Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore campus, conducted Anokha 2018, the 8th edition of Techfest, from 22nd to 24th February, 2018. It is the first and only techfest in India with United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) accreditation. The theme of Anokha 2018 was “Innovation for Societal Benefit”. Major sponsors of the event included H&R Block, Infoview and Cognizant.
Anokha 2018 saw 15000+ footfalls, 75+ events, 30+ workshops, Lumiere premium lecture series, TechExpo, School Outreach and a whopping Rs. 15 lakhs in prize money. There were 75+ exciting and highly competitive contests and events in all branches of engineering, robotics, gaming, cubing and short-film making. Some of the popular events included FIFA 2018 – Armageddon Gaming; Robo Soccer; Maze Runner; Death Race; Mayday; Cubing royale – Rubiks’ cube; Xiamora CTF and E-pictures short film contest. There were 30 workshops by top companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Mathworks, Cisco, Intel, National Instruments and Robert Bosch. The workshops were in cutting-edge areas such as ASPEN HYSYS, Self-driving car robotics, ANSYS, Cyber Forensics, Analytics, 3D Printing, SDR, IoT and Green Buildings. The techfest featured Techexpo with Indian Navy, Robert Bosch, Ampere and SP Robotics as exhibitors. Other exhibits included wild life photography, vintage cars and electric bikes.
Another major highlight of Anokha 2018 was an extensive school outreach event titled School Zone, where school children had the opportunity to participate in events such as Cubing, School Wiz quiz, Science Quiz and Harry Potter themed Hogwarts Express and also explore the TechExpo. The objective of School Zone was to provide school children an exciting glimpse of the engineering discipline. School Zone saw the participation of over 500 school children from various schools.
Speakers for the Lumiere premier talk series showcasing success stories from all walks of life included Mr. Sujith Kumar, HR Leader, Infosys; Mr. Satish Manchikanti, Co-founder, U&I volunteer-driven charity; Mr. Arun Prabhu Purushottaman, Director of the critically acclaimed movie, Aruvi, and Ms. Priyanka Kochhar, India’s first female motorcycle blogger. Judges for the E-pictures event included acclaimed cinematographer, Mr. Om Prakash.
The grand finale was a scintillating Eventide Musical Show by popular playback singers, Mr. Rahul Nambiar, Mr. Aalap Raju and Ms. Sunitha Sarathy, who have, between them, multiple Filmfare & SIIMA awards and also has sung over 500 popular numbers from movies, and spectacular performances by Ragasudha and Natyasudha, student clubs of AMRITA
The Anokha core committee consisted of faculty members, Prof. K. Gangadharan, Professor, Computer Science, School of Engineering, Coimbatore, as Adviser; Mr. M. Sreevalsan, Mr. Prashant R. Nair, Vice Chairperson, Computer Science, School of Engineering, Coimbatore, & Dr. Shriram K. Vasudevan, Assiatant Professor, Computer Science, School of Engineering, Coimbatore, as Conveners and Mr. Rajendran P. as student organizing chair.
“Anokha Techfest provides students of Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore an invaluable chance to discover, develop and demonstrate their talent, to excel and provides a podium to stand on and succeed. This student-driven techfest showcases and celebrates the innovation, ingenuity, teamwork and talent of the engineering students of AMRITA”, shared Dr. Sasangan Ramanathan, Dean, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore.
