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| Cultivating an Engineer’s Mind |
A mechanical body, electronic components, intricate software, unique shape, various colours, and much more go into the manufacturing and assembly of a remote control for a television or air conditioner. This example of just one item of daily use shows that the entire production chain, from conception to final product, requires the expertise of people from different backgrounds, making engineering inherently a multidisciplinary field. However, despite being an applied science, engineering is primarily taught theoretically, with less focus on devising pragmatic solutions for real-life problems. In such a backdrop, how can one integrate an engineering mindset with a problem-solving acumen? What does it mean to think like an engineer? Professor Timothy Gonsalves answers these and other questions, while deconstructing the basic concepts for driving an engineer’s thought process.
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| Pandemic's Impact on Earnings and Employment of Urban Populations |
The varying impact of COVID by gender and occupation has necessitated policies to address vulnerabilities among people and support livelihoods by promoting businesses. Women experienced a greater loss in employment and paid working hours globally than men due to the pandemic. It was found that in Ahmedabad, women and low-skilled workers were more likely to have received a wage cut during the COVID lockdowns. A consequent rising trend during the post-pandemic period has been a noticeable change in economic activity and shift from wage employment to self-employment. These findings emerged from research on the short- and long-term impact of COVID-19 on earnings and employment in the metropolitan city from March 2020 to the post-pandemic year, 2022. The study was conducted by Ahmedabad University Professors Jeemol Unni and Sonal Yadav, in collaboration with Neha Gadhvi, Assistant Professor, Shri H. K. Commerce College, with the help of students of the Foundation Programme.
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Ahmedabad University
Launches the Writing Residency |
The University’s Ahmedabad Writing Programme (AWP), which brings together writers, translators and publishing professionals on a common platform, has launched a two-week to one-month Writing Residency for writers writing in different languages. The residency aims to facilitate cultural exchanges and interactions among the writers through workshops, readings, and conversations about their creative process. The first iteration of the residency hosted two noted writers, Anukrti Upadhyay and Radhika Iyengar, who spoke about their writing and publishing experience, and also produced short literary pieces on Ahmedabad city. Anukrti writes fiction and poetry in both English and Hindi, and has published her writings in several publications. Radhika, a journalist and debut author, writes on various subjects including arts and culture, marginalised communities, history, and gender.
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| Blending Nritya Yoga with Interdisciplinary Learning |
The study and preservation of heritage is emerging as an interdisciplinary field in the backdrop of evolving cultural landscapes worldwide. In this context, dance, in alignment with other art forms, signifies the intersection of heritage with human endeavour and spiritual experience. This was expressed by the renowned dancer, Dr Sonal Mansingh, recipient of the Padma Bhushan (1992) and Padma Vibhushan (2003), during her lecture at Ahmedabad University, wherein she recounted her journey through dance. She suggested that the aesthetic richness and cultural traditions encapsulated in dance should be integrated into the education system. This would help students understand the beauty of poems, literature, iconography, and motifs ingrained in local textiles and handicrafts. Dr Mansingh's talk aligns with the University's vibrant ecosystem that encourages students to cultivate a holistic understanding of different disciplines and art forms through experiential learning and innovative thinking.
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Exciting Research Fellowship Opportunity in
Quantum Physics at Caltech |
The advent of Fourier Neural Operators (FNOs) represents a remarkable innovation in the field of machine learning. As a mathematical tool, FNOs can learn mappings between infinite-dimensional spaces of functions and are discretisation-invariant. Freya Shah, a student of BS (Honours) at Ahmedabad University, who has been exploring FNOs, will get an interesting opportunity to carry forward her research on using FNOs for quantum applications after having received the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) award at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for 2024. She will work on a Quantum Machine Learning project with Professor Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor of Computing at California Institute of Technology. Freya’s research at Caltech will also explore if FNOs can learn the underlying quantum dynamics of these structured spin systems to generalise across similar unseen problems. After her previous research experience at Harvard University and the University of Waterloo, the study of FNOs at Caltech would be her third exciting research endeavour.
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| Ahmedabad University is a leading private, non-profit research university in India offering students a liberal education focused on interdisciplinary learning, practice orientation, and research thinking. Established in 2009, the University has four Schools and seven Centres: |
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