SRM University AP, Andhra Pradesh

National flag hoisting by Prof V S Rao, Vice-Chancellor
2020-08-16 08:00 - 17:00 (Asia/Kolkata)
On the occasion of Independence Day, Prof. V. S. Rao, Vice-Chancellor hoisted the national flag and addressed the employees and students. During his address, Prof V. S. Rao remembered our freedom fighters and emphasized on how non-violence freedom struggle set an example for the entire world to imbibe. He further urged everyone to dedicate ourselves to the nation by contributing in advancement of science and technology, especially in the domain of Information Technology, healthcare, nutrition, and agriculture. Dr. D. Gunasekaran, Registrar, Wg Cmdr Venkataachalam Sekkappan, Director-CLM, Ms. Revathi Balakrishnan, Assistant Director-Student Affairs and others participated in the ceremony.
Ph.D. students of SRM AP, D. Lenin babu and Yarramsetti Saisrinu who nobly served the needy during the pandemic were praised by Prof. V. S. Rao and Dr. D. Gunasekaran. During the lockdown, the two students distributed free essentials such as rice and condiments to the poor. They were honored with shawls and were presented the “Care Humanity” award along with mementos. Further, cultural events were organized where students participated in dance and song performances through online platform.

SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh inaugurates Orientation Programme 2020
2020-09-16 14:00 - 15:30
The inauguration of the Orientation Programme organized to welcome the fresh batch of students at SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh was preceded by an introduction of the various aspects of the university by the management. The dynamic leaders motivated the Freshmen by revealing the differentiating factor of SRM AP that endorses the excellence of the university. Upon invocating the blessings of the Almighty by a prayer, the occasion commenced with an address by Dr P Sathyanarayanan, President. He highlighted his vision of learning beyond the classroom, fostering wisdom and knowledge of the students through a holistic interdisciplinary approach.
Further, Prof V S Rao, Vice-Chancellor, acquainted students with the various processes of SRM AP. He informed students regarding his revolutionizing plans for the students of emphasizing on research from the first semester. He states, “Research should be seamlessly integrated with academic boundaries”. He also inspired students to realize the excitement of science, joy in engineering, and academic rigour. In line with his vision, Prof D Narayana Rao, Pro Vice-Chancellor, emphasized on the contribution of science and technology that led to the progress and superiority of India across nations. Further, he assures quality education to motivate students and urged them to contribute to the development of the nation.
To continue with the orientation programme, eminent personalities have been requested by SRM AP to initiate motivational discussions. Dr. Jaya Prakash Narayana, Former Secretary to Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, Dr R A Mashelkar, FRS, Former Director General CSIR & Chancellor-JIO University, Padma Bhushan Dr. K. Varaprasad Reddy, Chairman Emeritus-Shantha Biotech, Mrs Saritha, IPS, Additional SP-CID, Dr MC Das, Management Consultant-Vijayawada, and Head of the Dept. of Commerce (Retd.)-Loyola College, Mr Vivek Bhide, Entrepreneur, Co-Founder, and Managing Director-TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd, VV Lakshminarayana, Former Joint Director- CBI, Ms Karuna Gopal, President-Foundation for futuristic cities, Mr Ramesh Loganathan, Professor Co-Innovation/Outreach at IIIT Hyderabad, and Ms Anitha Sakuru, Chief Marketing officer-Platifi Solutions, will be delivering lectures during various sessions sprawled across the 2 week programme organized to encourage Freshmen.

