Students Achievements

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Jesni M Jacob, currently doing research under Dr Mahesh Kumar Ravva narrates her journey to achieving CSIR-JRF All India Rank of 65 through persistent efforts.

I’m working in the field of computational chemistry on designing and developing organic molecules for OLED applications. Securing an AIR of 65 in the CSIR JRF in Chemical Science June 2021 exam is a dream come true moment for me.

In 2019, I completed my post-graduate studies at Madras Christian College, Chennai. The four-year-long journey from zero to JRF AIR 65 was of hard work, patience, sleepless nights, sacrifices and even frustrated moments. It was challenging to remain motivated after multiple unsuccessful attempts. But I wasn’t ready to give up hope. I believed in myself and dreamed big with faith in God Almighty.

My previous attempts didn’t provide me with any hope of continuing my preparation because my marks were consistently far below the cutoffs. That made me realise one thing: without coaching and ample guidance, qualifying for CSIR JRF is a toiling task for an average student. But I learned that with strong passion, proper dedication, and right strategies of do’s and don’ts, any aspiring student can pass the exam with flying colours.

After each attempt, I learned from my mistakes and tried to optimise my strategies. One should never try to cover the entire syllabus and be bothered about it. I analysed the unit-wise weightage and narrowed it down to a few important topics that I found exciting and comfortable.

• Choose topics carefully and focus solely on mastering them.
• Try to stick to and rely on reliable standard textbooks as much as possible.
• The SRMAP library provided me with excellent access to a wide range of standard texts.

The JRF aspirants should try to solve previous years’ questions from standard exams (CSIR, GATE, IISc, etc.) and note new concepts or approaches every day. Enjoy and prepare short notes with a lot of scribbling and highlighting in various colours. Notes should be concise and simple to revise later. But don’t spend too much time making notes.

I made time for exam preparation along with my work and research activities. I’m grateful to my family, teachers, and especially my guide- Dr Mahesh Kumar Ravva, for their constant support and encouragement. He gave me a safe space to express my desire to ace the exam and my anxieties about it. Dr Mahesh always listened to my concerns and helped me to gain clarity on my thoughts. He always encouraged me to dream big and shared his perspectives and lessons from his life experiences. He is a great mentor, motivator, and teacher to me.

J Abbas Mohammad was in a state of absolute euphoria as the news reached him. He has been placed with Predli, a top-performing AI company, with a staggering offer of CTC 44.91 LPA. With one more achievement to flaunt, SRM is surging ahead with an endless list of placement offers and achievement stories. Abbas is a final year student of the Department of Computer Science Engineering who has already demonstrated his calibre by grabbing a seat at UC Berkeley through the Semester Abroad Programme. His sheer will and dedication have always helped him break the records and fly to further heights.

SRM University-AP happened to be the perfect place that shaped him up to pursue the career of his dreams. Our collaboration with leading enterprises in the world turned out to be an excellent avenue for many to walk ahead to a horizon of opportunities. The Department of Corporate Relations & Careers Services is also doing an amazing job in training the students and encouraging them to apply for the best available prospects. Let us listen to Abbas as he pours out his excitement.

“I am truly delighted to have received this high-paying placement offer. And all of this became possible with the exposure I received from my university. I kept abreast of the latest technologies in the software industry and applied them through practical projects as part of our co-curricular activities in classrooms and university labs such as the Next Tech Lab. The experienced faculty and specially curated curriculum we follow here will always give an extra edge to the students. I am indeed thankful to Dr Sujith Kalluri and Dr Priyanka for assisting me on several occasions”, he said.

“It is the Semester Abroad Program at UC Berkeley, which allowed me to build a strong international networks, that eventually led to this offer. I’m immensely fortunate to land the job of my dream. In future, I hope to advance professionally and adapt to greater leadership roles with the goal of starting my own venture”, remarked Abbas.

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”– Paulo Coelho.

