Bridging to a better future

COEP Foundation’s Silicon Valley Chapter (SVC) is glad to announce a new initiative called WebSetu.

COEP Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization of COEP alumni. It is a platform to bring together alumni from around the world. The goal is to network, learn and grow as a community. The SVC is active in building a strong alumni network and leveraging it to help students and alumni.

Background

We believe that the major stakeholders in any educational institution are the students studying there, the teachers, the college administration, industries that recruit from the college and former students/alumni.

Everybody benefits if the quality of students graduating from the college improves. The students benefit from a better education. The teaching staff and administration gain a lot of respect and credibility. The industry recruits skilled and able engineers. The institution becomes a place of repute and a societal force to reckon with. This indirectly benefits the alumni since the college they went to ultimately tags them. In the final analysis, improving the quality of education is a win-win solution.

An active alumni connection was the missing piece in the picture. Thankfully, a few committed individuals formed the COEP Foundation. They established a channel to link alumni with the college. We, as alumni, can now make a meaningful contribution to COEP. The alumni contribution does not always have to be monetary but can take different forms. The ‘WebGuru’ series is a good example of how alumni can reach out to students and make a difference.

We, as former students, are committed to improving the quality of education in COEP. We will execute our initiatives under the aegis of the COEP Foundation. WebSetu is a SVC initiative for mentoring students in COEP. The first round of Websetu was carried out as a 1:1 mentoring project and was completed in July 2007. We received an enthusiastic response from students and mentors and decided to move it to a forum for the benefit of a larger number of people.

What is WebSetu and why are we doing it?

Most people know that they would be better off had they done things differently. Hindsight is always 20-20. However, it never hurts to have the knowledge to make the right decisions at the right time. Some people actively seek this knowledge and guidance. Some are lucky and end up making the right choices. However, a vast majority makes more mistakes than they really need to. Lack of information and awareness are two major factors affecting the decision making process.

Obviously, no one can make the right decisions all the time. Nevertheless, we can make a serious attempt to root out ignorance and increase awareness. Nowhere is this more important than in student life where the choices made make their reverberations heard over a lifetime.

It would be worthwhile to invest the time and effort to aid students in navigating through a bewildering array of choices and inform their decisions. Most students do not have a ready resource to tap into for help and clarification. They cannot sort through all the data at their disposal. Too often, they are simply not aware of their options. It is not their fault. The culture and the atmosphere they grew up in do not place a premium on awareness and exploration.

Bridging this gap between ignorance and awareness will be the primary focus of WebSetu.

The project aims to tie up students with mentors who will aid them in their student lives. The help offered will cover aspects related to current and higher education, study methods, internships, final year projects, career counseling, etc.
This is going to be a learning experience for both students and alumni mentors. We will consider all students who are serious about higher studies after B.E. Higher studies include M.S., M. Tech, M.E., M.B.A degrees and civil service exams.
The ultimate objective is to extend the scope to life mentoring where alumni can engage with other alumni for professional and personal mentoring.

How will it work?
1. Mentors and students will register on the Aarewah community (www.aarewah.com) website and upload their profiles. The profiles will indicate their e-mail id, professional background and areas of interest. A LinkedIn URL (www.linkedin.com) for the mentor should be provided if available.
2. Registered users would be able to receive notifications about new topics and posts if desired.
3. Students’ questions may be addressed to a specific mentor or to all. Offensive posts shall be removed.
4. Students will navigate to the WebSetu Forum to carry out a search for e-mail threads based on the type of information they are looking for or browse through each of the sub-categories according to their interest.
5. We expect some common threads to emerge from these interactions. We will compile this information into FAQ’s and make it available to all students.
6. FAQ’s will be compiled and updated by the WebSetu team.
7. The volunteer team will continually work to improve the scope and content of the relationship.
Selection Criteria
Any students, alumni or professors at COEP can be mentors/mentees.

For general queries or suggestions related to this project, please send an e-mail to websetu_mentee@coepalumni.org for mentees and websetu_mentor@coepalumni.org for mentors.

Volunteers for the project

Neeti Gore, Jyoti Shirolikar, Asif Pathan, Vinay Kakade, Mandar Waghmode, Sameer Vaidya.

