is a gap between what is required by the industry and what is imparted to the students as part of the curriculum. IoT is a field that incorporates applications from diverse disciplines such as information technology, electronics, physics, cloud computing and control systems.  A trained trainer will train hundreds of students in the subject with practical knowledge. These young graduates will then apply the principles to “Smartify” the homes built by corporate IT giants. Dr.

K C Tripathi, convener of the program at MAIT informed, “There is no single branch of engineering that can incorporate IoT concepts fully as part of the curriculum. Thus, there remains a gap between demand of the industry and supply from academia. This training program was organized with an objective to bridge this demand-supply gap. IoT holds immense scope for young minds to come up with bright ideas leading to innovations, start-ups and ultimately job creation. The impact of training the trainer is huge as the trained faculty members go back to the parent institutes and impart training to their students.”

The trainers for this program were Prof. SRN Reddy of Indira Gandhi Delhi Technological University for Women (IGDTUW) and Umang Kejriwal of Apptronix Technologies. Prof. Reddy in his key-note spoke about the process followed in industry for developing state- of- the- art devices that are currently being used in home-automation as well as medical sciences. Umang Kelriwal took hands-on training sessions with the participants. A key aspect of training was design of next generation devices, to be called ‘neural net of things” rather than internet of things.

Ms Meena Kumari of Gibs, Delhi, one of the participants said, “Such training to trainers will lead to better transfer of practical knowledge to students leading to entrepreneurship opportunities.”

A panel discussion titled- Training the trainer: A wider perspective was organised on day 4 of the program. Prof (Dr) Rajive Kumar, Member Secretary, AICTE was present as distinguished guest on this occasion emphasised on the importance of IoT in today’s era of “smart living” and also discussed the new National Education Policy. He was hopeful that the present program will open up huge prospects of growth in the area with students from all adjoining colleges taking the lead ahead.

Prof. (Dr.) M.L. Sharma, Head of the IT department added, “IoT coupled with machine learning is the need of the hour in technical institutions.” The IT department is going to set up a dedicated lab for the applications of the IoT where expert sessions for students and faculty from outside colleges will be benefited from it.

The program was sponsored by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).