Creativity unleashed at Anokha

Students organised 75 events covering all disciplines of engineering with ‘Celebrating Innovation’ as the theme at inter-collegiate technical festival

M.P Chandrasekharan, Dean-Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham; V. Asokan, director, Flowserve India Controls Private Ltd; and Sriram Natarajan, chief executive officer, Circor Flow Technologies India Pvt Ltd; during the inauguration of ‘Anokha 2014,’ at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in Coimbatore on Thursday. Photo: M. Periasamy

At an end of the Amrita University campus on Thursday, students in casual attire were busy running around the swimming pool. A few held miniatures of hovercrafts, a few others had small planes and other students were there to watch on.

The Aerospace Department had organised ‘Hove Mania,’ ‘Magnus Boat,’ ‘HydroPlane,’ and a few other events as part of ‘Anokha 2014,’ the university’s annual inter-collegiate technical festival. This is the fourth edition of the festival.

Student coordinators N.H. Nandita, and K. Vigneshwaran say that students will have to manoeuvre their vehicles around obstacles within a given time – the efficiency and speed at which they do determine the prizes. As of Thursday evening – the first of the three-day festival – six teams had qualified for the finals in the ‘Hover Mania’ event. In the ‘HydroPlane’ event, seven had qualified. The finals will be held on Friday. These events are only samples of what is in store.

In all, the students have organised 75 technical events covering all disciplines of engineering with ‘Celebrating Innovation’ as the theme. Lauding the students and the university management for stressing on innovation, V. Asokan, Director, GM Operations and Sales, Flowserve India Controls Private Limited, said that innovation was what was needed for a growing economy like India. It would lead to sustained growth.

He inaugurated Anokha 2014. Sriram Natarajan, managing director, Circor Flow Technologies India Private Limited, said that organising events like Anokha would be a learning experience for students.

The students would become good organisers, learn to face and solve challenges and in the competitions, they could apply what they had learnt. He was the chief guest at the inauguration. M.P. Chandrasekharan, Dean-Engineering, Amrita University, said that Anokha, which meant unique, within a few years was rated as one of the very important technical events for students in the country.

The three-day event will see students host a few TEDx events, organise an artillery exhibition by the Indian Army, a photography project, lectures on Vedic mathematics and Vastu Shastra, a robotics workshop and also a few social entrepreneurship events. The Hindu is the media partner for the event.