Chandrakanta Kumar, Joint Secretary for IEEE Bangalore Section
Recent Activities by Bangalore Section
Bangalore Section (India), the winner of 2019 Outstanding Large Section Award among the Sections across the globe, has always been in the forefront in innovative programme design catering to the need of the larger section of IEEE members and the society at large. In the prevailing situation of the pandemic, the Section very quickly adopted to the new normal of delivering the technical content through electronic means. Apart from the regular activities, in time of lockdown, it is even more important to keep the members motivated. More specifically the student-members and faculties need to keep up the momentum of learning and honing and expanding their skillset. The activities of the ever dynamic Bangalore section for the second quarter of the year were aptly designed as depicted in the figure to take care of all those needs.
Bangalore Section is taking lead role in fostering the humanitarian technologies for the people who need them badly. As a precursor to the IEEE Bangalore Humanitarian Technology Conference on 8th to 10th October 2020 in Vijayapura, an array of international experts were brought in during 13th to 23rd April to share their thought to a larger audience through webinars, on the way forward to deliver urban amenities to the rural areas. Gurukul (Sanskrit), loosely translated as ‘Place for Learning’, is a flagship Webinar series addressing any gap in learning of the final and pre-final year graduate students due to locking down of the institutes. In order to assist them, Gurukul covered courses in standard Engineering Curriculum over a span of almost 20 days through webinar-based learning. Professors from engineering colleges all over Karnataka volunteered to deliver the modules.
The immediate attention is on the students, more specifically those who are not yet IEEE members. About 386 such faculties were brought together under ‘virtual faculty conclave’ on 25th April. The usefulness of IEEE in the lockdown scenario in disseminating quality education was demonstrated to them, which they felt was very effective and many of them got motivated to join IEEE. While addressing the specific need of students, professional members have also been engaged through high-end technical and management talks. A series of weeklong webinars have been delivered through the SAC, WiE, Industry co-ordination group, and different technical society chapters of the Section. As part of nominal operation, the Section has also successfully conducted the second meeting with the BCs on 18th April and the office bearers of the society chapters on 17th May respectively through WebEx. In another unique way, Bangalore Section has identified the District Coordinators for many districts of Karnataka. This comes out to be very useful in reaching out and addressing the need of the remote part even during lockdown. The enthusiastic members are making sure that the flag of the section fly very high!