Industrialists, academia come together

Hyderabad: Mahindra Ecole Centrale (MEC) College of Engineering, Hyderabad organised its annual Centrale Connect Conclave at the campus. The theme for this year's Centrale Connect was 'Perspective and Perception'.

Perspective is an individual's understanding of an event, an activity, an idea and a concept and changes from person to person. Collaboration can help connect to different perspectives to create alternatives to a single acceptable reality. This also leads to innovation by looking at things, concepts, ideas, differently, encouraging an enhanced "way of seeing". Perspectives define human nature and progress comes from the coming together of different points of views.

The Centrale Connect Conclave 2019 witnessed eminent professionals, from both the industry and academia, on a single platform with the primary motive of encouraging students to broaden their perspectives on society, allowing them to use this knowledge while developing innovative solutions to real-life problems.

"Through Centrale Conclave, we aim to engage with this 'alternative' / 'different" way of looking at and responding to things. Mahindra Ecole Centrale is happy to host a very high profile guest list which will deliberate on key perspectives like Perception towards Inclusion and Perception towards Life/Living. We expect to encourage our guests and audience to explore these aspects of the "real" world and understand their impact on individuals and organisations", said Dr. Yajulu Medury, Director, Mahindra Ecole Centrale. He then invited Shashikumar Sreedharan, MD, Microsoft India, to speak on the impact of digital technology and AI, and how it has integrated into our lives today.

The first panel discussion talked about inclusion, be it economic, political or societal. Dr Kannan Srinathan, Associate Pressure at IIIT, Hyderabad, focused on the effect of clarity of purpose and education on the theme. Dr Nikhil Agarwal, Senior Advisor to FICCI BISNET, mentioned that education is important, and the infrastructure for it, even more so.

Dr Srini Kaveri, the Director of the CNRS office in India, said that true inclusiveness is when no one is left behind in the wake of progress. Dr Venkat Changavalli, Advisor to the governments of Telangana and Haryana, described how good leadership is essential to making inclusive projects possible, but that the youth should not wait to join such ventures.

The second panel discussion focused on the ideals that form the basis of Indian society, and if it was time to rethink these. They focused on questions of success in the Indian context and landscape of engineering as profession in India. Dr Vidyanand Jha, Professor at IIM Calcutta opened the discussion by saying that the idea of success varies from person to person and that engineering should be promoted as a profession instead of a stepping stone to other professions.

Raju Venkat Narayan, VP of Simpsons and Co., said that success varies over time. In the beginning of one's career, it is about money but things invariably change. Namrata Rana, Director of Futures cape, said that in order to build, an engineer must have a breadth of knowledge now, and to build things with enduring value is a measure of their success.