Yoganand B, Parshal Chitrakar, Agniswar Paul, Abirami Ravishankar are four brilliant students from the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at SRM University-AP who have successfully completed an international internship with EION Wireless Inc, Canada. The students worked as engineering interns with this reputed wireless solutions firm in Canada for five and a half months (Jan 15- June 30) obtaining an internship salary of 500 CAD per student every month. Through this opportunity, the students could build a system that is able to send data to long distances.

Selection Process:
a. Internal selection: Based on the CV and projects undertaken, the ECE Faculty conducted interviews and shortlisted the students.
b. Personal Interview: The shortlisted students attended the interview with the company in which, the company scrutinised their project, skills, and whether they were relevant to the company’s requirements.
c. Techincal Interview: This round focused on analysing technical skills. A technical problem statement was given to members and was asked to come up with a solution in 10 minutes.
d. Coding test: In this round, coding questions were distributed and students had to submit documents of output and on how the code was processed.

For engineering graduates, technical skills and hands-on experience with industry is inevitable. SRM University-AP ensures that every student grabs opportunities to excel in their respective disciplines.

Student Testimonial- Parshal Chitrakar:

I would like to thank the faculty of the ECE Department at SRM AP for this great opportunity. Being a part of this internship programme by EION wireless has been one of my first and best experiences in the industry. Being a fresher, this opportunity gave me a chance to apply my knowledge and skills in developing real-time applications. This five and a half months internship taught me different ways to look at things, work with people from diverse backgrounds, and helped me develop my technical as well as soft skills. Before this, I was focused only on personal achievements, but when we work for a company it has to be focused on the public demand and common good. I think this is the main difference between academia and industry. There is no such difference between academic-based projects and industry-based projects; it is just how we think, showcase our abilities and how our work reaches the target stakeholders.

Heat stress negatively affects crop yield and its impact has increased over time. Researchers in India study this situation with utmost priority. Consequently, Dr Ghanshyam Kumar Pandey, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at SRM University-AP has co-authored a paper with Pratap S Birthal and et. al titled “Benefits of irrigation against heat stress in agriculture: Evidence from wheat crop in India” in the journal Agricultural Water Management, Vol 255, having an Impact factor 4.02.

Applying the fixed effects regression technique to the highly spatially disaggregated district-level data from 1966–67 to 2011–12. This paper has assessed the impact of heat stress on wheat production in India and concurrently evaluated the role of irrigation in offsetting its harmful impact. The study has brought out three key highlights:

(i) Heat stress negatively impacts crop yield, and the impact has increased over time.
(ii) Irrigation, besides its contribution towards improving crop yield, also moderates the harmful impact of heat stress, but over time its effectiveness has declined.
(iii) The measure of heat stress built on multiple aspects of excess temperature (i.e., intensity, persistence, and frequency) explains variation in crop yield better than working on a single aspect of it.

Given the increasing scarcity of irrigation water and rising temperature, these findings suggest the need for exploring technological and policy options for improving irrigation water use, efficiency, and breeding of crops for heat tolerance and low water footprints.

This research paper is written in collaboration with ICAR-National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, PUSA, New Delhi. Dr Ghanshyam’s future projects are focused on climate change and agriculture, and the effect of climate change on the livestock sector in India.

Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2021.106950

Barukula Snehitha Naga Sai and Kamma Samhitha are two brilliant third-year Computer Science Engineering students selected for the enviable Semester Abroad Programme (SAP) at the University of California, Davis. The students received a partial scholarship from SRM University-AP to complete their final semester abroad with the global study programme at UC Davis. The selection process for the semester abroad programme generally starts at the end of the 3rd and 5th semesters when our university carries out student interviews. A minimum of 8.7 CGPA is required to be eligible for the SAP scholarship and the programme focuses on building engineering design processes along with developing behavioural and communication skills of meritorious students.

The Study Abroad Programme provided Snehitha and Samhitha with the opportunity to cooperate with industrial designers. For practical hands-on experiences, Snehitha worked for the UC Davis school of nursing. Besides that, UC Davis promotes a variety of student clubs and technical programmes that bring students from all over the world together. This opportunity also helped students to live in a new culture and travel through different cities abroad. Prof Ragunathan and Dr Priyanka from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering constantly supported the students throughout their semester abroad journey at UC Davis.