Orientation Programme 2020
2020-09-16 14:00 - 2020-09-29 16:00
SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh affectionately welcomes the Freshmen 2020 to embark on the erudite journey that would transform their lives, and steer them towards becoming a global professional. The university is organizing an online Orientation Programme from September 16, 2020 till September 29, 2020 to provide insights concerning the life at SRM AP.
At the onset, the dynamic leaders of SRM AP will be addressing the Freshmen on September 16, 2020, at 2 p.m. Dr P Sathyanarayanan, Founder, President & Chairman will be delivering the inaugural address. Further, Prof V S Rao, Vice-Chancellor, will be presenting the welcome speech where he will be introducing the various elements of the university. Finally, Prof D Narayana Rao, Pro Vice-Chancellor, will be presenting the vote of thanks.
Eminent personalities have been requested to initiate motivational discussions during the Orientation Programme. Dr. Jaya Prakash Narayana, Former Secretary to Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, will be speaking on September 17, 2020 at 2.30 p.m., followed by a session at 4 p.m. by Dr R A Mashelkar, FRS, Former Director General CSIR & Chancellor-JIO University. On the next day, Padma Bhushan Dr. K. Varaprasad Reddy, Chairman Emeritus-Shantha Biotech will be delivering a speech at 11 a.m. The students will get to hear from Mrs Saritha, IPS, Additional SP-CID, on September 19, 2020 at 11 a.m. Progressing with the programme, SRM AP requests Dr Nv Warlu, a certified Neurolinguistic Programming trainer, personality development coach, writer, motivator, and educator, to inspire the Freshmen on September 21, 2020 at 10.45 a.m. Also, Dr MC Das, Management Consultant-Vijayawada, and Head of the Dept. of Commerce (Retd.)-Loyola College, will be presenting a lecture on September 22, 2020 at 11 a.m.
Beyond the motivational lectures, SRM AP has requested Mr Ramakrishna Mallela, and Mrs G Sailaja, to organize a three-day session on Heartfulness titled “GOAL (Go On And Lead)”. Mr Ramakrishna, who will be addressing the participants during the Orientation Programme on September 22-23, 2020, is a professional faculty, trainer, coach, and mentor having experience in HR Management spanning across 20 years. Further, Mrs G Sailaja is renowned for imparting training in Heartfulness tools and initiatives for the last 5 years. She will be conducting the session with the young students of SRM AP on September 24, 2020.
Moving ahead, Mr Vivek Bhide, Entrepreneur, Co-Founder, and Managing Director-TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd, will be encouraging the young students of SRM AP on September 23, 2020 at 11 a.m. by speaking on “How to develop a start-up culture”. Further, VV Lakshminarayana, Former Joint Director- CBI, will be taking the dais on September 24, 2020 at 11 a.m. while, Ms Karuna Gopal, President-Foundation for futuristic cities has been invited to speak on September 25, 2020 at 11 a.m. where she will be emphasizing on “Role of Students in Building New India”.
Mr Ramesh Loganathan, Professor Co-Innovation/Outreach at IIIT Hyderabad, will be addressing the students on September 26, 2020 at 11 a.m. Also, Ms. Anitha Sakuru, Chief Marketing officer-Platifi Solutions, will be delivering an entrepreneurial talk on September 28, 2020 at 11 a.m. In addition, the deans, departmental heads, and faculty members of SRM AP will introduce the departments, labs, clubs, facilities, online classes, and centres of the university during various sessions sprawled across the 2 week orientation programme. Along with it, the freshmen will get the opportunity to interact with Prof V S Rao followed by the senior students who would advise and motivate the students to ease their predicaments.

