IIT-SINE, the Pan-IIT group in New England held its general body meeting at The Renaissance hotel in Bedford, MA. The event featured talks by Mickey Pant, CMO of Reebok, Ranjan Pant and Prof. Bahaa E. A. Saleh, Chairman of Electrical and Computer Science Engineering Department at Boston University.

In his talk on ‘Creating a Global Brand’, Mickey Pant outlined a few basic principles of marketing. “Taking a single product and packaging it according to the need is the art of marketing.” said Pant, an Alumni of IIT Kanpur. He has held several high profile marketing positions in India and the US. “Marketing is the art of creating or changing perception” said Pant. He illustrated this point with the example of Tetley tea where the changing of the shape from a rectangular to round tea bag helped them increase their market share significantly.

Prof. Saleh spoke on 'Prospects for Quantum Information Processing Technology'. He explained the basics of Quantum mechanics and presented its applications in communications, computing and tomography. "Communications made using quantum cryptography generate secure cryptographic codes that are secure and can detect attempts made to eavesdrop", he said. While, Quantum computing will be efficient in solving certain types of problems that include finding prime factors of large numbers, traveling salesman problem. Although classical computing can simulate quantum, it would be very inefficient.

Ranjan Pant presented a preview his upcoming coffee table book on the IITs. The book is called IITs – India’s intellectual treasures and includes a DVD in the back. The book will be available in Novermber 2003. To purchase a discounted copy send an email to info@iitsine.org

Elections were also held for the IITSINE and the following committee members were elected to office.

President,Mr. Vinay Aggarwal, 68 Delhi;
Exec. V. P., Mr. Jayas Damodaran
Secretary,Dr. Anil Saigal, 79 Bombay
Treasurer, Dr. Vishwa Shukla, 69 Kanpur
VPs
Bombay , Dr. Anil Saigal, 79 Bombay
Delhi, Dr. Krishna Srikrishna, 89 Delhi
Kanpur, Rakesh Pandey, Kanpur
Kharagpur, Himanshu Sinha, Kharagpur
Madras, Rajesh Raju, 87 Madras
Rourkee, Mr. Satyendra Agarwal

Further information about IIT SINE and its activities is available at http://www.iitsine.org/.

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