For engineering graduates, technical skills and hands-on experience with industry is inevitable. SRM University-AP ensures that every student grabs opportunities to excel in their respective disciplines.

Snehitha extended her gratitude to all her professors at SRM University-AP who guided her to this achievement. “I really appreciate the curriculum structure at SRM AP that offers us practical knowledge rather than forcing us to memorise theories. The concrete understanding of the subject aided me greatly in learning about real-world problems, and accomplish this dream of studying a semester abroad”, she said.

This programme has taught me how to be adaptable, resilient and above all, how to make the best use of resources available. I have been and am fortunate to study from the best professors, both at SRM AP and UC Davis”, said Samhitha.

Young researchers from Mechanical Engineering- S.K Hassan, M.Vijaya Bhargava, Jithin Peram, and Meghana Bonthu- have added one more laurel to SRM University-AP by inventing something novel! Under the supervision of faculty from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the quartet have published a patent A Comprehensive Disinfection System during Pandemic for Personal Items and Protective Equipment(PPE) to Safeguard People.

The current Covid-19 pandemic has led to an enormous demand for gadgets/objects for personal protection. To prevent the spread of the virus which proliferates also through surface transmission, it is important to disinfect objects of common use. One of the ways suggested is to use a UV-C disinfecting box that is efficient and effective in deactivating the COVID-19 virus. The novelty of the product prototype is the use of a UVC transparent material (fused silica quartz glass tubes). This not only physically supports the objects to be disinfected but also improves the effectiveness of disinfection. The aluminium foil which the students have used, a UV reflecting material, was used as the inner lining of the box for effective utilization of the UVC light emitted by the UVC lamps. Care has been taken to prevent leakage of UVC radiation out of the system. COVID-19 virus can be inactivated in 5 minutes by UVC irradiation in this disinfection box.

This novel product can help in efficiently sanitizing normal household items such as mobile phones, keys, purses, grocery and also PPE kits (masks, gloves, visors etc.). This product is not only affordable but also makes disinfection faster. Moreover, the operational process is simple – open the door, place the objects, turn it on and then retrieve them sanitised within minutes.

“We are looking forward to taking up this UV Box to the next stage of implementation with a more compact and more efficient mechanism”, says the proud team behind the invention. “We are ready to undertake new projects and with the help and support from Dr Venkat Nori and other faculty members”, they added.

Link to patent document: https://ipindia.gov.in/writereaddata/Portal/IPOJournal/1_4971_1/Part-1.pdf

The maiden graduates of SRM University-AP have secured 100 per cent placements in the campus recruitment drive where 500+ reputed companies from India and abroad visited our university. More than 70 per cent of the students successfully bagged the dream and super dream offers. Ganji Harikrishna, a CSE graduate, received a dream offer with a salary package of 17 lakhs per annum from ZUORA, a leading software MNC. He joined as a full-time Senior Development Engineer (SDE) and would work in their Chennai office.

Student Testimonial

SRM AP is a great place to learn new things and what makes me excited about it is the excellent group of faculty and state-of-art infrastructure. Faculty at SRMAP are from reputed academies spread in and outside the country, and they are highly interactive with students. The training and placement cell organises personality development programmes, group discussions, mock interviews with industry experts, and personality development training sessions for the candidates. The all-round development training made me confident to face the challenges associated with interviews. Besides the aptitude and soft skills training, SRM AP provides CCC training for those who are very good at Computer Science Fundamentals and Coding. The curriculum followed by CCC was great and they were interactive with the students in clarifying their doubts in coding and as well as further rounds of interviews.

There was great motivation from the Corporate Relations and Career Services Department and faculty members. They trained me with the tips to clear the interview. I appreciate the efforts made by the CRCS department in bringing such top MNC’s like AMAZON, PAYPAL, AB InBev etc. Faculty members worked very hard for the success of each student, especially our HOD, Dr Raghunathan has been of firm support to all things associated with the CSE Department.

Dr Nimai Mishra, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh, along with his research group pursuing PhD under him-Ms V.G.Vasavi Dutt and Mr Syed Akhil- have published a research article titled “Enhancement of Photoluminescence and Stability of CsPbX3 (X= Cl, Br, and I) Perovskite Nanocrystals with Phthalimide Passivation” in the Journal “Nanoscale” (The Royal Society of Chemistry, Impact Factor-7.8).

