Students of University of California (UC) Berkeley will work together with the students of Indian universities on ‘UC Berkeley-Andhra Smart Villages’ programme and an agreement has been made in this regard.
The US university has partnered with Koneru Lakshmaiah University (KLU) and other Indian universities to evaluate and find solutions to the problems in the rural areas, according to Solomon Darwin of University of California and chairman of Open Innovation Forum.
As part of the project, the open innovation hackathon would hold a convention for students, entrepreneurs, businessmen and heads of different global banks on KLU campus at Vaddeswaram in Guntur district from August 29 to 31, said Darwin at a press conference held here on Tuesday. “The hackathon designing team has identified categories, including agriculture, education, health, aquaculture, digital technology, transportation, entrepreneurship, skill development, communication, safety and security, proposed to develop in villages.
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Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu will present awards for best prototypes in each category,” said Prof. Darwin. The theme of the programme was to empower rural India with digital technology for economic development by creating a platform to converge knowledge centres, academicians, administrators, researchers and students, said KL University Vice-Chancellor L.S.S. Reddy. Chief Advisor of Berkeley-Andhra Smart Villages Project I.V. Murali Krishna said as many as 22 students worked on different technologies and challenges would share their ideas with the Indian students. KLU Registrar T. Uma Maheswara Rao and university open forum chairman M. Kishore Babu said arrangements were on for the event.
“As many as 2,300 student teams from different institutions got registered for the three-day open innovation forum, of which 30 best teams were selected for the meet, in which representatives of various technical institutions in India, professors from UC-Berkeley and Stanford Universities, corporate executives of Silicon Valley and other firms will address the delegates”, Mr. Murali Krishna said.