Amalthea (technical summit)

Amalthea is the annual technical summit of Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. It remains the only technical summit in the country which is completely student-driven. The first summit was organised in 2010 with the belief in spreading knowledge and since then it has been organised every year during the fall. The summit's tagline is prosperity through technology.[1]

Amalthea, IIT Gandhinagar
Mascot of Amalthea
MottoProsperity Through Technology
Founded2010 (2010)
TypeNonprofit organization
Location
Official language
English
Parent organization
IIT Gandhinagar
Websiteamalthea.iitgn.ac.in

The summit started off with only the Conclave and now has grown into a wide array of activities which include the Conclave, Symposium and Exhibition, along with technical events. The summit also consists of a networking dinner.

About Amalthea

Amalthea is the Annual Technical Summit of IIT Gandhinagar. The vision of Amalthea is:

  • To foster innovation and creative thinking by providing a platform for people to share their thoughts and exhibit their ideas.
  • To provide an interface between the industry and academia to connect and discuss pivotal technological prospects.
  • To inspire young minds to ponder upon currently existing problems and look for innovative and feasible solutions.

Elements

Conclave

The Conclave features talks from a wide range of speakers, who share experiences from their fields of expertise. The speakers are from the various STEM fields.

Some of the previous speakers in Conclave at Amalthea are:

Symposium

Speakers at the previous Symposiums have included:

Tech Expo

The previous editions of Amalthea have seen exhibits from:

Events

A wide range of technical events is organised during the summit. In Amalthea’15, the first-ever WCA Cubing competition, in association with the SCMU, was organised on October 24, 2015. Moreover, Amalthea '16 hosted India's first-ever drone racing competition in India, in association with the Indian Drone Racing League.

  • Events in Amalthea
  • InQuizzed
  • Electronica
  • DCode
  • TechKNOWQuest

Amalthea '19

Amalthea '19 will be held on 19 and 20 October 2019. The theme this year is 'Transcending Boundaries'. It represents the ideology of limitless reformations and innovations surrounding human beings.

Conclave

The Conclave this year will host the following people

  • Ms Debjani Ghosh (President of NASSCOM)
  • Mr Sudarshan Sen (Former Executive Director of RBI)
  • Mr Abhinay Bhasin (Director (South Asia), Data Science, Dentsu Aegis)
  • Mr Peter Cook (British Deputy High Commissioner)
  • Mr Neel Gala (CEO, Incore Semiconductors)

Symposium

The Symposium aims to connect people from various industries with each other as well as academicians and industry experts. The theme for this year symposium is 'Drug Discovery and Distribution: Taking a Leap'. The speakers are:

  • Dr Sachin Dubey (Head of Formulation and Analytical Development, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals SA.)
  • Dr Srinivas Oruganti (Director, Dr Reddy's Institute of Life Sciences)
  • Dr Hemant G. Koshia (Director Commissioner, Food and Drug Control Administration )
  • Dr Shivaraj Katageri (Chief Scientific Officer, Accord Life Spec Pvt Ltd)
  • Dr Hardik J. Pandya (IISc Bangalore)

Events

Amalthea organises an extensive lineup of events, ranging from technical to general knowledge fields. There are in total thirteen events being organised this year. Two (D'Code and Cryptix) are online and eleven (TechArts, Brainwiz, ICon, Amalthea Open, Roboquest, Drift, Inquizzed, Drone Racing Amalthea (DRA), Electronica, Logix, and Chem-e-Car) offline.

