Symposium Connect

The IITM symposium has boasted a vast array of participants, many of whom have gone on to make it big in their life. Given below are some of the experiences of these past participants.

Shrey Goyal:
Shrey Goyal recently graduated with a B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, India. He co-founded Urja, a social enterprise aiming to deliver affordable clean energy solutions to rural India, which has been deemed an Ashoka's Youth venture, and won the Oxford Youth Business Development Challenge in 2009. An alumnus of the Washington DC-based Presidential Classroom Program, Shrey is an inaugural 'Engineers for Social Impact' fellow, and an Executive Committee member at Mensa India (Delhi). He was a co-organiser for TEDxGardenCity, and attended the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations 2010 Conference in Singapore. He has previously worked in the spaces of innovation in microfinance and Social Enterprise consulting, and worked with the World Bank and NCERT on OECD’s international assessment program for education systems, PISA in India. Shrey has authored publications in the spaces of Corporate Social Responsibility, Participation of Youth in Society, and Financial Inclusion. His last engagement was with the Social Venture Exchange, Toronto, as a Social Finance Fellow, and is now working on AnaGenesis, a social venture which build capacity for microfinance institutions and other financial inclusion powerhouses by providing research-based solutions and infusion of top Human Capital. He is also a Villgro Fellow for 2011-12, and shall be working with First Energy, Pune, which provides affordable clean energy solutions to low-income households in rural India.

I was a participant at the IIT-M Symposium for Sustainable Development in 2009, and gained valuable insights that furthered my experience, skills, network and passion to work in the development space, while going back with friends and memories to last a lifetime.

Kaveri K. Iychettira:
Kaveri K. Iychettira, born in Bangalore, completed her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore in 2011. Apart from a strong inclination towards power systems and image processing, she is also interested in various aspects of solar energy. She is a co-author of “Harnessing Solar Energy: Options for India”, a comprehensive report on solar energy in India released by the Centre for Study of Science Technology and Policy (CSTEP), Bangalore. She is a recipient of the G.E Foundation India Scholarship award 2010-2011 from the GE Foundation and the J&L van Effen Scholarship 2011-2013 from TU Delft. She is currently pursuing a master’s programme in Engineering and Policy Analysis at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

I was a participant of the 2009 edition of the Shaastra Symposium. The theme was sustainable development and problem statement for our team was to suggest a policy framework for rural electrification. My experience at the symposium sparked off an ardent interest towards policy studies, with an emphasis on energy. That passion led me to work on projects that deal exclusively with techno economics of renewable energy technologies and even pursue a graduate programme in the field. Personally, I came away from the symposium with a greater certainty about what I wished to pursue and of course, friends for life!

Ashish Kashyap (a.k.a. Babsy)
I am a 5th year Computer Science student at I.I.T. Madras. I took part in the Symposium for Rural Education last year. It was a satisfying experience on multiple counts. I met interesting people, I read up about stuff that I wouldn't normally have, made a few new friends. All in all, the experience was fun, both intellectually and personally. Our team ended up doing quite well and we proposed certain reasonable reforms to the rural educational scenario in India.