Be it a dream or a wish, when you are determined to pursue what the mind really wants, SRM University-AP helps you reach that goal. Ms Pragya Gupta and Ms Swikriti Khadke joined SRM AP with vibrant dreams, and in their third year, they have attained the prestigious Mitacs Globalink Research Internship. The students from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering will spend three months in Canadian universities as a part of this fully-funded research internship. Ms Swikriti will intern at Université du Québec en Outaouais – Gatineau on the research project titled “Systematic PV farm power losses calculation and modelling using computational intelligence techniques”. Ms Pragya will be going to Athabasca University – Edmonton as a research intern to work on the project titled “Blockchains for Data Storage and Mining in Learning Analytics”.

About Mitacs Globalink Research Internship

Mitacs Globalink Research Internship is a highly competitive programme that pairs top-ranked international students having specific research expertise from 15 countries worldwide with faculty at top Canadian academic institutions. This is a twelve (12) week research project of mutual interest between May and October 2022. The Canadian host faculty project leader makes selections by verifying the student’s background and skills in the research area and the unique contribution they will be made to the research during the stay. As a fully-funded programme, Mitacs and AICTE will administer the grant. Students can choose from about 14k+ projects in disciplines like Engineering, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities.

Mitacs will be responsible for providing the following to the students:

1. An airfare stipend of Can$1,500;
2. A stipend of Can$175 to contribute to the cost of transportation from the Canadian airport to accommodation unless otherwise arranged by your host institution
3. A stipend of Can$200 per week for living expenses
4. Ensure that students receive Canadian medical insurance.
5. A daily allowance of Can$45 for housing for the duration of the research internship.
6. A stipend of Can$300 for any student fees charged by the Canadian host institution
7. Reimbursement of immigration permit application fees (as required to participate in the research internship — up to a maximum of Can$240)
8. A stipend of Can$500 for any COVID-19-related expenses (e.g., COVID test, quarantine, expenses incurred during isolation, etc.)

The journey, in Pragya and Swikriti’s words:

The journey from applying for MITACS to getting selected as one of the GRI interns in one of the top-ranked universities in Canada was no less than a dream come true. The registration process included filling out an application form which was the most important step and a complicated one. This was also an elimination stage for many because writing down all our details in a limited number of words was quite difficult and challenging. After submitting the application form, the details about the Matching round were intimated in November. We received emails for the interview round from the professor himself. It was a technical interview that comprised of questions regarding our work experience, knowledge about the technology we will be contributing to the project during the internship, and personal details. The interview lasted for 30-45 mins, after which the professor assigned us some tasks to assess our knowledge regarding the topic. After completing and submitting the task, around Mid December, we received a congratulatory mail regarding our selection for MITACS GRI 2022, which will commence from May 2022 and continue for the next three months.

The Globalink Graduate Fellowship offers former Globalink research interns:

■ Direct financial support from Mitacs
■ Recognition as Globalink alumni
■ The opportunity to work with Canada’s research supervisors during your graduate studies
■ Additional exposure to the Canadian research and innovation landscape and increased Canadian experience.

A note of gratitude

“We would like to thank SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh, for helping us build our skills and supporting us throughout the process. Our university management has always been kind and helpful to its students to explore new opportunities and create new relations. We would like to extend our gratitude to our mentors, Dr Goutam Kumar Dalapati and Dr Anil K Suresh, for their continuous support, guidance, and motivation. Last but not least, our parents have been our support system throughout our journey”.

Our bright young minds bring fame and glory to the university from all around the world. Mr Haseesh Rahithya Nandam, from the final year of BSc (Hons) Integrative Biology, has received admission offers to MSc Infection and Immunity course, University College London (QS ranking 8) and MSc Medical and Molecular Virology, The University of Manchester (QS ranking 27).

UCL is rated the top university in the UK for research strength in the most recent Research Excellence Framework. The MSc course that Mr Haseesh has enrolled in primarily focuses on teaching concepts of infection and immunity. It contains course modules such as Molecular Virology, Evolution of Diseases, and Epidemiology.

