New Delhi, Nov 13: The projects are submitted by 4.4 lakh final year engineering students from 500 colleges
An online database of engineering projects developed by an IIM-A professor, engineering students and a non-government organization has grown to over one lakh projects in just six months.
The database at www.techpedia.in which is a creation of Sristi, an NGO headed by Professor Anil K Gupta, contains more than 1.02 lakh final year projects submitted by 4.4 lakh final year engineering students from 500 colleges (including IITs, polytechnics and colleges recognized by the UGC and/or the AICTE).
Techpedia is to some extent similar to the database of the National Innovation Foundation – a massive, government-supported database of rural innovative technologies. While the government-supported foundation is a database of grassroots innovations, Techpedia stores projects of final year engineering students.
“We want the innovation quotient of the country to go up,” said Professor Gupta.
“The credit goes to the professors of various colleges who are open-minded about open source technologies. They have done what the UGC, HRD and the Knowledge Commission should ideally be doing,” said Professor Gupta.
The database, which is largely managed by engineering students, displays abstracts of projects, names of authors (a project is usually done in teams), names and qualifications of the professors guiding the projects, names of the institutes and, in case of ongoing projects, their current status.
The projects are stored under different sections. If a company wants to adopt or develop one, Techpedia connects the company to the students involved.
The question of copyright infringement does not arise, Gupta said, because the moment the projects are taken onboard by Techpedia, it owns the copyright.
Besides this, only the abstracts of the projects are displayed (though Techpedia possesses the projects in their entirety), said Hiranmay Mahanta, a final year engineering student at Sardar Vallabhai National Institute of Technology, Surat, who scouts out the projects for the database and convinces professors and students alike to contribute. The companies would have to talk to the students and professors before they can take up the project.
“We expect at least 60,000 more (projects) soon,” said Mahanta. The current engineering students will submit their final project abstracts in December and the complete projects by April 2010.
–Agencies