The science club of JRU organized a Tech Fest 2019 on 15 September at the University Ranchi campus to encourage young engineers to think out of the box and to honour the contributions of Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya.

India celebrates 15 September as National Engineers’ Day to appreciate the contributions of Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya.

Visvesvaraya is known for his contributions in the field of engineering. He installed an irrigation system with water floodgates at the Khadakvasla reservoir near Pune to raise the flood supply level and storage to the highest levels. Later, this system was also installed at Gwalior’s Tigra Dam and Mysuru’s Krishnaraja Sagara (KRS) dam. KRS created one of the largest reservoirs in Asia at the time.

He served as the Diwan of Mysore and was awarded the title of ‘Knight’ in 1915 as commander of the British Indian empire. He received the Bharat Ratna in 1955 and became a member of the London Institution of Civil Engineers before he was awarded a fellowship by the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) Bangalore.

The Tech Fest 2019 at JRU was inaugurated by the Vice Chancellor, Dr Savita Sengar. During her speech, Dr Sengar reminded students of the invaluable contributions made by M Visvesvaraya.

Dr Segar added, “Tech Fest is an opportunity for students to showcase their innovative ideas, besides keeping the spark of science alive. Students presenting science models also need to remember that they have to become role models for society as well. The right combination of knowledge, science, wisdom and academics are important, but so are life skills that give us the emotional quotient to make life more meaningful. You cannot progress in life or career by ignoring these soft skills. Then progress will become imbalanced.”

Later Dr Sengar spent time with the students to inspect their science/technical models and interacted with the budding engineers to understand the idea behind their models.

Students from Faculty of Science – Engineering and Faculty of Computer Science participated in this fest. Some of the models created by students groups are – smart home, highway technology, rain water harvesting, wastage collection, waste plastic road, green building, smart city Ranchi, light fidelity communication, treatment of sea water, save water in poly house, automatic human counter and light control system, service robot, and eco-friendly cycle.

Later, University faculty members, staff and students from various departments came along to view the models and encourage the participants. The entire Tech Fest 2019 was organized under the mentorship of Prof. Raghuvansh Singh.