“I am excited and happy since UCL stands in 8th rank and offers a course I dearly love to study”, says Mr Haseesh. According to him, the selection process for University College London was a piece of cake. The admission requirements were the English language proficiency test (IELTS/TOEFL) result, SoP, LoRs, CV, and Grade Card. He has also applied to Imperial College London and is waiting for the admission announcement.

SRM University-AP enables students to become the best version of themselves every single day and work towards their goals. “I am grateful for the support of my professor Dr Sutharsan Govindarajan to work in his lab. There, I got the opportunity to gain experience and learn new things”, says Mr Haseesh. He further thanked the Head of the Department, Prof Jayaseelan Murugaiyan, for his relentless guidance and support.

Soha Muskaan Sayyad, Samah Maaheen Sayyad, Juhita Naga Priya Velagapudi, and Trisha Chilukuri from 2nd-year Computer Science Engineering have achieved 2nd place in the I-Wallet Design Techfest, organised by IIT Bombay. Dr Sonam Maurya, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, guided the students to achieve this incredible feat.

The students started their work in December and explored a lot about IoT while working on it. More than 100 teams participated in this competition. In January, ten teams got selected for the second round, i.e., Report Submission, and our students were one of them. In February, based on the reports submitted, six teams, including our students, were selected for the final round, i.e., to present the proposed idea to the judges’ panel. Finally, the students bagged second place in the competition with cumulative prize money of INR 90,000.

Regarding the I-Wallet, students say that “Smart Wallet is an easy-to-use wallet that is designed for providing secured transactions”. It has minimal energy consumption, more security, and a few advanced features, some of which are not included in the regularly used wallets. The advanced IoT features enable it to be kept in our pockets with smartphones and smartwatches. The design received recognition from the expert panel members based on these features.

The team has also initiated the process to file a patent on the design of wallet. Students expressed their gratitude to Dr Sonam Maurya, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, for her relentless guidance and continuous support towards the project. They also thanked SRM University-AP for providing the opportunity to participate in this national level competition organised by IIT Bombay.

Prof B V Babu, Dean, School of Engineering and Sciences, appreciated the students and their faculty mentors. “Keep up the good work, continue to excel in all your future endeavours at professional and personal levels and bring laurels to your alma mater”, he said in the congratulatory message.

SRM University-AP is indeed proud of its young and intelligent minds who continue to bring honour and glory to the institution from across the globe. Pulkit Jasti and Tankala Yuvaraj, two of our students from the Department of Computer Science Engineering currently pursuing Semester Abroad Programme at the University of California, Berkeley have won first prize in the prestigious SF Hacks conducted by San Francisco State University, USA, and bagged a total of $950 ($600 for 1st Prize, $250 for Best UI/UX Design, and $100 for Best AIML Hack).

The world has always been ruled and sustained by ideas. Innovating and executing the unthinkable are what helped us tide over the unprecedented hardships the pandemic entailed. SF Hacks 2022, San Francisco’s largest collegiate hackathon was conceived to hatch some striking ideas under the tracks: inclusivity, mental health, sustainability, and machine learning to put the latest technologies to use in the fittest way possible to render solutions to the unending maladies of corona and climate change.

Pulkit Jasti and Tankala Yuvaraj have tread out of the way to introduce an AI-based classroom system that monitors the mental-well being of the students. It is an unfortunate fact that our classrooms have often overlooked the emotional and mental well-being of the students. The transition to virtual mode has made the scenario even worse. Researches state that the depression rates in students between ages 10-18 have increased by 72% since the pandemic.

According to Pulkit and Yuvaraj, this incredible innovation monitors various parameters like facial expressions, voice, attentiveness of a student during the class and generates a meta score that gives an overall idea about the mental well-being of the student. Based on this score, the school counsellors will be notified and then the student can have a one on one therapy session with the counsellor. This system can help identify signs of depression at early stages which makes classroom a safe learning environment for students.

