Prashanth Palakurthi, an Alumnus of BITS Pilani, is the Founder and CEO of Reflexis Systems. He joined BITS Pilani in 1978. His wife Anuradha, the founder of Juju Productions, is a professional singer, performer and radio personality in the United States. She joined BITS Pilani in 1984.

Anuradha and Prashanth have made a commitment to contribute at least $1 million USD for a centre named Anuradha and Prashanth Palakurthi Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (APPCAIR).

The objectives of the Centre for Materials Science and Technology are to develop and implement projects related to fibre-reinforced plastic composite materials as well as those related to other engineering materials such as metals, ceramics and polymers. The Centre also undertakes mechanical and non-destructive testing of various engineering materials for evaluating their mechanical properties and for evaluating defects such as cracks, voids, delamination, inclusions etc. Other activities include developing courses related to Materials Science and Technology and organizing Conferences/Seminars/Workshops/Short Courses in this area and to provide consultancy related to testing/development and analysis in the field of material science and technology.

The testing facilities available at the Centre include Universal Testing Machine, Hounsfield Tensometer, various hardness testing machines such as Brinell, Rockwell, and Vickers Hardness Testers, Rotating Bending Fatigue Testing Machine, Combined Bending and Torsion Fatigue Testing Machine, Circular Polariscope, Strain-gauge testing facility, Izod and Charpy Impact Testing Machines, X-Ray Diffractometer, Ultrasonic Flaw Detectors, Liquid Penetrant Test kit, Magnetic Crack Detector, Eddy Current Tester etc. The Centre is also well equipped with computational facilities. Advanced software packages for Finite Element Analysis and for micro and macro analysis of composites materials (e.g. PROMAL) are available at the Centre.

This centre was established with financial support from the University Grants Commission, New Delhi.

Objectives and scope of the Centre:

• To become a nerve centre of the Institute in terms of ideas, creativity and innovation.
• To promote research on educational management and administrative processes.
• To systematically document and integrate knowledge and skills generated at the workbench for all levels of education.
• To enable and motivate forces behind operation, expansion, strengthening, updating and modernization of teaching, research and consultancy in formal and informal education.
• To apply the experience obtained through implementation of educational innovation towards strengthening of manpower training.
• To pool interested manpower in the Institute as well as manpower from outside.
• To create facilities and environments for interested faculty from within as well as from outside universities and educational organizations to do research on educational innovations.
• To organize certain specific programs like practice school, vocational courses for other educational institutions who wish to implement such innovations.
• To organize special programs for the use of educators, planners, administrators and managers so as to enable the latest theory and practice in different disciplines and functional areas to reach all sections of manpower in government, education, business and industries.
• To organize seminars, symposia and workshops.
• To collect the data-base from UGC, AIU and various universities relevant for educational reforms and innovations.
• To create software to analyse all these data.

The areas in which the Centre concentrates are:

• Planning and implementation of examination reforms
• Design and restructuring of educational programs
• Course development - Preparation of text books, teaching materials, teaching aids
• Computer software development for educational administration and infrastructural facilities
• Computer software development for student records, time-table, admission process
• Teaching workshops for upgrading teaching skills
• Purchase and upkeep of Educational Hardware
• The new methods of vocational training
• Development of Distance Learning Programs, particularly in Science & Technology areas
• University-Industry linkages
• Development of new methodology for educational and cultural advancement of the socially disadvantaged
• Adult education
• Science education
• Methodology of faculty development
• Systems approach to educational operation and correlation between cost of education and efficiency of education
• Preparation of feasibility project and status reports on specific topics
• Offering services in the acquisition of equipment, library books, journals and experts for new institutions in the country and abroad
• Evolving new norms for innovations in new universities in the developing countries
• Organization of Placement Unit - Campus Interviews, Career Planning
• Counselling of students

The Centre uses for its methodology organization of seminars, symposia, workshops, brainstorming sessions in specific areas. The Centre collates a large data-base already available at BITS and collects data from UGC, AIU, AICTE and various universities and develops systems and software for analyzing these data. The Centre has visiting faculty and research scholars. The Institute faculty picks up topics of research which are of interest to the activities of the Centre. In short it is a place where unique activities in terms of planning, implementation and reforms are taken up. The Centre accepts preparation of study reports and consultancy jobs in the above areas, as well as, plans to conduct certain training programs. The Centre also publishes a quarterly Journal, "CURIE" - Journal of Co-operation among University, Research and Industrial Enterprises.