There are two reports available for the COEP Master Plan.

1.COEP Campus Options and Evaluation Report

2.COEP Campus Inception Report

Interesting read on what is being planned for the COEP campus.

Thanks to Anjali Nandedkar for the reports.

The Report of Visit to USA by COEP Director and HoD (Computer Engg &IT)

(1st June -18th June 2007)

A day to day report is available at http://www.coep.org.in/usa/2.htm

Prof. A. D. Sahasrabudhe, Director, COEP and Prof. A. A. Sawant, Head, Computer Engineering and IT visited USA between 1st June 2007 and 18th June 2007 on the invitation of COEP Charitable Foundation (an alumni association of COEP in USA). The prime objective of this visit was to have interaction with a large number of COEP alumni settled in USA, to inform them about the status of autonomy awarded to the college, the positive changes taking place in the institute in terms of academics, administration governance and finances with the help of eminent members of the Board of Governors, seeking financial help from the alumni in the development of institute, requesting the alumni for raising an endowment fund, having meetings with academicians from renowned universities in US for understanding their best practices, seeking their help for identifying possible faculty for COEP, and visits to a few industrial organizations at various places all over the US.

Meetings with alumni

The meetings with alumni were held at Columbus, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Portland, Phoenix and San Francisco.

Most prominent meetings where large number of alumni attended were at New York and San Francisco. There were about 40 alumni in New York meeting at the residence of Mrs. Anjali Nandedkar, while more than 100 alumni attended the meeting in San Francisco arranged in a park.

At every meeting with alumni, COEP film was screened and a presentation about institute activities was done, emphasizing on the changes taking place in the COEP campus, IT Infrastructure & internet connectivity, about autonomous status of COEP, the involvement of the Board of Governors in the development of the institute, areas requiring further improvement, plans for attracting quality faculty members, plan for raising the endowment fund etc. Everyone was appreciative of the changes taking place and the new academic rigour at COEP. The starting of on-line classes from IIT Bombay was specially appreciated. A number of issues like institute finances, need for creating a corpus of Rs. 20 crores ($ 5 million) for providing performance based incentives to faculty were discussed. These were appreciated by the alumni. However, quite often, most alumni kept insisting on smaller projects which individuals in US could easily fund to COEP. Some well established alumni were enthusiastic about instituting Chairs in different departments. Some prominent alumni who interacted were as follows:

Prof. Suhas Patankar, senior alumni, known for his CFD Algorithm, was contacted on phone. He has shown willingness to extend possible help including donation to the college.

Mr. Amol Jadhav and Mr. Kedar Kirtane who are pursuing PhD in Ohio State University Mr. Tejas Ranade pursuing MS in CMU were motivated to consider joining COEP as faculty after completing PhD.


Mr. Mangesh Honwad, Instru_1975 (honwadm@impactsys.com) has shown willingness to extend all possible help. Mr. Mukund Kute (Instrumentation) mkute@sunonesource.com elaborated how we may develop an interdisciplinary programme showcasing industry automation to the newly upcoming automobile sector in Pune and leverage on this strength.

Meetings with Mr. Sanjeev Deshpande (Metallurgy 1980) and Mr. Surendra Khambete (Mechanical 1987), both well settled industrialists were very useful.


Kaustubh Bhalerao, Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign 1998 Civil batch (bhalerao@uiuc.edu) is keen to extend co-operation and help COEP in the area of Bio- Engineering.

Narendra Kale, Chairman Kale Consultant Ltd. 1974 E&TC batch (narendra_kale@kaleconsultant.com). He is managing financial services of 44 airlines in the world by having a software product developed in Pune. He is already felicitated by PM of India for the Best Software Product. Recently he was also felicitated by IIT Kanpur ,as a distinguished alumni of IIT Kanpur. During his felicitation, he had informed the Director of IIT Kanpur for making available live lectures to COEP through IP based video conferencing. He was willing to fund IIT Kanpur for this purpose.


Meetings with Prof. Haresh Shah, Mr. Sandeep Johri, Mr. Chris Lawrence were very useful and the details have been reported under separate sections.