They were determined to come up with an effective solution to redefine the conventional classroom setup and make learning a wholesome experience. “After selecting a problem and drafting the base of the project, we were assured that it could create a positive impact for students during these unprecedented times of the Covid-19 outbreak”, they said.

“During the hackathon, we ran into a lot of technical issues and roadblocks but were able to overcome them and submit our final prototype. To be a part of such a huge event where there were around 1000+ participants from over 26 countries was indeed a remarkable learning experience”, they expressed their feeling of contentment. “We can never thank enough our faculty at SRM for their enormous support throughout our journey at the University of California Berkeley” they added.

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The Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering could not be prouder as their student Sohith Chowdhary Akkineni turned out to be the next in the line of the lucky handful who has received admission offers from various world-class universities. Giving wings to the dreams of students makes the university a choice destination for next-generation where dreams are turned into reality.

With its priority being, teaching the students to dream big and facilitating their journey ahead, more students have found a place to initiate the primary strides towards a world of opportunities looming ahead. They bring laurels back to the university by placing its name on the global map. Sohith Chowdary has also reciprocated his love and respect for SRM University-AP by making the best use of the conducive learning atmosphere, experienced faculty, and cutting-edge infrastructure which opened the doors for higher studies abroad. He received admission offers from the University of Maryland, Northeastern University-Boston, George Washington University with a scholarship of 25% of the tuition fee, and Rochester Institute of Technology with yet another whopping scholarship of $15,561.

“I am indeed grateful to my HOD, Siva Sankar sir for giving me deeper insights into the course I have chosen, and to Swetha ma’am of International Relations Office for helping me get the necessary documents from the college. Besides, I would also like to thank all my professors, Sujith Kalluri sir, Gangi Reddy Salla sir, and Sateeshkrishna Dhuli sir for their Letters of Recommendation”, said Sohith. He also expressed his desire to start a career in the field of research in Telecommunication Networks.

As a word of advice to his juniors, Sohith said, “Choose a course that interests you, rather than following everyone else, do research in the course you have chosen, and apply to international universities preferably before the priority deadline”. With the number of students enrolling into international universities rising, SRM University-AP continues to build a legacy of its own in the domain of global education.

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Understanding stock market trends is crucial for investors to make key decisions. It was indeed a wonderful moment when Katla Sai Naveen from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, presented a paper for the first time with an intelligent solution to that problem. The paper “A Novel Stock Price Prediction Scheme from Twitter Data by using Weighted Sentiment Analysis” was presented at the 12th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering (CONFLUENCE-2022), organised by Amity University, Noida, UP, India. It was co-authored by Nikhila Korivi, Godavarthi Chandra Keerthi under the mentorship of Dr V M Manikandan, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering. The paper will later be published in IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

Abstract:

Stock market forecasting is one of the most interesting research areas for many professionals and researchers. Economic conditions, investor sentiment, current events, future guidance, and a variety of other factors have an impact on the stock market. Since the stock market changes swiftly from time to time, it might be tough for a user or investor to keep up with the shifting trend. Combining sentiment analysis with a machine learning model, a solution to this problem has been introduced. Sentiment analysis is a text mining procedure that has one of the most important uses in analysing user reviews and evaluating the overall sentiment of a piece of text. The purpose of this research work is to create a machine learning model that takes recent tweets from the Twitter API and categorises each message as positive, bad, or neutral. Later, the impact of the person who wrote the tweet is also considered while predicting the trend. The parameters such as the total number of followers, the emotion of each comment on each post of selected stock, the number of likes and retweets are considered. An overview of the selected stock’s potential will be given to the user as the output.

This research will be useful for businessmen and people with enthusiasm for the stock market. The research will provide insights and intelligence to help make profitable decisions. False positives during sentiment analysis is a major concern in this domain. The team is focused on improving the existing approaches with better methods to identify false positives.

