It was another proud moment for Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham as Mr. Vijey Shrivathsan, B. Tech in Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) 2016-2020 batch from Coimbatore campus became the first student from Amrita to secure the coveted IUSSTF-Viterbi research internship. The internship for summer 2019 will be at the University of Southern California (USC) Los Angeles, USA.

The Viterbi School of Engineering of USC and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) have partnered to support this program in which 20 of the best and brightest students from India are selected every year to gain exposure and access to world class research facilities in the Viterbi School. Another objective of the program is to pave the way for building long-term R&D associations, collaborations and to encourage outstanding students to take up research as a career.

This scholarship, which has been facilitated by Amrita Center for International Programs (ACIP) covers stipend and airfare for the selected interns. Prof. Shaama Sharada, from USC who has a Ph. D. from Berkeley has been assigned as the faculty mentor.

Responding of this spectacular achievement, Dr. Sasangan Ramanathan, Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, remarked that this moment of international recognition was indeed a moment of great pride for everyone. Dr. Ramanathan also emphasized the point that it was the first time an Amrita student has won this impressive opportunity, which has been the domain of institutions of national importance like IIT, IIIT and NIT. He expressed his heartfelt satisfaction in seeing the vision of Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi ‘to prepare the next generation graduates to take on the challenges in science, engineering, technology and management’ is bearing fruit.

Prof. Prashant R. Nair, Vice-Chairman, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, said that Vijey is an integral part of Team Vision, a prolific student team that he has been mentoring for the last couple of years. Taking pride in the team that has won several competitions like ‘TCS EngiNX Digital Twin Challenge’ and ‘Smart India Hackathon’, Mr. Nair commented, ‘Vijey brings a strong skill set in Machine Learning and Deep Learning, which we have been leveraging in all of our innovations for various hackathons.”