Mr. Mahavir Sanghavi, Mr. Shashank Modak and Mr. Siddharth Sasmi from Ohio, Mr. Mukund Kute, Mr. Mangesh Honwad, Mr. Sheetalkumar Vibhute and Mrs. Shubhada Kulkarni from Philadephia, Mr. Aslam Handy and Mr. Ravi Bhatkal from New Jersey, Mrs. Anjali Nandedkar from New York, Dr. Ramesh Raskar, and Mr. Prem Natarjan from Boston, Mr. Sanjeev Deshpande and Dr Surendra Khambete of Detroit, Mr. Vishwajit Panse, Dr. Kaustubh Bhalerao, Mr. Narendra Kale from Chicago, Mr. Subhash Joshi and Mrs. Aparna Joshi from Portland, Mr. Susheel Jadhav from Phoenix, Mr. Vinay Kakade, Mr. Sandeep Johri, Dr. Harish Shah, Mr. Chris Lawrence, Mr. Mohit Gundecha, Mr. Sameer Vaidya, Mr. Ajit Nazre and all the office bearers of COEP Charitable Foundation (an alumni association of COEP in USA) have shown keen interest in the activities of COEP and promised to help in all possible ways.

At every place the COEP_ALUMNI local chapter is getting energized and will network more COEPIANS around for helping COEP achieve excellence.

On June 17th, we attended the US alumni Charitable Foundation Meeting and briefed about the visit and appealed to all the alumni to raise funds for an endowment so that faculty can be remunerated suitably through the interest earned from the endowment fund.

Meetings with Academic Administrators, Professors in US Universities

We held meetings with academicians from Ohio State University, CMU, Princeton University, Stevens Institute of Technology, North Eastern University, Tufts, Michigan State University and Stanford University. We also visited the campuses of Harvard University, MIT and Stanford.

At Ohio State University, we had meetings with Prof. K. Cheena Srinivasan, Chairman, Mechanical Engineering (srinivasan.3@osu.edu) and Prof. Nitin Padture of Material Science Department (padture.1@osu.edu).

Mechanical Engineering Department at Ohio State University is strong in Automobile Engg. Prof. Srinivasan is keen to have student exchange, especially students from US visiting Pune for summer internship in industry from global exposure point of view.
There was also an emphasis on possibility of carrying out consultancy/project work in association with IT industry in India (e.g. TCS) and COEP and also in partnership with automobile industry.
Prof. Nitin Padture has agreed to deliver a lecture on nanotechnology and materials at COEP in August 2007, during his India visit.
We also met Mr Amol Jadhav (COEP Metallurgy graduate), a student of Prof. Padture, completing his PhD and joining Intel shortly. He has strong academic interests and is willing to join COEP as faculty in near future.

At CMU, we had the meetings with Prof. Mel Rosso-Llopart, Associate Director of Distant Education. (rossollo@cmu.edu) and Prof. Vijaykumar Bhagavatula, Professor of E & C (kumar@ece.cmu.edu).
Possibilities of collaboration including beaming of live classes to COEP were discussed. The University already has similar arrangement for a University in Portugal. The CMU has linkage with ISN, Chennai.
The information shared by Prof. Mel on the nature of projects undertaken by them, how these projects are obtained from industry etc. was useful.
Prof. Mel Rosso-Liopart is likely to visit India next year and is willing to deliver a talk in COEP.
Prof. Vijaykumar Bhagavatula, Professor of E & C (kumar@ece.cmu.edu) is also visiting Pune for giving a key note address in an International conference in December 2007. He has also shown willingness to address COEP students.

