Although TechTatva is traditionally ushered in with flagship events such as Robowars or Fuel RC, the Technical Paper Presentation Competition yet again validated itself as an indispensable part of the fest. 9th October, 2015 bore witness to technical papers presented by the students of Computer Science, Information Technology, and Computer and Communication Engineering branches. The event had previously coordinated a preliminary round which comprised an online submission of abstracts.

The shortlisted teams of two or three appeared at the designated venue and adhered to the obligatory formal dress code, rendering the affair all the more solemn. Each team was allocated a total of fifteen minutes, segregated into ten minutes for presenting the paper and a five minute Q&A round. The subjects of the papers presented varied from the reality of cognitive radios to predicting the behavior of the stock market using algorithm trading techniques. One participant described his predicament on choosing a subject when he stumbled upon the idea of conceptualizing a search engine exclusive to researchers and their area of interest by implementing query expansion, while another team realized the potential of Digital Image Processing (DIP) in the detection of blight on farmlands. When asked for his take of the event, 4th year participant Rohan Kapoor said “The time allotted was inadequate, but the judges were fair and posed challenging questions”. He also believes that his team’s prototype of a Blight detector is not far from seeing the light if a few of the hardware ordeals are overcome and they continue to work on it.

All in all, the event served as an impeccable platform for economical inventions and presented an intermittent peek into the realm of research and development. It also exposed the potential of frugal innovation and the dire need of its employment in our country. Although not the most anticipated of the lot, the event was a silent reminder of engineering and its many marvels.