April 17, 2009
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore
Amrita faculty and students, both graduate and undergraduate, are currently in nine universities across Europe, working on short- or long-term research projects. Funded by the EURECA Project under the European Commission’s EMECW Program, many have been at the host universities for several weeks now. The largest number is in Sweden, either at Malardalen University or at Uppsala University.
“I am currently working on my project, which is equivalent to masters-level thesis work,” stated Deepthi Devaki, a final year B Tech student from Computer Science and Engineering at Amritapuri, currently in Malardalen.
Deepthi is writing translator code that will help convert CRL2 representation of PowerPC assembly code to ALF format. More details about her work can be accessed here. She expects the project to complete in another ten weeks time. “I have been here for two-and-half months already. I attended a course on Distributed Systems and got a grade of 5 out of 5 with a score of 37 out of 40. Currently I am also attending a class on the Swedish Language.”
Added Deepthi’s classmate and friend, Nithya Vijay, “Swedish language has very different pronunciation and rules, we are just learning the basics.” Nithya is currently also enrolled in a class on Multicultural Improvisation. “A lot of foreign students are in this class and every week we share different aspects of our country with the others. I have found that there is much we can learn from other countries.”
About twenty other Amrita students are also at that same institution. Apart from academic and research work, they have participated in events and trips organized by the Student Union on campus. “I went ice-skating, ice-skiing, on a cruise trip and also on a trip to Stockholm,” shared Nithya.
The group organized an Indian dinner for the EURECA Board on March 22. They cooked nearly twenty dishes, both from North and South Indian cuisines. The event was coordinated by Jogender Barak of the Amrita School of Business (ASB), who is also in Europe as part of this program. “Here people are very punctual, all guests arrived exactly at 7 pm. We welcomed them in traditional Indian style.”
Jogendar has already completed classes in Organizational Theory and Entrepreneurship in Malardalen. He had enrolled in a class on Strategic Marketing Management. “After a few classes I found that most of the topics were covered in the Strategic Marketing class I had taken at ASB,” he said. “So I dropped the class.” Jogendar is beginning his research project soon. With his classmates, he had participated in Venture Cup, a business plan competition. “Now we have an invitation to present our plan to some industrialists and venture capitalists in Stockholm on April 24. We will be going there then.” We wish the team good luck!
Stay tuned for more reports from Europe …