At Princeton University, we had about 90 minutes meeting with the three deans of Princeton University.
Ms Catherine A. Peters, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs(cap@princeton.edu),
Prof. Roland Heck, Associate Dean, Administration (phheck10@verizon.net)
Prof. Peter Bogucki, Associate Dean UG Affairs (bogucki@princeton.edu)

Many academic issues of common interest such as curricula, changes desired in the curricula and the courses, challenges in engineering education and institute administration etc. were discussed.
Princeton has about 4600 UG and 2000 PG students on the campus. The UG programme contains 2 Physics, 1 Chemistry, 3 Maths, 1 computing and 1 Writing Courses respectively during the Freshman; Department is chosen by students in the second year based on their interest, and Sophomore year courses comprise of Engineering Principles and Applications; Junior year follows the courses in Design and provides in depth knowledge in chosen field; Senior year has advanced courses and project/thesis/industrial work etc.
Prof. Roland Heck is planning to visit India and give a series of lectures at COEP on engineering marvels for motivating the students to take up engineering as a career.
He suggested following books for a first introductory course on engineering:
1. Innovators: David Billington, 2. Power, Speed and Form: David Billington

At Stevens Institute of Technology, Dominic Duggan, Chair of Computer Science, Daniel Gallaghar, Dean University Admission, Larry Bernstein, Director Quantitative Software Engineering and Lynn Insley, Director, Career Development participated in the meeting with great enthusiasm. All of them appreciated the COEP film presentation. Larry briefed about the experience of Stevens in the collaborative project of remote blood testing with Johnson and Johnson.
Possibility of extending the joint collaboration between Johnson and Johnson and Stevens Institute to COEP on the remote blood testing project was discussed.

At North Eastern University, Mr. Ramesh Raskar arranged a meeting with Prof. Ravi Sundaram, an IITM alumnus and Professor in College of Computer and Information Sciences in North Eastern University, followed by a meeting with Prof. Larry A Finkelstein, Dean at Northeastern University (laf@ccs.neu.edu). Dr. Ramesh Raskar also participated in the meetings. Prof. Larry A Finkelstein elaborated on how funds are raised by the Universities in US from their alumni and industries.
We visited the campuses of Harvard University and MIT and met alumni from IISc and IIT Delhi. We visited a number of departments and laboratories in MIT with the help of Dr. Ramesh Raskar.


We also had a meeting with the faculty at Tufts University which was arranged by our alumnus Mr. Prem Natrajan.

At Michigan State University, we had a meeting with Prof. Satish Udpa, Dean, College of Engineering. This meeting was arranged by Mr. Sanjeev Deshpande of Atmosphere Annealing, a Metallurgy graduate from COEP. There was a prolonged discussion with Prof. Satish Udpa, who showed keen interest for signing an MOU between COEP and MSU for academic collaboration comprising of summer internship for the students of COEP/MSU, faculty exchange etc. He was informed about the faculty vacancies at COEP and requested to motivate graduating students to consider joining COEP in faculty positions. There was a visit to the Civil and Environmental Engineering lab, where Dr. Mantha Phanikumar Associate Professor (phani@ egr.msu.edu), an IISc alumnus briefed about the research facility available in the University. Then, there was a visit to the library of Michigan State University.

We met with Prof. Haresh Shah in Stanford University, who elaborated on how the endowment funds are raised by the US Universities from their alumni, how these funds are maintained and his intention of instituting a Chair in COEP. He also explained how establishing an exclusive office towards endowment fund management is important for the COEP.
He also indicated that a few other alumni are interested in instituting Chairs. He informed that he is in touch with Prof. Thomas Kailath, Mr. Shirke and Prof. C. K. N. Patel for instituting Chairs in COEP and creating endowment fund.

Visit to Industries and R &D establishments

Apart from universities, we visited a number of industries and R & D organizations such as Ohio Super Computer Centre in Ohio, PLEXTRONICS at Pittsburgh, Visteon at Lansdale, Innovation centre of Johnson and Johnson, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories at Boston, Indratech Performance Fiber Systems at Detroit, Atmosphere Annealing Inc at Detroit, Intel Fabrication lab at Portland, Assembly Technology Development unit of Intel Corporation in Phoenix and Tech shop (a hobby workshop) at Stanford.

Visited Ohio Super Computer Centre and met Mr. Siddharth Sasmi ( BE E &TC 1998) (sasmis.1@osu.edu) who is pursuing PhD and interested in giving series of lectures to COEP students through Webguru on the topic Parallel MATLAB.


We visited the research and development activity at PLEXTRONICS, Pittsburgh.
Dr. Mathew Mathai, Technology Manager, Analysis (mmathai@plextronics.com) and Mr. Swanand Vaidya took us around the labs and briefed about the advancement in flexible display systems.