  • Drift: A racing competition based on RC cars.
  • DRA: First Drone Racing Competition to be organised in the country.
  • D'Code: D’code is a three-hour competitive programming contest held on Codechef.
  • Cryptix: It is a Capture The Flag Event. It includes web exploitation, reverse engineering, and cryptography.
  • TechArts: A team event involving brain teasers, puzzles and challenges based on technical topics like Mathematics and implementation of algorithms.
  • Brainwiz: Quizzing competition for students from class 8 to class 12. t is an event aimed at testing the participants' logical aptitude and applicative knowledge of science and maths.
  • ICon: An event which aims to bring hidden and unknown ideas/innovations in front of the world.
  • Amalthea Open 2019: This event is being organised for the first time this year. It is an official WCA event.
  • Roboquest: This event includes building robots and making them compete in challenges.
  • Inquizzed: Another quizzing event for college students.
  • Electronica: This is based on the fundamentals of Electronics.
  • Logix: It test participants on logical abilities.
  • Chem-e-Car: This event requires building a CMW (Chemical Made Wagon) and competing them in a race.

Over the years

Amalthea '18

The 9th edition of Amalthea was held on 20 and 21 October. The theme was 'Integrating Technologies'. It focused on exploring the endless possibilities that could be realised through a combination of various fields of science and technology.

Conclave at Amalthea ’18 hosted eminent personalities who shared their experiences and research with the audience. The keynote speaker was Mr Kush Saxena, CTO of Mastercard. Dr J.N. Goswami, the chief scientist of Chandrayaan-1, also was a speaker.

The 4th edition of the Symposium at Amalthea was held on 20 October 2018. The theme was ‘Advancing Solar Power Generation.'

A total of 13 events (4 online and 9 offline) were organized in Amalthea '18. Offline events included DRA, Drift, Roboquest, Electronica, Techarts, Seismism, Brainwiz, Inquizzed and Icon.

Amalthea '17

Amalthea '17 was held on 4 and 5 November 2017.

The conclave in Amalthea '17 hosted many prominent speakers like Dr Matthew Schneps, Mr A.P. Hota who talked on the indisputable use of technology as a vehicle of human development. The Exhibition in Amalthea '17 showcased products from various big exhibitors like Drona Aviation, NeuroSky, BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) became a part of the summit for the first time.

The third edition of the Symposium had the theme "Low-Cost Automation".the discussion covered various prospects of topic and its applications along with its future trends. A brainstorming session was also held in the afternoon.

Amalthea '17 marked the return of drone racing in the form of DRA (Drone Racing Amalthea), in association with IDRL. It also saw the introduction of a variety of new events, that included: TechArts, Icon, RoboQuest and Drift.

Amalthea '16

Amalthea ’16 was held on October 22–23, 2016. Based on the theme ‘Technologizing Challenges’, this edition of the summit aims to bring out the simple correspondence between technology and development.[2]

The second edition of the Symposium addressed the issues with the country's defense frontier with the theme ‘Technologies in Defence and Internal Security’. This edition hosted talks by eminent speakers, poster presentations and contributory talks by the audience.

The Conclave in Amalthea ’16 had the theme of ‘Technologizing Challenges’ which saw speakers like Diwakar Vaish and Shailesh Kumar talk about the different challenges that the society faced and how they had managed to overcome it.[3] The exhibition is based on the theme, 'Expediting Development Through Tech and Innovation’. The Exhibition promises to bring together some of the exemplary ideas that are increasing the pace of development and revolutionising lives - all under one roof.[4]

Amalthea '15

This edition of Amalthea is the first summit to be organised in the new campus of IIT Gandhinagar.[5] Conducted on a large scale, this event was marked by its first ever symposium on ‘Bioengineering’,[6] it provided a platform for research scholars and technology enthusiasts to share and widen their knowledge in a common field of interest.