It is an umbrella agency setup under the prestigious Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani.

The primary objectives of the center are to:

• Conceive, develop, and implement renewable energy applications and environment protection projects
• Develop courses and organize awareness creation programs
• Collaborate with national and international organizations and institutions in the areas of renewable energy education, training and technology development.

The Centre is presently collaborating with MNRE, IREDA, REDA, ARTES, Institute of Flensburg University, Germany, and CEER of SPIC Science Foundation, Chennai.

The centre is actively involved in:

• Research work related to Renewable Energy and Alternate fuels
• Setting up performance evaluation of parabolic solar cookers
• Solar hot water system
• Solar still and fuel cells
• Setting up of an Energy Park

Research Overview

The faculty and students at the centre carry out research / development activities in the following areas:

• Planning and Economics of Renewable Energy Systems
• Renewable Energy Dissemination
• Renewable Energy Education
• Solar Thermal Engineering
• Multi Criteria Decision Making for Energy
• Integrated Renewable Systems
• Demand Side Management
• Passive Architecture
• Energy Efficiency and  Steam Systems

New Areas of Research Planned

• Design optimization of biogas based turbines and engines
• Multi-unit planning of wind and small-hydro conversion systems
• Operational control of renewable sources
• Energy efficient buildings
• Solar Thermal Power System
• Hybrid Systems
• Carbon Emission Ranking  and Analysis.
• CO2 based Refrigeration
• Biomass Gasifier

This Centre has been set up in Collaboration with MOTOROLA INDIA LTD. The objectives of the Centre is to impart detailed understanding of important features of embedded controller architectures and familiarizing advanced concepts in the field of embedded controllers through

• Industrial projects/sponsored projects/student projects
• Research and development of applications around embedded controllers
• Imparting training to the industry professionals and running short term courses in the field of Applications design
• Developing course modules

The infrastructure of the centre includes Pentium machines, Micro controller Modular Evaluation Systems, Micro controller Development Systems, Emulators, Assemblers and Cross compilers for various micro controller families, DSP processors, logic analyzer and other bench equipments.

The Centre is also collaborating with ST MICROELECTRONICS in this area. The company has gifted two of their ST-7 emulators useful for embedded system design.

Apart from the centres described above, the following specialized laboratories have been established with a view to strengthen research and development in the respective areas:

• Fiber Optics: Infrastructure includes PC based instrumentation for characterization of optical fibers for communication, opto- electronic sources and detectors; facilities for development of point and distributed fiber optic sensors fiber optic communication kits, apart from computational facilities.
• Process Control: Infrastructure includes computer control of chemical engineering process such as distillation column, evaporator, heat exchangers and various types of reactors.
• Flexible Manufacturing Systems: Infrastructure includes state of the art facilities for teaching, training research and development in the field of manufacturing systems, such as computer numerically controlled machining centre and Robot for material handling, lathe and computational facilities.

The Centre for Robotics & Intelligent Systems (CRIS) came into existence in the year 1992. Earlier it was known as Centre for Robotics (CFR). Prior to that there was an informal research group working in this then emerging area. This research group at CRIS has acquired in-depth technical skills in design and fabrication of robot manipulators, AGVs, devising intelligent control strategies for both manipulator and navigation and their real time implementations.

The objective of this Centre is to develop prototypes that provide greater intelligence and higher versatility for robotic tasks under ever-changing constraints of the environment. This objective is set forth to make Indian industry competitive by developing indigenous technical skills, manpower and innovative spirit. Each prototype is developed in four different stages: (i) conceptualization, (ii) algorithmic development and verification in simulated environment, (iii) real-time testing and (iv) integration to automated system. The CRIS is very well equipped and is aiming to explore the possibilities of creating virtual intelligence in animated systems. The new computing systems will be based upon the virtual cognitive machines for solving the real world perception, reasoning and decision making problems. The research group of CRIS has its members from Electrical & Electronics, Instrumentation, Mechanical and Computer Science. Besides faculty members, many students from various disciplines work on different projects at CRIS for their doctoral thesis, M.E. dissertations and first degree thesis.
The Centre for Robotics has collaborations with CAIR, Bangalore, BARC, Mumbai and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A. Current activities of this Centre are in areas such as mechanical design and fabrication of articulated SCARA and direct drive manipulators, autonomous guided vehicles for uneven terrains and walking robots; dynamic control of robot arm, adaptive and robust control, modelling and control using neural and fuzzy neural networks; real-time control using DSP and micro controller based controller card; path planning, development of infra-red and ultrasonic based obstacle avoidance module, fusion of vision with ultrasonic based sensing system, global and local path planning in both static and dynamic environment; robotic vision, visuo-motor coordination, visual tracking, active vision and object recognition; intelligent system design, machine learning, computation and virtual reality.