Caesium lead halide perovskite nanocrystals (CsPbX3 NCs) have been the flourishing area of research in the field of photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications because of their excellent optical and electronic properties. However, they suffer from low stability and deterioration of photoluminescence (PL) properties post-synthesis. One of the ways to minimize the surface defects in the surface treatment with suitable ligands is to achieve the NCs with superior PL properties for light-emitting applications.

In this article, Dr Mishra’s research group demonstrates that incorporating an additional ligand can further enhance the optical properties and stability of NCs. Here, we introduced phthalimide as a new surface passivation ligand into the oleic acid/oleylamine system in situ to get near-unity photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of CsPbBr3 and CsPbI3 perovskite NCs. We observed, phthalimide passivation dramatically improves the stability of CsPbCl3, CsPbBr3, and CsPbI3 NCs under ambient light and UV light. The PL intensity is recorded for one year which showed a dramatic improvement for CsPbBr3 NCs. Nearly 11% of PL can be retained even after one year for phthalimide passivated samples, on the other hand, the PL of as-synthesized NCs completely diminishes in four months. CsPbCl3 NCs exhibit 3 times higher PL with phthalimide and retain 12% PL intensity even after two months while PL of as-synthesized NCs completely diminishes by then. Under continuous UV light illumination, the PL intensity of phthalimide passivated NCs is well preserved while the as-synthesized NCs exhibit negligible PL emission in 2 days. About 40% and 25% of initial PL is preserved for CsPbBr3 and CsPbCl3 NCs in the presence of phthalimide. CsPbI3 NCs with phthalimide exhibit PL even after 2 days while the PL is rapidly declined for as-synthesized NCs in the first 10 hours. The presence of phthalimide in CsPbI3 NCs could maintain stability even after a week while the as-synthesized NCs under transition to non-luminescent phase within 4 days.

Furthermore, blue, green, yellow, and red-emitting diodes by using CsPbCl1.5Br1.5, CsPbBr3, CsPbBr1.5I1.5, CsPbI3 NCs respectively are fabricated by drop-casting NCs onto blue LED lights which show the great potential of the use of these phthalimide passivated NCs in the field of display and light technologies.

Read the full paper here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/nr/d1nr03916d

Maharana Suraj Harihar, Nitesh Bharti, Tata Lohitasya, Khushboo Sharma are four undergraduates from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering who have got placed with the financial services company Bajaj Finserv Ltd. in the Engineering Campus placements for the class of 2022. They will be working in the headquarters of the company in Pune.

Bajaj Finserv Limited is a part of Bajaj Holdings & Investments Limited, a leading financial services company focused on wealth management, insurance, lending, and asset management. Being India’s fastest-growing and most diversified non-banking financial corporation, the company gives opportunity to fresh graduates to build their careers.

The first shortlisting round was Application Programming Interfaces (API) test and it was followed by the second round of coding with multiple-choice questions. The third round was the technical interview based on the projects that the students have done and their major achievements during the course. Questions related to data access and algorithm, technologies like eCommerce development and blockchain were also asked.

Nitesh Bharti, one of the placed students, says that he was rejected in so many interviews and couldn’t even clear the coding tests many times. “My persistent efforts with the support of the CR&CS department have finally paid off well. The mock interviews, industry readiness webinars, practical sessions to polish coding skills have been really helpful. Dr Ajay, Dr Manikandan and Dr Priyanka from the CSE department are my mentors and I cannot overlook their guidance and support”, said the overjoyed Nitesh. “The projects that I did as part of studies – One related to Covid-19 analysis and one DBMS project related to the e-voting system- helped me a lot in cracking the interview. My advice to juniors who are to attend placement interviews is that never lose hope”, he added.

Tata Lohitasya, another student thanks to the support of the placement team that has been very resourceful and the separate orientation sessions conducted for different companies. “Subjects like ISCP and training by CCC have been very helpful. The CR&CS department has been very approachable throughout the process”, said Tata. “The SRM AP faculty have helped me to create a strong base on conceptual topics. Dr Murali Krishna, Dr Ashok Kumar, and Dr Amit Kr Mandal from the department of CSE are my mentors”, he added.