The exhibition of this edition of the summit was based on ‘Energy and Eco-friendly Technologies’ and the displays were all those innovations that make the ecosystem a clean and healthy place to live. The conclave was based on the theme ‘Building a Sustainable Future Through Vision and Technology’ and as the name suggests focused on enlightening the audience with ideas of technological advancements that help to achieve sustainable development. The two day-long conclave was concluded by Mr. Saurabh Kaushal, an entrepreneur and space explorer, who talked about the importance of cleaning space debris and proposed ways to achieve that.[7][8]

Amalthea '14

Amalthea'13

Themed Design and Innovation, Amalthea’13 took place on 19 and 20 October 2013. The major highlight of this summit was the ‘Design and Innovation Expo 13’[9] that showcased various technological innovations such as iNDEXTb, Metalmate Robotics, Gridbot Technologies, etc. There was also a three-stage challenge ‘Innovation and Incubation in which the winning startup idea was awarded ₨ 50 lakhs by IIT Gandhinagar.[10] The theme of the conclave was ‘Innovation’. The conclave saw technocrats such as Mr. Alan Emtage, the founder of the first search engine, Archie[11] and Dr. Kazutaka Kurihara who has won the Ig Nobel Prize.[12]

Amalthea ’13 was inaugurated by Mr. Manu Seth (Director, Marketing, HTC India) and Shri Maheshwar Sahu (Additional Chief Secretary, Industries and Mines Department, Government of Gujarat).

Amalthea '12

The conclave and exhibition in this edition of the summit were based on the automobile industry, its developments in the recent years and challenges it faces in the future. The conclave included lectures by personalities such as Mr. Dilip Chhabria, Founder, DC Design Pvt. Ltd. and Mr. Tom Chackalackal, Executive Director of Ford India Pvt. Ltd.

The exhibition displayed automobiles that are considered engineering and design landmarks such as the Tata Nano, Audi, DC Design with Avanti.[13] This edition also saw a conference on worldwide safety being organised as a part of safety centre initiative at IIT Gandhinagar.[14]

S.B. Mathur, the director general of Factories Advice Services and Labour Institutes in India, had said that around 15% of factory workers in the country were working under ‘hazardous conditions’ as per Factories Act, 1948. In lieu of this, the International Conference on Safety was organised as a part of the summit.[15] Sudhir K. Jain, Director, IIT-GN, said that the loss of lives during the 2001 earthquake in Bhuj was not merely caused by the earthquakes, but by human failure to construct safer buildings. Therefore, the speakers discussed on safety measures across various sectors like fire, transportation and buildings, buildings in over various aspects such as design, regulation and economics, in where we lack and what we need to do in future to improve the standards of safety in the country.[16]

Amalthea '11

This second edition of the summit- Amalthea’11 was themed on ‘Infrastructure in India: Present Scenario and Future’. It was inaugurated by Shri Narendra Modi, the honourable Prime Minister of India, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat.[17][18]

The summit witnessed its first exhibition in this edition and showcased various infrastructure projects. The conclave of the summit was organised on similar themes and consisted of a discussion on the successful and innovative infrastructural projects in India.[19]

Amalthea '10

The first edition of the summit was organised in October 2010 and consisted of an energy conclave on Non-Conventional Sources of Energy. The conclave was divided into four sessions: solar, wind, biofuel and entrepreneurship in the energy sector. The summit was concluded with an interactive session hosted by Ms. Yogita Limaye, senior correspondent at CNN-IBN at that time.

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References
  1. "Amalthea 2017 | IIT Gandhinagar".
  2. http://amalthea.iitgn.ac.in/2016/ Amalthea 2016 Website
  3. http://amalthea.iitgn.ac.in/2016/conclave.html Conclave, Amalthea'16 webpage
  4. http://amalthea.iitgn.ac.in/2016/exhibition.html Exhibition, Amalthea'16 webpage
  5. Article in "DNA"
  6. Article in "DNA"
  7. Article in "Ahmedabad Mirror"
  8. Article in "Gujarat Samachar"
  9. Exhibition, Amalthea '13 Webpage
  10. Article in "The Times of India"
  11. Article in "Ahmedabad Mirror"
  12. Article in "The Times of India"
  13. Article in "The Times of India"
  14. "Webpage of ICS". Archived from the original on 10 June 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  15. Article in "Times of India"
  16. Article in "Business Standards"
  17. Article in "Ahmedabad Mirror"
  18. News update on www.narendramodi.in
  19. Article in "Ahmedabad Mirror"
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