By earning a ticket to NYU Tandon School of Engineering for the Master’s programme, Students of Civil Engineering; Jayaram Chowdary Dasari, S Yogendra Gopinath and Leela Sujan Sai Borra have added one more feather in the department’s cap. It is a matter of joy and pride for the Department of Civil Engineering and the university as more and more students are getting admitted to international universities. Harnessing the true potential of each student and preparing them for a bigger world have always been the primary focus of SRM University-AP.

They are groomed from a very early stage to reflect on their educational objectives and initiate the appropriate action. “I had started my preparation way ahead and cleared the GRE and IELTS tests, then I consulted my Professors Dr Bhagath sir, Dr Narasimha Murthy sir and Dr Uma Maheswar Rao sir for guidance and with their help, I shortlisted the universities and the best programmes which can fulfil my future goals,” said Yogendra.

“We will never forget our faculty members for their immense support in helping us find the right universities, and also for the initiatives taken by the department such as conducting webinars to educate students about the application procedure for higher studies.” Borra and Jayaram also marked their gratitude to the department.

The Office of International Relations at the university has also played a crucial part in their achievement as it walked them through the right procedures for an overseas application. “I shall forever be thankful to Dr Shweta ma’am for her valuable guidance on drafting an incredible SoP” added Yogendra.

An enriching learning environment with exposure to global educational practices rendered at SRM University-AP will foster the right academic spirit in students and enable them to move ahead with better clarity of purpose. Also, training imparted by the expert faculty will help them gather deeper insights and transform themselves into professionals in their respective fields.

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The Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering is proud to announce the remarkable achievement of the students Chebrolu Taraka Sai Tanishq and Vellampalli Medha V Subrahmanya Aditya. They have designed a wearable face shield and secured the second position in IEEE Covigilance, 2021 – A pan India student contest based on Covid-19 relief do it yourself equipment design and development, under the guidance of Dr Anirban Ghosh, and got a patent published for their prototype developed as part of the competition. The team also participated in the 4th Research Day organized by SRM University-AP and received a gold medal.

The prototype was submitted in the design competition on July 30, 2021, and after 40 days of rigorous brainstorming, component procurement and prototype development, the final model was submitted for evaluation. Based on prototype execution, feasibility of manufacturing and suitability of the model to contain the spread of the pandemic, the team secured second place in the Pan India contest, and it was deemed fit to address the two criteria; innovation challenges like Innovation of homemade masks/shields/PPEs and innovation of a feasible solution to control covid-19 spread while the schools and colleges are reopening. Further, this prototype was submitted to the patent office under the name “A Wearable Face Shield” (Application no:202241000990) and the patent was published on January 21, 2022.

Their accomplishment bears testimony to the fact that unflinching determination towards your goals and consistent efforts to make them come true will always pay off. Designing a wearable face shield is a well-timed innovation as the pandemic shows no sign of retreat and face shield has become one of the daily necessities of all mankind.

About the Prototype

The wearable face shield is a medical protective device, and it comprises a frame for securing the shield to the head of a wearer, a transparent sheet extending from the frame, a detection circuit that is mounted on the frame, a switch, and a battery module. The detection circuit comprises of a control unit that processes the sensed data received from proximity and temperature sensors to generate output signals and an alerting unit that comprises LEDs, buzzer and it provides an indication of– (i) the presence of a detected external object within a pre-determined distance of the wearer (ii) the sensed body temperature of the wearer. The alerting unit is placed strategically to alert people via visual and audio signals respectively.

Such precautionary detection and proximity alert prototype can prove instrumental in early diagnosis and isolation aiding in crowd management and free movement in places of social gathering. Hence, a wearable face shield ensures adequate separation between persons and facilitates temperature monitoring and early detection of disease.

They are currently working on a project called “Human Monitoring System” (HUM). It is an all-pervasive system designed to measure and keep track of the heartbeat, blood pleasure, temperature, location, Spo2 level etc of the user. In the event of an emergency or critical drop in any of the vitals, the system can automatically alert the local hospital, ambulance service and relatives.

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