Awaiting for Convocation

Convocation of NIT Rourkela will be held on 16th January 2010. Ex President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam is supposed to come and deliver the graduate speech. I am eager to attend the convocation to receive the M. Tech degree, to listen the graduate speech by Dr. Kalam, and to meet my friends.

TCS ILP Training Centre at HIT

TCS has chosen Haldia Institute of Technology as one of its ILP training centre. This centre can accomodate around 700 TCS Trainee Associates.

8 faculties from CSE, MCA, and IT department of HIT has been inducted as ILP trainer till now.

We have to teach Basic Programming Concepts using Dr Scheme programming language, Structured Modelling, OOP concept using Dr Java, OOP implementation. We started taking classes from 31 December.

For these sessions, I had to give so much time for good preparation. Though overall, I am enjoying much these sessions due to the good quality associates (or students !). Only today I got some time to breath - and so I am writing this blog !

TCS Guwahati is mentoring this centre. They took our telephonic interview before inducting us as trainee. Most of the associates are from Tamil Nadu. I am taking sessions for 2 batches. Most of these associates in these 2 batches are from Biotech background. But they are picking up the subject very nicely.

Indocrypt 2009

Indocrypt 2009 was held in Indian National Science Academy (INSA) New Delhi, jointly organised by SAG DRDo and Delhi University, from December 13 to 16. Also attended last years Indocrypt 2008 at IIT Kharagpur.
I met there Kishan-da, Subhamoy-da, Rana-da, Bimal-da, Sanjit-da, Avishek, Prem-da, Sumanta others. Kishan-da gave me so much time. I stayed in RAC guest house in Timarpur, near Delhi University campus.
First day was tutorial sessions given by Nicholas Sendrier and Willi Meier. Remaining days were filled with paper presentations and invited talks.
Next year Indocrypt will be held in C R Rao Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science in University of Hyderabad campus, Workshop will be held in PSG college of technolgy Coimbatore, and workshop on teaching cryptography at undergraduate level will be held in Manipur University.

I couldn't see see the tourist places in Delhi due to lack of partner. Kishan-da and others was staying in Aurobinda Ashram. Only places I have seen while going to conference venue by bus are Red Fort, Raj Ghat, Shakti Punj (some thing like that), and Chandni Chowk Market. One day I went to Red Fort in the evening but by that time it was closed. Also due to lack of time I coudn't go to Modinagar, Merut to meet OP and Parmanand, my friends of NIT Rourkela.

During this period, the cold was not severe. The foods in the conference was just excellent. The conference dinner was held in India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road.

Happenning Medinipur

Last week I attended Subhasish's elder brother's marriage ceremony in Medinipur. Earlier I went Medinipur quite a few times when I took admission in Chemistrty Hons in Midnapur College or for Practical Exams or deputation to the VC for openning M.Sc during the final years of graduation in Computer Science from Panskura College. Compare to those days, I was quite impressed to see the development in the stretch from Midnapur Rail Station to Keranitola. Possibly, the setting up of Jindal's Steel Company has boosted up the economy of the quite old Medinipur town.

Met our M.Tech junior Sourav in the wedding reception. Had a good discussion with him regarding his dissertation, his upcoming book to be released in the kolkata book fair.

Papers in the Coming Semester

The subjects, I'll be teaching in the coming semester to the HIT students are as follows:

1. Network Security,

2. System Software and Administration , and

3. Formal Language and Automata Theory.

Many are considering these are bit loaded. Lets see. I am happy to get the paper Network Security as this subject is close to my area of work. The Administration part of SSA paper is new to me... taking help from Google Books... hopefull, i will be able to justify students expectation...

One Update: I'll not be taking Automata, though I was interested to take it.

Packed Novemeber

The month of November was of little bit pressure. I Had to finish the syllabus of Microprocessor & Microcontroller. Apart from my own slots, I had to take slots of another faculty who had already finished her syllabi to complete my portion. Lets see how my students would perform in the university exam...

There were setting the question papers, invigilation for second class test, correcting the answer scripts, different meetings etc..

Few Online Research Magazine

We can surf the following sites to get the feeling of progress/overall scenario in the science community -
Scientific American Magazine: http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciammag/
Resonance Journal of Science Education: http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/
Current Science Journal of Research: http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/
Royal Society Science News : http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=8471