Alumni from IITs gathered in San Jose, CA to celebrate 50 years of the establishment of Indian Institute of Technologies. "Establishing the IIT Brand Name" and "Giving Back" were the two themes that dominated this high energy event. The event was spread over two days and featured a wide variety of speakers. Over 2500 people attended the event.

Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, inaugurated the 50th anniversary celebration of the found of the IIT at the Flint Center in Cupertino, CA. “I rarely speak at college events, but I decided to make a special exception in this case because of all the contributions that the Alumni of IITs have made to Microsoft, India and the world.“ said Gates. In his address, Gates spoke about future directions. Gates speech may be heard at http://www.iit.org/

Over 2500 IIT alumni from all over the United States, Europe and from India came to the Flint Center and heard Gates speak about "The Next Wave - And Opportunities for IITs". Amongst the many high profile alumni in attendance were Rajat Gupta (Managing Director, McKinsey & Company), Victor Menezes (Senior Vice Chairman, Citigroup), Arun Sarin (CEO-Designate of Vodafone), and Narayana Murthy (Founder and Chairman of Infosys).

"The IIT alumni community has come together in an unprecedented manner to establish a strong and cohesive force to help their alma mater and their fellow alumni", said Monishi Sanyal, Chairman of the IIT50 Organising Committee.

“Establishing the IIT Brand name“ and “giving back” are the two themes of this celebrations,” said Dilip Venkatachari, the chair of publicity for the event. IIT was profiled earlier this month on the CBS News 60 Minutes program as "the most important university you've never heard of." “It is hoped that the branding exercise will give the IITs greater ability to draw resources to do high quality research in key areas,” said Venkatachari. On the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the IIT system, two distinguished IIT alumni announced major donations to their alma mater. Vinod Khosla, General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and co-founder of Sun Microsystems announced a $5 million donation to his alma mater, IIT Delhi. The gift is the largest by a single individual in the history of IIT Delhi, and will help maintain and enhance the excellence of the school. "This donation will be utilised to establish a School of IT which should provide an excellent research facility for undergraduate and post-graduate students," said Prof. R S Sirohi, Director of IIT Delhi.

Avi Nash, Advisory Director, Goldman Sachs, announced a $1 million donation to the Chemical Engineering Department at IIT Bombay for research laboratories, endowments for Chair Professorships and awards for faculty and student excellence. "Avi's donation will go a along way in enhancing the research capabilities of the Chemical Engineering Department," said Prof. Ashok Misra, Director of IIT Bombay.

"The importance of these generous donations from Khosla and Nash cannot be overstated," said IIT alumnus and McKinsey Managing Director Rajat Gupta. "The money they are contributing will help fund education and research at IIT, and ensure that IIT will continue to be one of the world's leading universities. The IIT50 event was also poised as a launching pad for a number of far reaching initiatives in the areas of fundamental research, research and development of advanced applications, entrepreneurism, alumni services and education & primary health care.

The Directors from the various IITs presented their vision for the future of the IITs. All emphasized the focus on research. "Our goal is simple. We want the Nobel Prize" said Dr. Sanjay Dande, Director of IIT Kanpur. The directors also outlined the challenges ahead, the most important one being the inability to hire adequate high caliber faculty as the current crew retires.

Several New Englanders attended the event. Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, Chairman & CEO of Sycamore Networks, who was a panelist attended the event with his wife Jaishree (IITM). Members of IITSINE, the IIT Alumni Association in the New England region including, Dr. Dwarika Aggarwal (IITB), Vinay (IITD) and Manju (IIT Roorkee), Amit Jain (IITB) were present. Dr. Vijay Kumar (IITM), who is the Associate Provost at MIT, was also present at the event.

The energy at the event was simply amazing. While of course most alum have made significant contributions in the field of technology, there were also alum that had chosen to contribute to the world in other ways. One of the finest examples was Prasanna (IITM), the guitar Carnatic music maestro, who is now making strides in the area of Jazz-Carnatic fusion. Other alum have taken positions in spiritual organizations, become filmmakers and even won Oscars for technical excellence.

In addition to the more serious events IITians were also treated to some nostalgia with the Inter IIT quiz and the singing of popular songs from IIT days. Considering the scale of the event and how well it was run, one could hardly believe that the whole event was run by volunteers. While there were many technology superstars in the crowd, some who are pathfinders in different fields, for the two days it almost felt like the IIT days, when everyone was just a "Batch" and a "Hostel". There was a tremendous amount of positive energy in the group. Our time in IIT was extremely interesting. One was always challenged and constantly lived in an atmosphere of competition. As we met again and saw all the success stories, (not just the big ones but the small ones as well) it is clear that our time at IIT was worth it.

Lokvani thanks Dr. Dwarika Agarwal for sponsoring our trip to cover this event. We will have greater coverage on specific topics in subsequent issues.

|