Mr. Aslam Handy, Director, Emerging Technologies (COEPian_Mech 1987) took us around the innovation centre of Johnson and Johnson in New Jersy.

At Boston, we visited the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories and in particular to the research lab of Mr. Ramesh Raskar, who has earned several awards for his research.

· Mitsubishi Electric Valuable Invention Award, 2006 (For Photosensing Tags, RFIG)
· Mitsubishi Electric Valuable Invention Award, 2006 (For Dome Screen Projector Display)
· Dome Screen Projector for prestigious 'Best 10 New Products' Prize in Japan given by Nikkan Kogyo Simbun
· Technology Review's 100 Top Young Innovators Under 35 (TR100), 2004 (More links)
· Mitsubishi Electric Valuable Invention Award, 2004
· MIT Global Indus Technovator Awards (Top 20 Indian Researcher), 2003

In Detroit, we visited Indratech, Performance Fiber Systems of Mr. Surendra Khambete. (Surendra.Khambete@Indratech-us.com). Surendra a COEPian 1987 Mechanical pass out has upgraded himself by completing M.S. in Mechanical, M.S. in Computer Science, MBA and Ph.D in Economics. He has set up two plants of fiber systems, one at Detroit and the other one at Indiana. He has an expertise in Polyester foam. The visit to the Indratech was invigorating.

We visited Visteon, an automobile electronic component automated assembly plant at Lansdale.
Mr. Ambrish Gor (agor@visteon.com) and Mukund Kute(mkute@visteon.com) briefed us about the activities in the automated plant, especially related to automated manufacturing and cell manufacturing of various control modules for automotive industries. It was a nice experience to have a closer look at the engineering activities scheduled for automated processes.

We also visited Atmosphere Annealing Inc. in Detroit.
Mr. Jay Murthy (1990 Metallurgy pass out), General Manager – Lansing Plants (murthi@aaimac.com) showed the heat treatment plant and the processes involved.

Mr. Subhash Joshi 1992 Metallurgy pass out (subhash.m.joshi@intel.com) working with Intel arranged a visit to the Intel Fabrication lab at Portland, gave details about engineering processes involved in vapor processing and chip manufacturing.

Mr. Susheel Jadhav arranged a visit through the Assembly Technology Development unit of Intel Corporation in Phoenix. There was a meeting with three COEP alumni Dr. Mukul Renavikar ‘94(Metallurgy), Dr. Nachiket Raravikar ‘97 (Metallurgy) and Dr. Rahul Panat ’96 (Mech) in the conference room of Intel regarding possible collaboration between Intel and COEP. Many issues of interest were discussed. All three have agreed to provide valuable inputs for a course in advanced material science and nanotechnology. They have also agreed to offer a course on advances in nanotechnology through IP based videoconferencing.

Mr. Chris Lawrence took us around the Stanford University linear accelerator centre, local market, and arranged a visit to the Tech shop (a hobby workshop) wherein one can find everything that a Tech Savvy can think of and one just needs to spend his energy on innovative ideas and implement them in reality at a nominal fee. The concept of Tech Shop can be replicated using the workshop facilities in COEP.

Conclusions:

The visit to USA by senior faculty was useful in bridging the information gap between the alumni and the institute, understanding the alumni viewpoint on many issues concerning the institute. There has been a general feel good factor about the changes taking place in COEP. There has been great enthusiasm to help their alma mater. This needs to be channelised effectively by opening an office for endowment fund in the institute. All the alumni are required to be kept in constant touch so that they are aware of positive happenings in the institute and there is no communication gap. It is expected that by continuing similar visits by a few more senior faculty, the motivation levels of alumni may be further enhanced and endowment fund raised.


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Press Note released by Mrs. Anjali Nandedkar an alumnus (COEP Foundation)

COEP director visits USA


COEP (College of Engineering, Pune) director Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe visited USA alumni from June 2 - 18, 2007. He was accompanied by Prof. A. A. Sawant, Head of Department, Computer Engineering in COEP. They traveled to ten cities and toured several universities and industries. The alumni were very excited to meet the two professors from their alma mater and arranged meetings with administrators from academic institutes including Ohio State University, Ohio State Computer Center, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Steven's Institute, MIT, North Eastern, Tufts, Michigan State University, Stanford and various industries including Johnson and Johnson, Nanotechnology based Plextronics, Indratech, automobile industry (Visteon), Atmosphere Annealing plant, and Intel plants in Portland and Phoenix. Tie-ups and MOUs with some of these organizations are being planned.

