Cognizance- The Technical Extravaganza

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Cognizance- The Technical Extravaganza

Cognizance- The Technical Extravaganza is the annual technical festival of IIT Roorkee. It is one of the largest and finest technical platforms for the students for great innovations and new ideas. It was started in 2003 and the custom follows up till today. This was the 15th edition of the festival with the theme being Eureka 2.0 and was held for a span of three days from 24th march to 26th march 2017 with a footfall of over 75,000 across the globe. The festival was loaded with inspiring and fun events and competitions, seminars, workshops, exhibitions, guest lectures, pronites and more. Cognizance is completely organized and managed by the student body. However, the team of cognizance is divided into several departments like Promotions and Events Departments, Sponsorship Departments, Publicity and Creativity Departments, Guest Lecture Department, the Pronite Department, Competitions Departments and more; headed by the conveners and co-conveners. The basic motive of the festival is to achieve the perception to be at the borderland of the emerging technovation and to spread new and raw ideas of the youth amongst everyone. However, any festival is impossible without the chief supporters or the sponsors; few of the sponsors and partners of Cognizance 2017 were Samsung, Reliance Jio; Amar Ujala, Hindustan, (Newspaper Partner)Sprite; TextGuru, SMS Deals, NC Solutions infinity, (SMS Partners) Premium Transmission; Pristine Info Solutions, The Incredible Photographers, (Photography & After movie Partner) Shotang India, Digit, Scientific India, JAM, (Magazine Partners) TATA Motors, IBM, Future Fins, Larsen & Tourbo, Shell; BuddyBits, Ideal Indian, Fuccha ,(Online Media Partners)Mobikwik, Microsoft,NSS IIT Roorkee and Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (Social Initiative Partners) and more.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”4789″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

NOBLE CAUSE

A very few college fests exist who work for a noble cause; Cognizance is one of those. The noble cause of this year of Cognizance 2017 IIT Roorkee was “Clean Ganga” with “Quadrone Mission Impossible “and The National Mission to Clean Ganga. It was a great initiative in its own in order to spread awareness about the very serious issue of the holy river Ganga being polluted and depleted day by day. It was a step by which drones could support the ill lifeline of India, Ganga and heal the wounds human race has inflicted upon this holy river by giving everyone a second chance for the betterment of the environment in every way possible.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”4785″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

