IIT-Bombay gears up for virtual avatar of its Techfest

IIT Bombay

AMID the unprecedented turn of events triggered by the pandemic, the IIT-Bombay will hold its annual technology festival - Techfest - on the virtual sphere. The premiere institute at Powai has drawn an impressive line-up of speakers this time.

Techfest will see dignitaries like Abhinav Bindra, India's first individual Olympic Gold medallist, and Dr R A Mashelkar, the former director general of CSIR. The lecture series includes two Nobel laureates along with Jürgen Schmidhuber, who is considered the father of modern artificial intelligence.

The 24th edition of the much-followed event is scheduled to take place from January 7 to 13, 2020. Eminent journalists, including Ravish Kumar, a senior NDTV editor and Magsaysay awardee, Rajdeep Sardesai of India Today and a few Pulitzer award winners from abroad will take part in the media summit.

Nina, a 1.02-metre-tall humanoid robot from France, designed for human interaction, is expected to be an attraction. It has articulated lips, jaws, ears and moving eyelids. Nina will soon be able to conduct tests to provide an early stage diagnosis of Alzheimer's.

Virgin Hyperloop, known for its radical transportation technology, will also be a part of the Techfest. Techfest will have a competition called Covideate. Participants need to come up with solutions to either slow down the spread of the virus or streamline the production and distribution of COVID vaccines. The winner will take home Rs 1.25 lakh.

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