Members of Rotaract Club and NCC cadets of Ramadevi Women’s Autonomous College in Bhubaneswar plant saplings on the institute’s campus. Telegraph picture

Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, has signed memorandum of understanding with five universities of South Korea as part of its ongoing efforts to promote research and students and faculty exchange programmes through international collaborations.

The varsities include Kyungpook National University, Sangmyung University, Jungwon University, Chonbuk National University and Hanbuk University.

“Our objective is to develop academic, scientific, technical and cultural relations between various universities across the world,” Ravenshaw vice-chancellor B.C. Tripathy said.

Tripathy said that the fresh agreements with Korean universities would include exchange programmes for students, research scholars and teachers.

As per the five-year agreement, emphasis has been given to ensure that Ph.d scholars of Ravenshaw University also benefit from the tie-up. The proposals suggest that the research scholars will have to complete 50 per cent of their work at Ravenshaw while remaining half of their thesis would be completed in Korea.

“Korea is one of the giants in the field of information technology and we are also contemplating to cover maximum internship module for our students,” Tripathy said.

Earlier, Ravenshaw University had signed an agreement with National Stock Exchange for opening an integrated MBA in financial markets, the first-of-its-kind in Odisha. The integrated MBA offers a three-year BBA course and a two-year MBA in which students would be trained on theoretical aspects as well as the latest trends on the stock market.

Apart from this, Ravenshaw has already inked an agreement with Birmingham University, United Kingdom, for working on a collaborative research project funded by the Welcome Trust since June 2012.

Similarly, in 2011, the premier institution had tied-up with the Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin University in Japan.

The joint venture aims at collaborative research in a number of areas such as bio-remediation of urban wastewater and mine wastewater, water quality, environment technologies, waste management, computer science, electronics and renewable energy.

Boy goes global

Laxman Hembram, a tribal student of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Bhubaneswar, took part in the Malala Day United Nations Youth Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on July 12. He represented India at the prestigious international event and was among 120 youth leaders from as many countries.

The event — intended to represent the goal of education for all children — celebrated the spirit of courage of Pakistani child activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot at by the Taliban for campaigning for girls’ education in Pakistan.

Laxman Hembram (right), the KISS boy, returns home after taking part in Malala Day at UN Youth Assembly. Telegraph picture

During his visit, Hembram interacted with the Indian high commissioner besides expressing his views on “Education for All” at the Youth Assembly, outlining quality education system and youth union. He also informed the Assembly about free education being provided in KISS to 20,000 tribal children.

He talked about Odisha and also on how to eradicate poverty through education. The visit also provided him an opportunity to gain knowledge about the education systems of other countries.

Green pledge

Members of Rotaract Club and NCC cadets of Ramadevi Women’s Autonomous College, Bhubaneswar, joined hands for a plantation drive on campus on July 16. Teaching and non-teaching staff of the college, including principal Chitrangada Samantasinghar and NCC instructor Kalpana Das, also took part in the green movement.

While there are already many trees on both sides of the road leading to the college building, the students covered other vacant spaces. The participants were asked to devote time for planting more trees as well as maintaining them. The college plans to conduct environment classes for them to tell them how their small efforts can bring a big difference in the present scenario.

Seer’s varsity tours

Puri shankaracharya Swami Nischalananda Saraswati visited two private universities in Bhubaneswar last week to deliver a talk on the Indian education system and expressed concern over its adverse effects on society and mankind in general.

Addressing the meet at SoA University, he said: “The present education system does not contain 95 per cent of the elements required to make life meaningful. Man has indeed become a machine, which only feeds itself and procreates. The purpose of life has gone haywire. The whole thing is not leading us to development but destruction.”

The Shankaracharya hit out against cutting down of forest and “mindless” exhaustion of mineral resources, citing the Uttarakhand calamity as an example. He also focussed on the need for women’s empowerment, stating that women must be protected “as our whole culture is dependent on them”.

PK Dash, director (research) of SOA University, felicitates Hisao Ishibuchi, vice-president of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, at the workshop organised at ITER. Telegraph picture

Later, at KIIT University, the Puri seer spoke in the same vein, saying that the world was heading towards a catastrophe because of negation of values and ethics in society, senseless destruction of natural wealth and environment and the faulty education system. He also launched a scathing attack on the western education, which had “led to division of joint family, desertion of the villages as present day education gave more importance on building new cities”.

The Shankaracharya said governments and political parties were busy in small games, instead of protecting Indian territories, and river Brahmaputra from China. While the British divided the country into four divisions, the government of India has been dividing the country in to small states for narrow political gains, he added.

Virtual versus real

Advancements in the field of computational intelligence (CI) and challenges for researchers occupied centre stage at a day-long workshop organised by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society at the Institute of Technical Education and Research, Bhubaneswar, on July 12.

IEEE or Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. About 180 researchers from different parts of the country attended the deliberations, which was the second in a series of four such national level workshops being organised in the country last week. Major constituents of CI are neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, fuzzy systems and hybrid intelligence systems.

The organisation’s vice-president (technical activities) Prof Hisao Ishibuchi, editor Prof Chin-Teng Lin and vice-president (publications) Prof N.R. Pal conducted the plenary sessions. Prof Pal said ‘computational intelligence’ could resolve complex real-world problems, which traditional approaches could not.