Water resources are fast diminishing world wide and the quality of the available water has also deteriorated over time. There is a need to conserve this important natural resource through education, training, technology driven systems approach, etc. Israel and some other countries have done pioneering work in the area of desert development technologies. The Ben Gurion University in Israel has developed technologies for conservation of water in irrigation, particularly the drip irrigation systems. In India, some companies have taken know how from Israel for the production of drip irrigation systems. Further, rapid developments have taken place in integrated computer based sensors and associated wireless systems. By developing wireless sensor systems, a higher level of sensor technology is possible. Tissue culture and biotechnology have revolutionised the development of new variety of plants, etc. Thus there is a need to develop advanced technologies in this area for conservation of water, energy etc. and improve productivity.

About :
 

Over the years BITS has proven & proudly owns a legacy dating from 1970’s when most of the nation was unfamiliar with terms “Entrepreneurship & Startups”. A strongest alumni entrepreneur’s BITS family tree consisting of largest alumni network available of serial entrepreneurs, investors, VC’s & mentors, corporate professionals. The institute has highly experienced and trained faculty members and mentors in the area of entrepreneurship, research & Innovation along with eco-system to promote innovation start-up culture.

BITS Pilani is proud to be a core part of the Indian start-up ecosystem, with our alumni rising to great heights, building companies like Swiggy, Big Basket and Red Bus to name a few. Often, such ideas or the fire are born in college hostels, and through the passion of the founders, grow up to be such giants. BITSians swear by the spirit of entrepreneurship, and it is this spirit that we are trying to thrive by our never-ending sincere efforts.

BITS Pilani looks at inculcating innovation and entrepreneurship in the minds of people from the first year itself, it has a dedicated department called CIIE- BITS Pilani for each campus (Centre of Incubation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship) from the beginning of 21st Century that holds a series of projects that promote innovation & entrepreneurial spirit around the campuses pushing people to identify and solve problems around them. Each campus has a state of Art Technology Business incubator help in creating, identifying and enhancing budding entrepreneurs, pushing the potential start-ups with necessary resources.

Institute also offers a specific designed academic course drawn from years of experience for budding entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship enthusiasts called New venture creation(NVC) where students work on an idea and take it into implementation getting hands-on experience and getting some time with the few innovators who have walked the path.

Each campus has a dedicated Student E-Cell where student engage freely in the leadership role of activities and events promoting entrepreneurship not only restricted to campus but nationwide. It provides them exposure to the current trends, engage with serial entrepreneurs, experts, leaders and learn to hone their skills on managing a thriving Ecosystem.

With all of these initiatives by the BITS Pilani administration and the student-run CEL, the entrepreneurial spirit in BITS is heading in the right direction with over 25 start-ups hustling at different scale and domains and many more are on sleeves. The growth in passion has walked hand in hand with the growth in results.

The Technology Business Incubator at BITS Pilani was set up in 2004, and formally inducted into a separate not-for-profit society called Pilani Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development (PIEDS), in 2012. Since inception, the incubator has played a pivotal role in supporting 75 startups, and many more who did not graduate and folded up. 

The Incubator has been instrumental in defining and supporting an innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship ecosystem at the Pilani Campus. Directly or indirectly, the incubator has motivated and inspired many BITSians to take up entrepreneurship. As per an estimate, BITS students and alumni have formed more than 300 startups after the incubator was set up in 2004, which may be attributed to the incubator and the ecosystem created in BITS, with many of them creating economic value for investors, and leading to job creation.

To know more about the incubator and reach out to them, please visit  https://pieds-bitspilani.org/

Services

A powerful centralized compute server farm for EDA tools in Layer 1 Sun Fire v250, NAS 3300 & SDLT320

• Sun Ray software
• EDA tools & user files
• Automatic tape back-up