IIT Cutting Edge 2013 – “Pushing the Boundaries of Technology”
The Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) which takes pride in nurturing students and gearing them to take on the challenges of the modern working world , recently held the “Cutting Edge” exhibition for the 11th consecutive year in June 2013. This is a showcase for all final year students studying Software Engineering and Information Systems with Business Management to display their final year projects.
What is unique about this final year project is that it is entirely the students’ innovation where two years of thorough academic study followed by an eye opening placement year, moulds each one of these student to be able to think out of the box, be creative, be innovative, and dare to be different.
The judges Prof. Gihan Wickramanayake and his team from British Computer Society (BCS) who evaluated the projects for its excellence were experts from the fields of IT and Management. This year’s exhibition saw many creative inventions that included business solutions for categories such as in E-Commerce, Management Information Systems Planning, Finance, Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain Management, Hospitality Management, Education, Healthcare, and IT solutions for Artificial Intelligence, Hardware based solutions, Communication Networks, Mobile Applications, Virtual Reality, Web based solutions and Multimedia & Graphics.
Amongst these many innovations, one of the most outstanding projects belonged to the winner of the software category, Amal Gunatilake , which focused on development and evaluation of an application which captures real world objects as realistic 3D models (natural texturing, shape, lighting, reflections, specular levels, highlights and shadow) and display them in the virtual world for selected application domains. This proposed application can be installed into any device with a camera and processing power and therefore, it is highly economical and gives maximum productivity to the user.
Other winners of the software category for the Virtusa Award for Academic excellence included the 2nd runner up, Reny Joseph for his project “Build-IT” which was an interactive web application for 3D construction, interior and exterior design and the 3rd runner up Rumesh Aponso for the project “ARmax”, a Cross- platform Augmented Reality Development kit.
The winner of the business category for the Informatics International Limited Award for Business Innovation was the project displayed by Jeewani Lakshani which was a Microfinance Field Officer Management System. This systems was aimed at all the financial institutes which provide micro finance services that encounter common issues in tracking, monitoring and gathering real-time information from Microfinance Field Officers ( MFOs) who are scattered around the country. This research was aimed to identify factors affecting the managing of MFOs and propose an IT solution to address this problem.
The 2nd runner up included Tharaka De Alwis for his project “Fintit” which is a Framework for Context Aware Personalized Shopping and the 3rd runner up was Maheshika Peiris whose project was “Glamour online” which was an optimized business solution that increases the quality of the pageantry sector in SL in order to produce world class contestants.
Speaking about their experience in taking part in the Cutting Edge exhibition winner of the software category, Amal Gunatilake stated “Taking part in the Cutting Edge exhibition was a truly rewarding experience for me. Information Technology today is a truly global activity which motivates us to think out of the box and initiate our own innovation in IT. Therefore IT has certainly contributed to honing my creative abilities, whilst at the same time giving me a good insight into what I am up against in the real world. I thank IIT for allowing me to compete in this exhibition which I believe has prepared me well for my future career.
The winner of the business category Jeewani Lakshani also endorsed these comments by stating that “Competing and winning at Cutting Edge has certainly inspired me to keep innovating and looking at new ways of designing programmes that will help businesses be more efficient .“
The exhibition also featured ifm- “voice of IIT” the radio channel aired by IIT students for 3 consecutive days from 27th June to 29th June. A code camp organized for school students where they were trained in programming techniques followed by competition was very popular among the students who attended the exhibition. Of great interest to the many students who visited was the “Gaming Zone” where they were afforded the opportunity of playing some very interactive computer games.
The exhibition was also open to the corporate world and attracted many key personnel from reputed IT based companies. The exhibition allowed these employers to assess the capability and talent of the students and offer career opportunities for them.
“T h i s ye a r ’ s Cutting Edg e brought out many refreshingly novel concepts and new ideas in the area of information techn o l o g y. Such exhibitions have also contributed in creating a balanced academic environment for IIT students that enhances their minds to conceptualize and execute fresh and innovative ideas . Hence, it is no surprise that through programmes of this nature IIT students will undoubtedly continue its reach for excellence in the years ahead” stated Ms. Naomi Krishnarajah, Head of Department of Computing at IIT.
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