Yadlapalli Sai Harshini, a student from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering has received a mesmerizing job offer from the world’s largest brewing company, AB InBev, in the Engineering Campus Placement for the class of 2022. She will soon start working at the Global Capability Centre located in Bangalore with a CTC of 12LPA.

The first shortlisting round was an online test with multiple-choice questions on aptitude, domain knowledge, and coding; followed by a group discussion. The third round was a technical interview based on the resume, followed by an HR interview.

In the words of Sai Harshini:

I am so happy to receive the offer from the world’s largest beverage and brewing company, AB InBev. The inclusion of Industry Standard Coding Skills & Industry Standard Employability Skills courses in the curriculum right from the first semester has helped me hone my coding and communication skills continuously. The projects I’ve done and my research publications with Dr Manikandan have made me stand out from the crowd. The extra-curricular activities at the university I’m part of, Student Council and Social Media Ambassadors, helped me understand perspectives, gain morale, exposure to working in a team and social skills.

The resources provided, sessions before the recruitment drive and the talks with our seniors organised by the CR & CS department helped me get an idea of how the process is going to be and what I need to be prepared for. Thanks to the CR&CS department, the CCC team, and all my mentors. My advice to my peers and juniors is to not worry about what you don’t have, instead be confident and ready to justify what you have. That’s what I’ve done.

The Department of Corporate Relations & Career Services (CR&CS) at SRM University-AP interacts closely with the industry to make the university a favoured destination for national and international organisations looking to recruit fresh talent. The CR&CS Department, SRM University-AP, considers the placement process very crucial and extends every kind of support to ensure that the students are given the best opportunities to streamline their career interests.

Bitragunta Vivek Vardhan, a final year student from the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, has filed a design copyright for developing a “UV Ray Wooden Sanitizer Disinfection Box”. This is a safe chemical-free product designed to disinfect the surfaces of items. In this period of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been difficult to sanitize mobile phones, tabs, laptops, car/bike keys, wallets, currency/coins, credit/debit cards, newspapers, pens, goggles, spectacles, accessories, milk packets, bakery items, water-absorbing products, delivery packages, toys, clothes etc with liquid sanitisers or else with water.

Researchers say that the coronavirus stays on surfaces of plastic (3-7 days), stainless steel (3-7 days), copper (up to 4 hours), paper (up to 4 days), glass (4 days), cardboard (24 hours), and wood (up to 2 days). UVC has a wavelength of 10 nm to 400 nm and is used for the disinfection method that has short-wavelength light to kill or inactivate microorganisms by destroying nucleic acids and disrupting their DNA, leaving them unable to perform vital cellular functions. The UVC light used in the product will not penetrate into solid surfaces and it is safe to use on touchscreen mobiles, laptops, tabs, etc. It is also proven that the disinfection box can destroy the bacteria and viruses on the surface of food items without causing any harm to the edibility.

“In future, I have plans to take this project to the next level by designing large dimensions of the box and making it work automatically with remote control through our mobile phone. I am extremely happy about filing the copyright and I express my heartfelt gratitude to Prof Siva Sankar Sir and Pro VC Prof D Narayana Rao Sir for giving me the opportunity and supporting me to expand my idea up to the level of implementation. And I thank Prof Vinod Kumar Sir for taking care of the filing process. Finally, I thank SRM University-AP for encouraging and nurturing young talents in all ways possible, “ Vivek stated.

Dr Rajapandiyan Paneerselvam from the Department of Chemistry has published a paper titled “Advances of surface-enhanced Raman and IR spectroscopies: from nano/microstructures to macro-optical design” in the journal Light: Science & Applications, Volume 10, Article number: 161 (2021) having an Impact factor of 17.7.

Raman and infrared (IR) spectroscopy are powerful analytical techniques, which are widely used for a variety of applications including food analysis, environmental analysis, chemical, and biomolecule analysis. This review article presents some latest advancements in vibrational spectroscopic techniques, and further developments in this field are given with emphasis on emerging techniques and methodologies.

This article has been published with Prof Zhong-Qun Tian’s group, State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China.

Furthermore, Dr Rajapandiyan’s research group will focus on the development of plasmonic nanostructures for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and its applications in food science, spectroelectrochemistry, and microfluidics in the future.

Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-021-00599-2