Prof Ajay K Sood, FRS delivered the University Distinguished Lecture 01
2020-10-19 08:00 - 17:00
Prof A K Sood on “Doing Science Without Borders”: Collaboration and curiosity among researchers will lead to impactful multidisciplinary solutions of the 21st century
The first University Distinguished Lecture on “Doing Science Without Borders” commenced with an inaugural welcome speech by Prof V S Rao, Vice-Chancellor, and Prof D Narayana Rao, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh. Prof V S Rao expressed their gratitude to Prof Ajay K Sood for his gracious presence. Prof Narayana Rao emphasized that under the University Distinguished Lecture series, the talks will be delivered by eminent scientists from India and abroad that would be of immense benefit for students and the faculty and researchers. He further mentioned, “Doctors, researchers, engineers and scientists from several fields of knowledge around the world worked together to confront corona outbreak with an unprecedented spirit of collaboration. Also, NEP advocates and emphasizes that the societal need of the 21st century require broad-based multidisciplinary research and education”.
Prof Ajay K Sood, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS and Honorary Professor, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, narrated three stories of his recent experiments and advanced research work, namely “Emergent flocking behaviour seen in nature: Laboratory experiments”, “Crystallization of Glass: Machine Learning in condensed matter Physics”, and “Bacterial Nano Heat Engine: Getting bacteria to work”. He begins by stating that back in 1944, a profound physicist Schrodinger introduced the concept of “aperiodic crystal” which led to the understanding of genetic molecules, enunciating the importance of inter-disciplinary applications of scientific works. In his first narrative, he speaks of the flocking movement among birds, bacteria, locusts, and human beings as well. He brought the same experiment in his laboratory where he used 2 particles, energized them, and identified their flocking pattern. He observed that the velocity of movement between the two particles differ, which can be applied to particle sorting. This experiment has applications in biology, where bacteria and/or cells can be sorted and separated and also in autonomous cars.
While explaining his second experiment, Prof A K Sood mentioned that he studied the devitrification or the tendency of glass particles to crystallize over time to reach a state of stability from its metastable state. He used supervised Machine Learning to predict where crystallization will occur in glass. His team trained the system to identify the hard and soft particles of the glass. His experiments concluded that Machine Learning (ML) helps in identifying the soft particles, which possess the tendency to move and crystallize over a long period of time. Further, Prof A K Sood and his team of collaborators developed bacterial nano heat engines by mimicking the biological motors in our body which produces energy for living beings to function. Using bacterial activity, they made heat engines and are advancing their research work to recognize the practical applications of the nano heat engines in cars, batteries. The bacteria heat engines is a highly promising technology of the future.
Prof A K Sood narrated his laboratory stories to explicate the splendor of multidisciplinary research which can be used to solve basic problems. He said, “The key to successful scientific research is to collaborate with experts beyond their own domain. Communication and appreciation of views of an open mind enable the scientists to understand the various phenomena. Students and researchers should be curious which will lead to research having various interdisciplinary applications that will make an impact across various domains.”
About thousand participants from IISc,IITs, NITs,IIITs, IISERs, several Indian Universities including University of Hyderabad, Delhi University, NEHU, Pondicherry University, Punjab University; a few foreign Universities including KAUST, Saudi Arabia, Nagoya University, Japan, Zhejiang Ocean University, China, Teesside University, UK, several Engineering Colleges; National Laboratories of DST, DBT, CSIR, ISRO, DRDO, ICMR, BARC, JNCASR, ARIES, ARCI; industries including ARBL, Tata Steel have attended the distinguished lecture given by Prof Ajay Sood.

Chairman-AICTE elucidated the changing scenarios of the education sector in the Post COVID era
2021-06-06 08:00 - 17:00
The Tenth edition of the University Distinguished Lecture (UDL) Series, organised by SRM University-AP, expounded on a pertinent problem of the current time, “Higher Education in India in the Post-COVID-19”. Prof Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), delivered the Distinguished Lecture, and Shri Satish Chandra, IAS, Special Chief Secretary, Higher Education, Government of Andhra Pradesh, gave a special address.

In his welcome address, Prof D Narayana Rao, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of SRM University-AP, set the context of the event, emphasising on how the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis has resulted in the temporary closure of about 1000 Universities and about 40,000 Colleges in the country, severely disrupting the teaching and learning process and research activities. The transition to “Learn From Anywhere (LFA) happened overnight and people had to get used to it. National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 recognises the importance of leveraging the advantages of technology while acknowledging its potential risks and dangers. Online education calls for carefully designing and appropriately scaled studies to determine how the benefits of online/digital education can be reaped while addressing or mitigating the downsides. There is a need to establish a “Digital and online Wing” in the Departments of Education in different states of the country.