EVENTS AND PROCEEDINGS

The three days extravaganza festival was declared open with the Inauguration Ceremony of Cognizance 2017; the Guest of Honor of the ceremony being Dr. S.C. Gupta the Deputy Director at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), with the best wishes and inspiring video message of the Honorable Railway Minister of India, Mr. Suresh Prabhu in which he said “We have to use technology to modernize the railways, mitigate the accidents and over all improve the railway experience.” He also said that the use of technology in different sectors was inevitable to modernize and uplift the standards. In the inauguration ceremony another Guest of Honor was Commodore, Mukesh Bhargava (Retd.) who is the Vice President (Heavy Engineering) at Larsen & Turbo.  The ceremony marked the commencement of the three day technical festival followed by the interactive sessions with the guests;  The theme of the festival being ‘Eureka 2.0’, the events aimed to develop ideas that can accomplish ways to make the lives of Indian people better in every way possible. More than 200 events were held in the festival which concentrated on technology (and its promotion) and societal themes like Sex Education and dealing with problems of unemployment amongst the youth. The events which were held were divided into few sections like Theme Events, Guest Lectures, Competitions, Robotics, Techtainment, Online Events, Departmental Events, Workshops, Paper Presentations, Preshow and more.  Few of the activities which were held on the day one of the festival were the Guest Lectures in the Pioneering Persona section with the Keynote Speaker, Anil Kumar, the Co-Founder of ISB (Indian School of Business) and the Ex-Director at Mckinsey, Asia and with Vasu Primlani, the International Standup Comedian and Environment Activist and also the 2015 Narishakti Puraskar; she talked about Environmental issues, Human Rights and Rapes. The Workshop on Ethical Hacking and Cyber Forensics with Information Security Researcher and Cyber Crime Consultant Mr. Rizwan Sheikh was also held on the same day itself. In the Techtainment section was the amazing performace by The Kutle Khan Project under the banner of Coke Studios, which took the audience back to the4 roots of our origin by remising our culture and tradition with the unique collective of these Rajasthani Folk Musicians.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”4786″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]However, the few other highlights of Cognizance 2017 were events like Poseidon- a race through Aquatic Inferno, Carbonaught- Zero Carbon Footprint which focused on the importance of individuals in significantly lowering India’s Carbon Footprint by amending their lifestyle choices and thereby contributing to the country’s response to the climate change, Insomnia- Nocturnal Coding Arena, Way-e-Rivieria-Accessible Inland Waterway, The Departmental Events by the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering (under the Ideaz and Spectrum section), events by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (Vishleshan), events by the Department of Management Studies (under the Ideaz and Spectrum section) and by other Departments including Alternate Hydro Energy Centre, Architecture and Planning, Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Centre of Excellence in Disaster Mitigation and Management, Computer Science and Engineering, Centre of Transportation Systems, Earthquake Engineering, Earth Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Hydrology, Mathematics, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Centre of Nanotechnology, Physics, Water Resource Development and Management and more all of them under the Paper Presentation topics; Chem-e-Car (Fueling your Future Car), Senonomics – Sen in Unemployed World which dealt with the skill mismatch which makes the youth unemployable, it aimed to change the definition of economics by linking economics with skill and unemployment. Chaos-The Biggest Gaming Carnival which included games like Fifa013, NFS Mostwanted, DOTA2, Counter Strike 1.6, Age of Empires and more was also loved by the audience, Quizzotica – the flagship quizzing event. Cognizance 2017 also held few Exhibitions which were Pluto- Mini- Drone exhibition, Epsan AR Glass Exhibition which showed the glass which is 20% lighter than any augmented glass with a sleek design. Well’ in the Events section were the events like the Chain Reaction Event which was to solve the simple problem in the most complicated ways and design a contraption, the Mind sweeper Event- the Coding Trap which was the coding competition, the Literio which included Vox Populi -“Voice of the People”, Quizzotica -The Mecca of College Quizzing and IITR MUN -Your Choice to be a Diplomat, the online events included Backdoor CTF -Theme-based Coding Enigma!, CogniStreet -Bulls and Bears, Illushun -Decipher the Conundrum, Project Gauss -Where Algo meets Mathematica, Blogomania -Blog Your Way Through, Tele-Tale -Feast for TV Junkies, The Indian Jugaad –never stop exploring; in the Robotics section were activities like Armageddon -Precluding the Inevitable, Powerdrift -F1 @ R-Land, Robosapiens -Into the Future, Cyborg Break-In -The Avengers, Breach Wars -Face the worst enemy, Aeronave -Where Sky is the Limit; amongst the Theme Events were M.A.R.S. -Men Are Reaching Soon, Detour -Via Bike Lane, Chip & PIN -Taking Digi-payments Grassroots, Hush! Hush! -Breaking the Taboo of Sex which was about sex education and in the Competitions section were activities like Corpostrat -Battle of the Corporate Minds, Junkyard Wars -Trash to Treasure, Chain Rxn -Goes on & on & on, Rubik’s Cube -Un-Blocking the Block, SoliSpark -The Solar Dash, Applicate -Bon Appétit and Hackathon -Let’s go to the depth of it.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”4787″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The second day of Cognizance 2017 was no less as it included the Guest Lectures with the Keynote Speakers in the Pioneering Persona with Ira Singhal (UPSC-2014 topper) and Balaji Holur (Sr. Vice President of Multimedia division of Samsung, India). The festival also held a panel discussion on cashless economy in India with the top executives of Reliance Jio Money, Mobikwik India, Paytm and others; the speakers were Sunil Agarwal (Senior Advisor at Deloitte), Mr. Atul Mehta (Head Enterprise Sales and Strategy at Mobikwik), Mr. Abhishant Pant (a Fintech Professional), Rajnish Kataria (Director of Nibscom), Mr. Karthik Nandyal (Vice President at Reliance Jio Money) and Kumar Aditya (Vice President at Paytm).  The Shell Day was also a great part of the the second day on Cognizance 2017 as it was the interactive session about the Tips and tricks of trade and the chance to interact with alumni by Shariq Abbasi (Senior Petrophysicst at Shell and IIT Roorkee Alumunus).  An interactive session both in literal and metaphoric terms was also held with the very famous Standup Comedian and writer Sorabh Pantt. The workshop of the Digital Design with FGPA (Field Programming Gate Array) was all about using cutting edge technologies was also held. The day couldn’t end without the laughter and cheer with the team of the entertainment channel ,The Viral Fever (TVF) with the very famous Youtubers, comedians and performers, Vipul Goyal, Abhishek Bannerjee, Gopal Datt and Akanksha Thakur. The day ended on a cheerful note with loads of laughter and humor.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”4788″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The last day of Cognizance 2017 surely had to be the most memorable one as it held many awaited activities which included mainly I’M F.I.N.E. – Fine is a new escape, which was the panel discussion about mental wellness as many Indians around the world suffer fromsome sorts of Mental Illness, the speakers in the discussion were Dr. Ravinder Singh (Scientist at Inidan Council of Medical Research), Ms. Ishita Sanyal (Founder and Director of Turning Point), Ms. Anna Chandy (Chairperson of  The Live Love Laugh Foundation) and Dr. Ali Khwaja (Chairman of the Banjara Academy). The Exhibition of the Equinox Planetarium with cool telescopes and Projection Presentations and the Workshop of Big Data and Hadoop (Divide and Rule Big Data) and the Guest Lectures with the Keynote Speaker in the Pioneering Persona with G Satheesh Reddy (Guest of Honor, Scientific Advisor to the Defense Minister) were also amongst the highlights of the day.

How could the last day of the festival end without the Techtainment nights, which included the very famous Music Composer Duo, Sachin Jigar, their performance certainly made the audience go wow and they couldn’t stop grooving on the music beats; and the soulful performance by Angaraag, the folk-fusion band found by the very famous musician and singer Papon in the Paramount Music Night, his scintillating performance gave the festival the perfect soothing end.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”4782″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

CONCLUSION

The festival ended on a comprehending note, with great achievements and new heights. Cognizance 2017 gave the audience, the inspiration to grow and to never stop creating anything new for the development of one own self, technology and the society as well. The hard work and the dedication of everyone came out with flying colors as the festival went off smoothly and turned out to be a success; with so much to learn, gain, grow and innovate for the students; and excitement and high hopes for more for the next year, Cognizance 2017 IIT Roorkee signed off.

Disclaimer: All the images have been picked from various sites to represent the content and none of it is owned by what after college and is credited to its rightful owners[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]