BITSians develop India's first fully indegenous humanoid!

India's only entry in Robogames'08: World's largest Robo competition!

Here is more:

About ACYUT

ACYUT is India's first humanoid Robot conceptualized, fabricated, assembled and programmed by five students from BITS, Pilani. ACYUT has been created on Pilani soil in its very own workshop and labs and is the only entry from India into RoboGames 2008. Check out http://acyut.wordpress.com/ to know more about how ACYUT was

born and how it is gearing up for the biggest contest in robotics. Catch a glimpse of ACYUT at http://www.youtube.com/v/QjAIaNiB1KI&hl=en

About RoboGames

Robogames is the world's largest open robot competition (even the Guinness Book of World Records says so!), being held at Fort Mason, San Francisco, from June 13, 2008 to June 15, 2008. The 2007 event had 249 teams participating from 28 different countries, in 70 different competitive events. There is only one Indian team participating in the 2008 event. www.robogames.net

Kudos to Samay Kohli, Arpit Mohan, Harsh Sinha, Prayag Mukherjee and Sushma Vallabhaneni for keeping the BITS flag flying high!! :D

Here is another video of Acyut:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhxYAeBOROs

MS/PhD admission statistics for BITS-Pilani, Pilani, Goa and Dubai Campuses, Fall 2008

Here are the admission statistics (for MS, MS/PhD and PhD) for all the three campuses of BITS for 2008.

BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus has done very well in its first ever admit scene ( The first batch of the Goa campus is passing out this year) with admits with full scholarships to universities like University of California – Berkeley, Harvard University, Stanford University, Purdue University etc. 

Average no. of admits per student stood at 3.27 (Total 454 admits for 139 students)

The list given below is NOT exhaustive.

Also,

Approx. 34% of applicants received some form of aid or the other (Fellowship, RA, TA, Tuition Waiver).

Top colleges like CMU (14 students), Stanford (11 students), Cornell (12 students), Purdue (29 students), Georgia Tech (16 students) etc. took a large number of BITSians this year.

These are the best (arguably!) admission statistics I've seen for any Indian University!

Kudos to BITS and BITSians!

MOUs with Foreign universities (Foreign collaborations of BITS)

Here is a list of reputed universities abroad, with whom BITS has collaborations with. The collaborations range from Exchange Programs (For both faculty and students) to joint research facilities. This is again not an exhaustive list and does NOT include Indian companies:

For more information go to: http://discovery.bits-pilani.ac.in/iru_site/mou.html

1. Advanced Business Language Group Inc, USA
2. Altera International Limited, Hong Kong
3. Arizona State University, USA
4. Ben Gurion University of Neger, Israel
5. Binghamton University (State University of New York), New York, USA
6. Braton Bitech Inc, Maryland, USA
7. Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute
8. Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore and Tulane University, Louisiane, USA
9. Cornell University, Ithaca, USA
10. ETA Ascon, Dubai
11. Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland
12. Hogskolan I Boras(University College of Boras), Sweden
13. Iowa State University, Iowa, USA
14. Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, USA
15. Kathmandu University, Nepal
16. Lund University, Sweden
17. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA
18. Motorola Inc., USA
19. Nokia Research Centre, Finland
20. OSTN, Cleveland, UK
21. Purdue University, Indiana, USA
22. State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
23. Techlead Software Engg Pvt. Ltd, USA
24. The Commonwealth of Virginia George Mason University, USA
25. The George Washington University, USA
26. The Jacob Blaust Institutes for Desert Research of Ben Gurion University(BIDR-BGU), Israel
27. The Tun Hussein Onn National Eye Hospital, Malaysia
28. Transtech International Inc., Maryland, USA
29. Tulane University Medical Centre, New Orleans, USA
30. Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda, USA
31. Universities Of Ontario, Canada
32. University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
33. University of Dundee, UK
34. University of Maryland, College Park, USA
35. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
36. University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA
37. University of Southern Califonia, USA
38. University of Windsor, Canada
39. Utah State University, USA
40. Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia
41. Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
42. York University, Canada

BITSAA and IPL Partnership! Wow! :D

Ahh! Finally BITSians joined the IPL frenzy!! Here is a first of its kind honor bestowed on ANY college community (read: BITSians!) by IPL, Rajastan Royals. This a mail I received sometime back:::: 

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Dear BITSians 

BITSAA is glad to announce that Rajasthan Royals (IPL Cricket Team based in Jaipur) and BITSAA have signed an exclusive partnership deal to create the first International fan base of an IPL team. A press release to this effect went out to the India Newswire today (see below). 