Prof Anil Sahasrabudhe in his Distinguished Lecture, delineated that the use of technology in the education environment has been initiated in the Pre-COVID days. Platforms such as Swayam, National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) came into existence to digitally bring quality education to everyone. Digital education carries a boon that no one can ignore, i.e. making physical distance irrelevant in education. Digital education has the ability to reach students anywhere and everywhere provided they are equipped with gadgets and internet connectivity. Thus, the Government of India has undertaken a nationwide project under, Bharat Net, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan to connect every corner of India through the internet. Prof Sahasrabudhe accepted that all subjects cannot be taught online, especially lab-based practical courses that will have the need to attend physical classes. Music, Drama, sports, other performing and fine arts, which are an essential part of a pedagogical system, cannot be studied online. Moreover, a digital class can never replace the bonding humans tend to develop while working in close proximity. However, it cannot be debated that the education system as we know it has changed. The future of education comes with a blended environment. Fortunately, National Education Policy-2020 envisioned the change long ago and introduced a relevant policy to ensure the educational growth of the country. Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities (MERU), Academic Bank of Credits, National Academic Depository are some of the revolutionary changes that are going to benefit the next generations in the post COVID days. The government has already established National Research Foundations to support mega research projects, which may need several crores of rupees. Prof Anil Sahasrabudhe emphasised that studying in one’s native language is an essential requirement that NEP looks into. Prof Sahasrabudhe asserted that proper administration, governance and autonomy are some of the deciding factors for the education sector in the coming days. While concluding his speech, he further elucidated AICTE’s initiatives towards the advancement of the education sector-Curriculum Revisions, Project-Based Experiential Learning, Faculty Training, Industry Internships, Students Internship Programmes are soon to be inseparable aspects of the changing education sector.
Shri Satish Chandra highlighted the challenges associated with online education in respect to the state of Andhra Pradesh. 3000 colleges and 17 universities with 12 lakhs students in Higher Education Sector have got affected because of the pandemic. However, the future of education brings a blended environment with both online and offline teaching-learning options. He opined that LMS, Online Platforms, gadgets such as desktops, laptops or tablets are going to be a part of the new normal of the education sector. The Government of Andhra Pradesh strives to help economically backward students by providing the gadgets at an affordable cost under various scholarship schemes.

Team Sunshine celebrate Children’s day in magnificence
2021-11-16 08:00 - 17:00
Children’s Day celebrations were held at Nirukonda and Nauluru government schools from Friday to Monday under the auspices of the Student Affairs department at SRM University-AP. The programme named SRM Sunshine, organised various games and competitions for students from classes one to ten and distributed prizes to winners. The essay writing, drawing, running, skipping and musical chair competitions focused on children and their enjoyment contributing to their cognitive development.
Students of SRM University-AP mingled with the children involving them in various games. The tiny tots of Preschool and Pre-primary celebrated the day with much joy and enthusiasm. The celebrations began on Friday, followed by a variety of fun-filled activities and games planned by the Sunshine team. Children were given chocolates and gifts like crayons, pencils etc. as a token of appreciation. The event was attended by Ms Revathi Balakrishnan, Assistant Director – Student Affairs; Dr Abdul Mohimin, Assistant Director – Physical Education and Mr Narendra Babu, Manager – Student Affairs.
Every year on November 14 India celebrates Children’s Day, the birth anniversary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. The day is also known as Bal Diwas. He adored children and once said that children are the country’s future and that they should be loved. Children also adored him and referred to him as ‘Chacha Nehru.’

Field Visit for Environmental Awareness
2023-10-16 09:00 - 2023-10-20 17:00
The Department of Environmental Science and Engineering organised a field visit for first-year odd semester students as a part of their Environmental Science course (VAC-101) from October 16-20, 2023 around the vicinity of SRM University-AP campus. The students were made aware of the surrounding land-uses, their biodiversity, impacts and importance to the environment. Observations were made on different threats like pollution, plant invasion, fertilizer run-off, etc. and the students were explained what can be done as an individual and as a community to protect our resources. Practical know-hows on vegetation and water sampling were also demonstrated by different faculty members. The students returned with a heightened sense of stewardship towards environmental protection.
