DA-IICT to host Synapse 2004

Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT), Gandhinagar, will play host to a three-day technology festival, Synapse 2004 beginning February 20.

The theme of the fest will be `Explore - Innovate -Disseminate'. Students from more than 200 educational institutions across the country are expected to participate in the festival.

DA-IICT, which had last year been given the deemed university status by the Gujarat state government, is a research-led institute in the field of information and communication technology. This is the second edition of Synapse.

A spokesperson for the Synapse, said the festival will be a weekend of celebration to connect and bind aspects of technology and society through a series of panel discussions, lectures, workshops, exhibitions and exciting competitive events.

The celebration reinforces not only the usefulness and usability, but also emphasises on the delight and the overall experience of using technology.

Leading technology and other related institutes in the country will participate to discuss and explore information, communication and technology (ICT) and their applications towards technically feasible, culturally desirable and economically sustainable engineering solution.

The opening ceremony will be held at DA-IICTcampus on February 20. Kanwalinder Singh, CTO of Lucent Technologies, will deliver the key note address. Reliance Group chairman, Mukesh Ambani will address the Synapse through video conference.

Prominent among other guest speakers who will participate during the three-day festival include Raj Singh of MKPA Panasonic, Mohit Mahajan from Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer, IIT Delhi, Rakesh Basant from Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship, IIM- Ahmedabad, K V Ramesh from Kochhar and Company, Mumbai, Aditya Dev Saad, CEO, Centre for Societies, Bangalore and B H Jajoo, professor, IIM-Ahmedabad.

Besides, Corporates such as Reliance Infocomm, Qualcomm, Microsoft, IBM, Nortel Network and Planet Finance are expected to participate in lecture series and workshops during the festival.

On February 21 (Saturday), a conference on ICT for socio-economic development, followed by another conference on Patent Regime, IPR and Cyberlaws and IT Education and IT Industry in Gujarat, will be organised on the concluding day.

The added attraction to the event would be major competitive events such as Brain Child - The paper Presentation Contest; Tech Quiz, Technical debate; Junkyard Wars, Open Software exhibition and Open Hardware exhibition.