The director Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe informed alumni about the current developments at COEP particularly after the award of autonomy. He shared a video about COEP and about 100 slides with alumni. Please see this video and slides at this web site. http://www.coepfoundation.org/ny/


COEP is a 153 year old engineering institute. It is situated at the confluence of the rivers Mula and Mutha in a historic city of Pune, India. COEP has a spectacularly beautiful campus with many heritage buildings, old trees and a serene boat club. Pune is a thriving city with a well developed and ample cultural and industrial base. With this setup, it is a very attractive and prime institute for aspiring faculty and hard working top students. It also boasts a very large number of alumni going back many decades. With this backdrop, COEP is well on the way to become a center of excellence. The director has plans to engage over one hundred new educators at COEP this year. The faculty at COEP has abundant opportunities to collaborate on various research and development projects with a large number of industries within thirty miles of COEP campus.


The COEP director Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe concluded his tour by saying this to the alumni:

"Let us make COEP a place of pride for all of us, in terms of excellent infrastructure, academics, research and joyful living."

He appealed to the alumni to contribute liberally both financially and academically to achieve this goal.
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he CoEP Astronomy Club had a wonderful year full of interesting events in the year 2006-07. This year the club was successful in reaching out further to the college students and generating in them a curiosity for the field of amateur astronomy. The club achieved this through regular meetings and a number of events like mobile planetarium, outdoor star sky observing sessions, guest lecture and workshop. The first official meeting of the club for this year was held on 3rd august 2006. During the meeting a DVD named ’15 years of Hubble space telescope’ was screened. The DVD is a special documentary made by ESA (European Space Agency) about the making of Hubble space telescope and its contribution to the field of astronomy and astrophysics. The club members then met regularly on every Tuesday to discuss general topics related to theoretical and practical astronomy. This helped to form a group of about 20 regular members plus about 20 more not-so-regular members. Two outdoor sky observation sessions were conducted in the month of January and March. In the month February two club members Snehal Naphade and Suraj Sonatake designed T-Shirts for the club. The club also bought its own six inch Newtonian reflector telescope in the month of March. By the end of the year at least 20 members could identify the major constellations in the sky and at least 8-10 members became skilful in handling the telescopes and spotting deep sky objects. Also a telescope making workshop was conducted in the month of June, as a result now eight club members have their own telescope The club is not only helping the students to learn astronomy but is also imbibing in them a sense of scientific and technical reasoning by involving them in activities very much different from regular classroom lectures and lab-work.

We are thankful to our staff advisor Prof. S.D. Agashe for his constant support and advice to club. We are also grateful to the alumni and especially to Mrs. Anjali Nandekar for supporting our activities and also funding the telescope making workshop. A special thanks to Ms. Snehal Naphade of third year IT for her whole-hearted efforts and support to the club activities. She holds the distinction of being present and participating actively in each and every club event.

The club hopes to continue with same or even greater enthusiasm in the years to come. We also plan to undertake the work of reinstalling an old 12” cassegerian telescope owned by instrumentation department in the coming year.



- Trupti Ranka
Third year Instrumentation and control department


Please read The Full Report

This is a presentation that Anajali Nandedkar made at an Alumni meet on June 9, 2007 at Hopewell Junction, NY.

The presentation has information about the proposed project of sponsoring arts and crafts booths at COEP. It is an excellent concept that will provide a chance to the alumni to interact with the students and even mentor them.

There was a little trouble converting this powerpoint to HTML so you would see the slide number 1and Slide number 9 a bit distorted. Also, since I have used a free tool to convert it, you would see the free tool logo on each slide obscuring the slide a bit. Even with the above limitation the slides are good for viewing.

Here is the link to the presentation.http://aarewah.com/HopewellJune2007/AnjaliJune2007/