This deal came to BITSAA through Dreamcricket.com (founded by BITSian Venu Palaparthi- 1987 batch). Given that Rajasthan Royals is the natural home team for BITSians because of the memorable times we spent at Pilani, BITSAA was more than happy to oblige to kickstart a new trend in Indian sport history. 

As part of this deal BITSians around the world will get: 

• 50% discount on all season tickets for all Home Games (Played at Jaipur) 

• 20% discount on purchase of 10 or more tickets for specific games (i.e not season tickets). 

• Free tickets for home games that BITSAA will raffle to its members for specific promotions 

• 50% discount to BITSians who may want to purchase a VIP box for the season 

• Special tickets to RR away games like the ones in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata 

• Discounts on RR merchandise 

• Articles from Shane Warne and other Rajasthan Royals players for the Alumni Magazine, Sandpaper 2.0 

Please watch out for an announcement on how BITSians can avail of these benefits for IPL games. Send your thoughts and feedback to garg@bitsaa.org 

Thanks, 

Ashish Garg 

CEO, BITSAA International 

www.bitsaa.org 

Here is the link:: 

http://www.indiainfoline.com/news/innernews.asp?storyId=66592&lmn=1 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

Rajasthan Royals announces Global Fan Community alliance with BITS Pilani International Alumni Association! 

The first international fan base by an IPL team is launched! 

Jaipur, 30th April 2008: Emerging Media, owners of the Jaipur IPL franchise, Rajasthan Royals announced a first-of-its-kind global fan alliance by signing an exclusive relationship with BITS Pilani International Alumni Association. 

With this association Rajasthan Royals will induct over 30,000 BITS Pilani Alumni into the Rajasthan Royals support base, providing all members of the community with special offers, free tickets and discounted merchandise of the Rajasthan Royals. In addition, the Rajasthan Royals will also contribute to the BITSAA community with special articles written by Shane Warne and a charity auction at a later stage. 

BITS Pilani, the premier engineering and sciences institution is located in Rajasthan, only 5 hours away from Jaipur. Rajasthan Royals is also extending the benefits of this alliance to over 5000 students and members of faculty of BITS Pilani. 

Manoj Badale, Chairman of the Rajasthan Royals said, “We are extremely excited about this partnership. BITS-ians worldwide are a fine representation of India, highly educated, well settled and truly global citizens, yet deeply connected by a certain bond they share. With this alliance, we hope to provide them another reason to bond: supporting a fierce team in the Royals.” 

“BITS Pilani alumni around the world are rooting for Rajasthan Royal’s victory in the IPL tournament. Go Royals!”, said Professor S.P.Kothari, Chairman of BITSAA, who is currently Deputy Dean at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

“This is the foundation of what will be a huge community for us in due course. We have a number of initiatives on the anvil, both online and offline for increased interaction between our global members and of course, the Warnie Army has begun to take shape”, said Ravi Krishnan, Vice Chairman of the Rajasthan Royals 

Commenting on the relationship, Fraser Castellino, CEO of the Rajasthan Royals said, “Of course, the fact that Pilani and Jaipur share a home in Rajasthan was the primary connection between us. This is another first for us and we look forward to support from the BITS-ians.” 

With Shane Warne being the only international captain of an IPL franchise and a few fine winning performances, the Rajasthan Royals are already attracting fans from all over the world. 

"Rajasthan Royals is the natural home team for the global BITS Pilani Alumni because of the memorable times we spent at Pilani, Rajasthan. BITSians all around the world are rooting for Shane Warne and the team", said Ashish Garg, CEO of BITSAA.