Shaastra

Shaastra is the annual technical festival of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M), Chennai, India. The word ‘Shaastra’ means science and the festival accordingly consists of science and technology based competitions, lectures, demonstrations, video conferences and workshops. The festival is traditionally held over four days and five nights during the first fortnight in October, and has so far seen eight editions, having started in its current avatar in the year 2000. It attracts participants from all over India, and seeks to provide collegiate students with a platform to showcase their scientific and engineering talents. Shaastra is entirely student managed and holds the distinction of being the first such event in the world to be certified for implementing a Quality Management System

Events at Shaastra: An Overview

Design Events

This group of events involves engineering tasks that require innovative yet viable solutions. Some of them are-
*Blueprint: It is the open hardware and software design contest at Shaastra. The event does not have a problem statement, so participants are free to come up with anything as long as it is original.
*Golden Design Challenges: Shaastra 2008 features a new event known as the Golden Design Challenges, which consists of a set of socially relevant engineering challenges, the solutions to which are essentially product oriented.
*Industry Defined Problems: Among the most prestigious events at Shaastra, it consists of problem statements drawn up from varied engineering disciplines by major technology firms.
*Aesthetique: A popular event which is based on designing gadgets.
*Engenious: The event aims to provide cost-effective designs for the common man. Winning entries of this event have been prototyped and subsequently implemented, most notably by the Indian Railways.
*DesMod: An event involving 3-D modeling.

Design and Build

These events test practical skill and workmanship of participants in addition to their Design abilities. Featured events include-
*Fire N Ice: This event focuses on the application of the principals of motors, IC engines in particular in a given situation.
*Robotics: A staple at Shaastra, it provides participants a platform to showcase their talent at robotics. Events include Capture The Flag and Mission Mars (simulated environment for a Mars Rover).
*Switchcraft: A hands-on circuit design contest at Shaastra.

Programming

A number of Programming Contests feature prominently in Shaastra. They include:
*AI Wars: Participants pit their respective Artificial Intelligence codes against each other.
*PWNED!: Participants face one another in a 2D/3D game development competition.
*SHOCK: Shaastra Obfuscated Code Kontest is about code and logic obfuscation. Obfuscation in code involves making programs hard to interpret by using various methods and features of the programming language.
*Online Programming Contest: The SOPC as it is popularly known is an algorithm intensive programming contest for collegiate students.
*Brainf*ck: One of the most famous esoteric programming languages, the competition will aim to create algorithms/libraries in Brainf*ck.

Hands-On

These contests test the hands-on abilities of participants, i.e., their skill of application as opposed to theoretical knowledge. Typically, they require contestants to build engineering products using simple everyday objects. Some of these events are-
*Contraptions: The event, as the name suggests, requires complicated contraptions to be built to perform apparently simple tasks.
*Junkyard Wars: The event tests the ability of a team to churn out great designs from heaps of scrap.
*Project-X: It requires simple engineering products to be built using common everyday objects.

Applied Engineering

These events transcend conventional engineering, venturing into Mathematics, Computer Science and beyond. Some of them are-
*Simulation Championship: The event is designed to test participants on their ability to simulate real world phenomena while optimizing the usage of computing resources.
*Math Modeling: The event poses complex but interesting physical phenomena which are to be modeled mathematically.

Workshops

Shaastra includes a large number of workshops conducted on a wide range of topics. They give the participants a working knowledge or experience of various topics, such as solving Rubik's Cubes, Amateur Astronomy or Nanotechnology.

Miscellaneous/ Multidisciplinary Events

Some of the prominent new and old events at Shaastra include-Industrial Open House: A new event at Shaastra, it gives leading companies a platform to showcase cutting edge technology and innovative products facilitating student-industry interaction. The Ultimate Engineer: A spin-off from the Shaastra Lone Wolf Challenge, this event test participants in theoretical and practical aspects of multiple branches of engineering. Also introduced in 2008 is a Pentathlon of events, a team- based competition which tests the team members' skill in various spheres.A number of quizzes, such as the Shaastra Main Quiz (technology and science related trivia) and the How Things Work quiz also feature in Shaastra. Aside from the fierce competitions, a number of events at Shaastra are meant primarily for unwinding, such as Videos and Movies, Puzzles, Science Fiction Writing and the Daily Events. The newly introduced Shaastra Nights, featuring Laser and Pyrotechnics shows are aimed at taking the same a step further. Additionally, a variety of Online Events ranging from Programming to Puzzles allow Shaastra to reach all those who could not be present.

