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Photo: Ashoke Chakrabarty

The virtual world: Cash-in the tech fests.

This year, Shaastra brings to you, with renovations and new challenges, a perfect ground to push your engineering skills to highest level. Among the all-time popular events, you can fight it out at “Robowars” to assess if you are “The ultimate engineer”. Not to forget “Robotics” where you can parade down your own Mars Rover or build a robot for capturing a flag and a crane for marine purposes. As part of the ‘Spirit of Engineering’ exercise, engineering feats with months of effort pay off as the “Yu Fly” lifts up and the vehicle charged by “Bio-diesel” zooms ahead.

Learning is a never-ending process, and Shaastra 2007 sets out to quench your thirst for knowledge offering you a wide vista of workshops and lectures this year. In the lime-light is a workshop on Chandrayaan, supported by a display model from ISRO, followed by a panel discussion involving names like Jayati Dutta and Dr. Annadurai from ISRO. The “Radio Circuitry” workshop and the “Micro air vehicles” workshop promise an interesting time for the audience. For the lectures, the red carpet is rolled out to Dr. Narendra Karmakar, who is building the world’s fastest super computer and a host of lectures by eminent people form across India. Video conferences with Nobel Prize recipients like Kroto, the man who discovered ‘Fullerene’ and Tyler Cowen, the economist who add icing to the cake. Filled with fun, we have workshops on Rubik’s Cube and Origami. Fun doesn’t stop there. Go crazy at “The Ignobel Prize” and the “Science Fiction Writing”

The abundant on-the-spot events are aimed at keeping you busy all day. Along with the popular “Project X” and the emerging “Junkyard Wars”, this Shaastra puts forth all the new “Quick Fix” and “Art of War” to get your hands dirty. With your inherent interest in design as the prerequisite events like “Aesthetique” invite you to try your hand and charge yourself at “Fire n ICE”.

For the computer savvy lot, the ”Open Source” workshop is a source of learning and the coding events along with the usual “Online Programming Contest” bring to you new challenges in the form of “Advanced Programming Contest” and “SHOCK”. The online events have been revived with the edition of the “Online Hacking Challenge” which poses an ideal playground. Modeling has never been more fun with the addition of the “Online Math Modeling”. Quizzing at its best yet again continues with the highlighted “Shaastra Main Quiz”.

These apart, charged by your passion for business we bring to you “Breakthrough”, a B-Plan competition and a workshop on entrepreneurship. For those of you, who find the stock market intriguing; try out your trading skills in the “Bull’s Eye”.

Shaastra 2007 is a class apart from all the previous Shaastras. With trading in carbon credits in “Bull’s Eye” and conserving paper, the stress is on spreading environmental awareness and saving energy.

Memories fade with time, but here at Shaastra we remember them with pride and fondness as the past Shaastras unfold before you in the all-new-feature added to our website by the name of Shaastra Smriti ( www.shaastra.org\smriti). The site includes a database of questions asked in previous years for you to get an idea and the milestones and achievements from previous Shaastras. For those who want to revive your past experiences at IIT Madras, this is where the memory remains.

Being surrounded by a young and imaginative crowd ready to explore the realms of human possibility makes Shaastra the place to be for any budding engineer. Brainstorming sessions with brilliant outputs is a reason good enough to book your tickets now. With an efficient hospitality team awaiting your arrival, pack your bags this October for a week full of fun, frolic and engineering. Come, feel the spirit.

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