Pragyan

Infobox_Kshitij
company_name = Pragyan
company_
type = Student Run Non Profit Organisation
company_slogan = Lets Celebrate Technology
foundation = 2005
location_city = Trichy, Tamil Nadu
location_country = India
location =

num_employees = 8
Organisation = Non Profit Student organisation
events = B Plan, Robotics
institute = NIT Trichy
homepage = [http://www.pragyan.org www.pragyan.org]
prize_money = 6 lakh rupees
guest = Jimmy Wales, Guruswami Ravichandran, Sivathanu Pillai, Gurcharandas, Stephen Wolfram, Douglas Osheroff, Rudolf Marcus,Robert Michelson,Noam Chomsky,Philippe Lebrun,Dr. Subramanian Swamy,Philip Zimmermann,Prof. Trilochan Sastry,Prof. Ronald Mallett,Dr. K R Sridhar

Pragyan is the annual Science and Technology Festival of the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirapalli (NITT) in Tiruchirapalli, India. It has been held since 2005 every January/February over a period of four days on the NITT's Trichy campus. The event aims to provide a common podium for students from all over the country and abroad to exhibit their technical skills and accomplishment; additionally, it is meant to encourage the interaction between students and prominent technologists, scientists and industrialists. Participants include over 200 colleges from across the country and, since the event's second year, international delegations, including students from Germany, Russia, the USA and France.

2005

The first Pragyan took place from 29th to 31st January 2005. The idea of the festival had originated with the institution's students, who also bore the main responsibility for planning and organization; organization was supported both by the institution's director, P. Subramanian and by alumni, and guided by an advisory committee drawn from the institution's faculty. Corporate sponsors included IBM, Hewlett-Packard, CTS, Texas Instruments, Autodesk, Dell, Logic Info, L&T, Microsoft, Discreet, Masibus and The Hindu Education-Plus.

The first year featured more than a thousand delegates and industry representatives, including participants from 85 colleges (including IITs and NITs) from all over India, who took part in 17 events and 35 different competitions across the entire spectrum of engineering.

2006

The 2006 Pragyan witnessed increased participation from colleges all over the country, and also the first international participation in the programming event "ByteCode". Prominent guest lecturers included Yash Pal, Stephen Wolfram, Christopher Gill, and Christopher Charles Benninger. The chief sponsor for this year were Tata Consultancy Services; other major sponsors included Videocon, Airtel, and Hewlett Packard.

2007

Pragyan 2007 was from the 1st to the 4th of February, and included a large number of events encompassing the engineering and the managerial disciplines. The guest lecture series, meant to give students an opportunity to listen to, be inspired by, and interact with top pracitioners from various disciplines, included lectures by Douglas Osheroff, Rudolph Marcus, aeronautical and mechanical engineer Guruswami Ravichandran, author Gurcharan Das and, by videoconference, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Exhibitions included an exhibition of re-modeled cars, including a "behind-the-scenes" look, organized by Dilip Chhabria of Dilip Chhabria Design Private Limited (DCD). In addition, there were a number of workshops, including on automobile design (Amarendra Kr. Das), digital signal processing, as well as a one-day management simulation game.

2008

Pragyan 2008 was held from February 28 to March 2, 2008.

External links

* [http://www.pragyan.org/ The official Pragyan home page]
* [http://www.nitt.edu/ NIT Trichy Home]
* [http://www.hindu.com/edu/2005/02/07/stories/2005020700590300.htm News article in The Hindu about Pragyan 2005]
* [http://www.hindu.com/2005/02/01/stories/2005020115700300.htm News article in The Hindu about Pragyan 2005]
* [http://www.hindu.com/2005/02/02/stories/2005020216010300.htm News article in The Hindu about Pragyan 2005]