Shaastra 2008: A Preview

IIT Madras is celebrating its 50th year of existence in the year 2008. Since Shaastra 2008 is a part of the ongoing jubilee celebration, it is going to be much bigger and better in terms of prize money, quantity and quality of participation and number and variety of events compared to previous editions. Shaastra 2008 sports an all new logo which is representative of how it is going to be different from its predecessors. Efforts are made to ensure Shaastra 2008 will be a platform where the best of technical skill and expertise meets raw talent and grim determination, united under the garb of creativity and innovation. Shaastra 2008 aims, as its predecessors have managed with a fair degree of success, to further scientific, technological endeavors and enterprise in engineering, with a great deal of fun thrown in. A quick look at some of the main attractions and additions in this edition:Two major new introductions are a set of Golden Design Challenges and an Industrial Open House. The design challenges cover a variety of socially relevant problems, presenting an opportunity to participants with promising solutions of having their prototypes funded. Industrial Open House provides an opportunity for companies to showcase their products, areas of research, cutting edge technology and is aimed at bridging the gap between the industry and the academia.Shaastra Conclave is expected to generate a lot of excitement. It is expected to attract some of the best brains and very popular names from diverse fields making it a rich learning experience. It is considered as fertile grazing grounds for the next generation of entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators.Shaastra Nights provides an opportunity to unwind and be amazed and enthralled at the same time. It includes shows like a pyrotechnics and laser display and will entertain as well as intrigue.

Shaastra Sparsh

One of the new endeavors at Shaastra 2008 is Shaastra Sparsh. This undertaking intends to allow a large number of people to participate in the big events to be held at Shaastra, as well as increase the standard of competition in the actual competition at Shaastra 2008. This effort will kick off in Hyderabad and Chennai in its inaugural year. High profile events such as robotics and contraptions will be the highlights of Shaastra Sparsh.

The Shaastra Logo

The logo of the 2008 edition of Shaastra is a pair of dice having two dots on all its faces. This is a tribute to Albert Einstein's historic statement, "God does not play dice with the universe", which immortalized the concept of determinism. The logo is used by the organizers to signify that they leave nothing to chance. The dice will show the same number whichever way it is rolled.Even though the dice symbolize perfect order they don't have perfect symmetry. The two dots on the rightmost face of the right cube are not a mirror image of the same in the left cube. This is a tribute to Richard Feynman's statement, "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about". However hard one may try to remove all uncertainty and induce perfect symmetry perfection is an impossible ideal that eludes humans. The Shaastra website says "the Shaastra logo embodies the essence of what Shaastra strives to achieve - innovation, quality and perfection."

Lectures, Demonstrations and Video Conferences

Lectures, Demonstrations and Video Conferences: Shaastra has consistently drawn the world’s foremost experts in their respective fields for making guest lectures, either in person or via videoconference. These lectures and demonstrations introduce students to the cutting-edge research happening in various fields, and serve as educational forums that encourage interaction between collegiate students and the finest in academia and industry.

Some notable personalities who delivered lectures at recent editions of Shaastra:
*Martin Perl, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1995
*Shrikumar Suryanarayan, President, R&D, Biocon
*Roddam Narasimha, Former Director, National Aerospace Laboratories
*Rajagopala Chidambaram, Secretary to the Govt. of India, Department of Atomic Energy
*Simon Singh, code expert and popular science author
*Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica
*Kevin Warwick, the human cyborg
*Dilip Chhabria, Automobile Designer
*Gururaj Deshpande, CEO, Sycamore Networks
*Gene Frantz, Principal Fellow, Texas Instruments
*Krishna Bharat, Principal Scientist, Google Inc – Creator of Google News
*George Andrew Olah, Nobel prize winner for Chemistry in 1994
*Arno Allan Penzias, Nobel prize winner for Physics in 1978
*Bob Pease, Guru of Analog Circuit Design
*Harold (Hal) Abelson, Founding director of FSF, Creative Commons and Public Knowledge
*Dr. Arne Christer Fuglesang, ESA Astronaut – First Nordic citizen in space.
*Dr. Thamban Meloth ,Head, Ice Core Laboratory, National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research.
*Dr. Narendra Krishna Karmarkar, Indian mathematician - renowned for his Karmarkar algorithm in linear programming
*Ramanathan V. Guha, Computer Scientist, Google - He currently leads the development of Google Custom Search.
*Prof. V Balakrishnan, Professor, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras
*Dr. Apoorva D Patel, Professor, CHEPSE, IISc Bangalore.
*Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar, Professor, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc Bangalore
*Harold Kroto, Nobel prize winner for Chemistry in 1996
*John Cromwell Mather, Nobel prize winner for Physics in 2006
*Tyler Cowen, A leading Economist and Writer
*Chris Adami, An Eminent Evolutionary Theorist

External links

* [http://www.shaastra.org/ Official website]
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9163308928246312345&q=shaastra Robotics competition at Shaastra]
* [http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/05/stories/2006100517440400.htm Shaastra 2006 news report]
* [http://www.iitm.ac.in Official IIT Madras site]