The Newsletter – 28.03.2019

Gender Neutral Hostels: Continuing the debate

New Mental Health professional on campus

Aditya Morolia

Aarogya has a new psychiatrist. Dr. Chytanya Deepak from Asha Hostital, as part of the MoU signed between the Institute and Asha Hospital. He is available on wednesdays and fridays from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M.

In the meanwhile, Ping! Staff found out that one of the existing therapists from Aarogya, Dr. Sushma Panyam, is on a leave for a few months. The community, however, was not informed of her absence by the institute.

#trashtag: Campus Cleaning Drive

Ansh Puvvada

The campus cleaning drive is a series of events aimed at cleaning the campus once and for all. It has been conducted 3 times till date: on the 17th of March, 21st, and the 24th. The trash in various areas of the campus has been lying around for 4 years now, and despite many discussions among the faculty and also the parliament nothing fruitful has come out of it. This effort was mainly influenced by the #trashtag movement on social media.

The pictures clearly show how much trash is present. Essentially, we cleared all the non-biodegradable waste like plastic bags, glass bottles, thermocol, and so on. The first time, Yashas Samaga and I cleaned a small part of the Bakul backyard and posted it on Life@iiith. Many individuals were moved by this and they decided to contribute to this. This was clearly seen in the 2nd drive where 8 people participated in cleaning up the area adjoining David’s Canteen near JC. We cleared a majority of the waste lying around. But the amount present is tremendous and spread out over a large area. The 3rd drive took place on Sunday morning, the number of people involved reduced but the volunteers still managed to clean a lot of the trash.

After the first drive, the general secretary of the students parliament, Yashwant Naidu Singampalli supported us by providing us funds to buy gloves and trash bags. The impact on the IIIT community has been varied. Some have joined us, some encourage us, and some seem to have turned a blind eye.

Hostel Woes

Ping! Staff

Hostel refunds for the summer of 2018 have been finally processed. These refunds were pending since August, 2018 and were failed to be processed earlier even after multiple promises by the administration. The hostel-com too, proved to be ineffectual in demanding that the due monetary settlements be made on time. However, it is hoped that future refunds will be made on time now that the entire process is shifted to IMS.

OBH washrooms are being renovated in order to improve ventilation. The “first phase” of renovations began during the second mid-sem exams. Questions regarding the mid-semester timing, as opposed to the summer received no response either from the administration or the hostel-com. Further, emails regarding the civil work were suspiciously sent to individual students as opposed to the entire hostel community. The hostel-com has been accused to be playing the role of spokesperson for the admin as opposed to representing the students. The renovation, on its part, threatens to reduce privacy within the washrooms by reducing the size of the walls. One wonders why such a hastened renovation that no one asked for is taking place in the first place. Contrast this with the essential washing machines that are lying decrepit in the corner.

Club Reports: From Dungeons to Dragons – Introducing the Gaming Club

Aaron Augustine, Gaming Club

The Gaming Club of IIIT has set its name in stone and is well on its way to stepping up and hosting its own events. For everyone who has ever played games, or has ever wanted to, this club is for you. We plan to present some of the best information that we can get our hands on to help you know everything that goes on behind the scenes of a masterpiece game. Our aim is to make sure that you have all the information you need to become a great player, or a great designer of games.

The club was founded in March 2019 and had its first unofficial meeting where people were invited to discuss the plans for the club, the types of events it could host in the coming semesters and elect the coordinators for the club. It was deemed that a balance between competitions, eSports, training, workshops for learning about games and how they’re made and community events was necessary. The club coordinators elected are:

E Nikhil Rao – UG1
Sriven Reddy – UG2
Aaron Augustine – UG2
Aniruddha Deshpande – UG3

Positions of responsibility that we are still looking for are: Outreach, Public Relations, Tech.

We are working towards bringing at least one event to you this semester, so clear up your schedules for a day of fun! Join The Gaming Club and be a part of the big discussion!

Club Reports is a section where clubs and other student bodies of IIIT can write about their club activities in recent times. If you want your club’s activities to be featured in the column, reach out to us at Facebook, or send an email to ping@students.iiit.ac.in, or reach out to our editors.

Lab Insights: CVEST – designing since 2002.

Animesh Das

CVEST is short for “Centre for VLSI and Embedded Systems Technologies”. This lab was established in 2002 to create low-cost indigenous systems through, as the name suggests, focusing research on different aspects of VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integrated) circuits. VLSI chips today have taken over everything – right from computation to communication to sleeking the idiot box, VLSI has impacted us a lot.

The lab has had its primary focus on analog chip design to optimise power consumption and area. As an example, one of the projects in this lab is on making an ultra-low-power temperature sensor. Such a sensor has immense applications like biomedical implants, microprocessors, IoT and more. These sensors can even work with power supplied from energy harvesters. One of its recent in-house iterations, a temperature sensor with a 20-nano-watt power rating, has outperformed the state-of-art technology in this regard. Another one of their ventures is developing highly accurate on-chip CMOS resistance that takes very less area. Usually high-valued resistors take large area whilst fabrication so they’re preferred as an off-chip condiment. Some of them are also developing various ultra-low-power block level designs that will ease their job while working with bigger systems.

Another project that has been completed and presented is on designing RF sensor cavities for detection of permittivity and permeability of bio-liquids. This is a project that has potential applications in biology, solid state physics and material science. In this project, different kinds of sensor cavities have been tested and based on them, designs have been proposed for a full-fledged RF resonant sensor that can simultaneously detect permittivity as well as permeability of numerous bio-liquids.

Apart from these projects, there have been ventures in making all-optical devices using Ring Lasers.

If you’re interested in working on chip-level design or have a penchant or attraction for integrated photonics, you can always meet the faculty @ A5-317, just above Workspace-11.

The CVEST faculty roster has 6 professors in total.

Dr. Zia Abbas
Dr. Azeemuddin Syed
Dr. Aftab Hussain
Dr. Abhishek Shrivastava
Dr. R. Govindarajulu
Dr. Suresh Purini (associate faculty from CSG)

The author thanks Ashfakh Ali for his contributions.

Lab Insights is a column that intends to give students a brief insight into the labs of IIIT and the work they do. If you want your lab to be featured in the column, reach out to us at Facebook, or send an email to ping@students.iiit.ac.in, or reach out to our editors.