New Delhi: With the industry’s hopes pinned up for the twelfth edition of IIT Roorkee’s annual technical fest ‘Cognizance’, held from March 21-23, 2014, the three power-packed days will see some untiring innovation and a plethora of outstanding events that will sure leave you spell bound. Cognizance will witness some exciting and breath-taking events from various departments from the institute and has also collaborated with a few foreign institutes like University of Negev and Institute of Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage to provide a platform for students’ participation. It witnesses a congregation of widest spectra of students from various national and foreign institutes, along with experts of international repute from the academia and industry. With more than 20,000 students expected to participate across the globe and more than 150 events comprising of guest lectures and workshops, Cognizance 2014 is anticipated to be the biggest technical festival ever. Get ready to be swept off your feet by humming to the tunes of artists from Sunburn, Vilas Nayak- India’s Got Talent Season 3 winner, Finalists of India’s Got Talent, Hula B Boys and winners of the famous reality show “Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega” amongst others.

The advancement of skill sets among the people led visionaries to envisage better times ahead for the entire human family. The path ahead of us is analogous to a rocky terrain- appears simple from a distance but calls for amends as we tread towards the zenith. Cognizance 2014, highlights the need to imagine and engineer our efforts under the theme “Imagineering Change”. The 21st century has ushered a revolution which was not only limited to Engineering and Technology but had far-reaching effects on territories of Management and Social Welfare and this is what Cognizance aims to achieve this year through the magnitude of events that will be held during these three days.

On this occasion, Pradipta Banerji, Director, IIT Roorkee said, “We are proud to announce our twelfth edition of Cognizance and this festival truly embodies the tech know-how that the institute stands for.  Being one of the largest technology festivals in Asia, we get the latest technologies and innovation developed across the globe. Sponsors, national and international, think it would be worthy enough to invest in an event of this magnitude and with a strong team, we are assured that Cognizance will reach greater heights.”

IIT Roorkee’s technical festival is set to be a true and complete celebration of technology lead events with the students putting in their best put forward. It is an enthralling kaleidoscope where students exchange, assimilate knowledge and learn from their peers and faculty members. Some of the events under the theme of ‘Imagineering Change’ will include:

Automatic solar tracker

Automatic solar tracker begins to follow the sun exactly from sunrise, all through the day, till sunset, and begins the work all over again from sunrise next day. On hazy weather day, it lingers motionless and grasps the sun yet again as it peeps out of clouds. It does all this mechanically, by employing inexpensive and economical constituents, and is extremely accurate. This event is dedicated to develop solar tracker capable of following the trajectory of the sun throughout the course of the day on a year-round basis.

Help the blind:

Through an event- “Help the Blind”, a system shall be developed to facilitate the blind people in using ATM machines which shall use gesture recognition to accept the input from the user. The blind user will stand in front of the machine and use hand gestures to use the ATM machine. The system should be robust and able to tackle different lighting conditions.

Aeronave:

To most people sky’s the limit but are you one of those who feel that the sky is their home? To those skyward bound people; IIT Roorkee brings to you

AERONAVE- an event providing all the aero modelers a platform to fulfill their quenched dreams. An event where we call upon engineers and aero designers to design a RC powered electric motor aircraft and put their skills and technicality to the test. The event includes not only flight but also coupled with a series of hurdles, a real test of aero modeling expertise.

PowerDrift:

Powerdrift gives you the opportunity to test your machine an opportunity to vanquish all the other opponents. The event requires the participants to build a small wireless remote controlled IC engine driven car which can race on concrete as well as on off-road tracks. The task is to outperform the opponent’s bot in the race. And in the end only the fastest, snakiest and most aggressive machines will survive. Put your bots to the ultimate speed and control test

IIT Roorkee has been the front runner when it comes to social responsibility and empowerment. Some of the initiatives taken this year are as follows:

Waste Warriors: It is an initiative taken up by IIT Roorkee in collaboration with Waste Warriors, a voluntary organization and a registered society committed to clean up India. The initiative taken is the installation of spittoons in trains by the waste Warriors volunteers to provide a clean journey to the common mass.

Green Peace India: Cognizance 2014 has associated with Green Peace India, a non-profit organisation focused on four broad campaigns namely, stop climate change, sustainable agriculture, preserving the oceans and preventing another nuclear catastrophe.

As far as research projects are concerned, there are paper and prototype presentations that will be undertaken this year challenging the students on every step, thus horning their skills towards betterment. Some of these include 3-D digital modal of a multi modal terminal design for any transportation system, extracting maximum amount of heat from a hot fluid by the means of a Heat Exchanger, multiple fuel/energy to operate hybrid models etc.

This event will feature guest speakers by eminent personalities such as Nathan Scholuf: Inventor of MP3 Player, William Baker: Architect of Burj Khalifa, Dr. Pawan Agarwal- CEO, Mumbai Dabbawalas, Bikash Sinha: Indian Physicist, awarded Padma Bhushan and advisor of PM of India, Ravi Sandhu- Executive Director at Institute for Cyber Security, Max Burstein- SMD Lead for Research at NASA and many others.