National : Plaksha University, an upcoming university founded by successful technology leaders from India and abroad, has announced a new series of online conversations with world’s top scholars, thought leaders and experts that will be available for free online to interested students. At a time, when the spread of COVID-19 and the resultant lockdown has led to the temporary shutdown of colleges, schools and other learning centers, Plaksha’s inaugural ‘Tech Talks’ promises to help students continue learning and get access to intellectually stimulating and inspiring conversations with experts from top global universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the world’s rank #1 global University.
In the first session of this series, Dr. Sanjay Sarma, Vice-President for Open Learning, MIT, discussed the need to ‘reboot higher education’. Dr. Sarma, the founder of the Auto-ID lab at MIT which is known to have coined the phrase ‘Internet of Things’, shared his thoughts on how COVID-19 has challenged the traditional classroom, forced global educational institutions to pivot to a fully-online delivery mode and made experts debate about the importance of ‘blended learning’. Describing disruptions in education and other fields as ‘part of the future’ and an opportunity, he said, “The colleges that will survive will be the ones that take advantage of proximity to create classroom scenarios which cannot be duplicated online.”
Commenting on the launch of this series, Mr. Vineet Gupta, Founder & Trustee, Plaksha University, said, “Plaksha’s ‘Tech Talks’ is our attempt to bring world-class content from globally renowned experts to Indian students. I express my gratitude to international scholars and experts who have agreed to come on board and make this initiative possible in very short time.”
“Today’s uncertain times call for a redefinition of the boundaries of engineering education and a need to align them with global grand challenges. With Plaksha University, our aim to is to create a new generation of engineers through a tech-first but multi-disciplinary approach to education,who solve critical challenges of our times,” he added.
Second session: Cyber Attacks – Beating the Bad Guys with Dr. Rajeev Barua
The second session is scheduled to go live on May 2, 2020 with Dr. Rajeev Barua, Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor at the University of Maryland and Founder & CEO, SecondWrite Inc. Dr. Barua is a Ph.D. from MIT who had received the President of India Gold Medal for graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi with the highest GPA in the University that year. He will share his thoughts on ‘Cyber Attacks: Beating the Bad Guys’. Interested students can register by logging on to https://bit.ly/plakshatechtalks2. The session will be available over Zoom for free.
