In today’s competitive job market, academic excellence alone is no longer sufficient to ensure success. Employers seek candidates who possess not only strong technical skills but also a range of soft skills, leadership qualities, and real-world experience. Recognizing the importance of preparing students for the demands of the professional world, International Institute of Information Technology, affectionately known as I²IT, offers a plethora of professional development opportunities designed to equip students with the tools, knowledge, and experiences needed to excel in their chosen fields. There are diverse array of professional development opportunities available at I²ITand how they contribute to shaping the future leaders of tomorrow.

Internship Programs

One of the cornerstone experiences of professional development at I²IT is the internship program. Through strategic partnerships with leading companies and organizations, students have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in their chosen field, applying classroom knowledge to real-world challenges. Whether interning at multinational corporations, cutting-edge start-ups, or research institutions, students benefit from mentorship, networking opportunities, and invaluable insights into industry practices. Internships not only enhance students’ resumes but also provide a platform for personal and professional growth, helping them make informed career decisions and charting their path to success.

Industry Collaborations

I²IT fosters a culture of collaboration with industry partners, providing students with opportunities to engage in collaborative projects, research initiatives, and innovation challenges. Through these partnerships, students work closely with industry professionals, gaining first-hand experience in problem-solving, project management, and teamwork. Whether developing software solutions, conducting research studies, or participating in hackathons, students benefit from exposure to real-world problems and cutting-edge technologies, honing their skills and expanding their professional networks in the process.

Entrepreneurship Initiatives

For students with an entrepreneurial spirit, I²IToffers a range of initiatives and resources to support their aspirations. From start-up incubators to entrepreneurship boot camps, students have access to guidance, mentorship, and funding opportunities to turn their innovative ideas into successful ventures. Through workshops, seminars, and networking events, aspiring entrepreneurs learn about business strategy, market analysis, and funding sources, equipping them with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the entrepreneurial landscape. Whether launching a tech start-up or developing a social enterprise, I²IT empowers students to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams and make a positive impact on society.

Professional Workshops and Seminars

Continuous learning is essential for success in today’s rapidly evolving job market, and I²ITfacilitates lifelong learning through a series of professional workshops, seminars, and guest lectures. Covering a wide range of topics such as leadership development, communication skills, and industry trends, these sessions provide students with valuable insights and practical strategies for personal and professional growth. Whether delivered by industry experts, faculty members, or alumni, these sessions inspire, educate, and empower students to stay abreast of the latest developments in their field and adapt to changing market dynamics.

Leadership Development Programs

At I²IT, leadership is not just a title; it’s a skill to be cultivated and nurtured. The institute offers a range of leadership development programs designed to empower students with the knowledge, skills, and mindset needed to lead effectively in today’s complex world. Through experiential learning activities, team-building exercises, and leadership workshops, students learn about effective communication, conflict resolution, and decision-making, gaining insights into their strengths and areas for growth as leaders. Whether serving as student ambassadors, club presidents, or project leaders, students have ample opportunities to hone their leadership abilities and make a positive impact on their peers and the broader community.

Networking Opportunities

In today’s interconnected world, networking is a vital component of professional success, and I²IT provides students with ample opportunities to expand their professional networks. Whether through career fairs, alumni events, or industry meetups, students have the chance to connect with professionals from diverse backgrounds, industries, and career paths. These networking opportunities not only facilitate job prospects and internship placements but also foster mentorship relationships, collaboration opportunities, and lifelong friendships. By building strong networks, students enhance their visibility, credibility, and career prospects, positioning themselves for success in their chosen field.

In conclusion, International Institute of Information Technology (I²IT) stands at the forefront of professional development, offering students a wealth of opportunities to grow, learn, and thrive in their chosen careers. From internships and industry collaborations to entrepreneurship initiatives and leadership development programs, I²ITprovides a comprehensive ecosystem of support to prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of the professional world. By fostering experiential learning, fostering collaboration, and empowering students to take ownership of their career paths, I²IT is shaping the future leaders and innovators of tomorrow’s world. As students embark on their professional journey, I²ITremains steadfast in its commitment to nurturing their potential, empowering them to make a meaningful impact in their chosen fields and beyond.

About the author: – Dr. Sandeep Patil, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Engineering, I2IT. Dr. Patil is also the Vice-President of I2IT’s Institute Innovation Council (IIC). To get in touch with Dr. Patil, you can send a mail to sandeepp@isquareit.edu.in; info@isquareit.edu.in; Visit – www.isquareit.edu.in to know about the institute.

In today’s interconnected world, diversity in education plays a pivotal role in shaping holistic learning experiences and preparing students for the dynamic global landscape. At International Institute of Information Technology (I²IT), situated in Pune, India, we believe that I²ITstands as a beacon of inclusive education, embracing diversity in all its forms. From cultural backgrounds to academic interests, I²IT fosters an environment where students from diverse backgrounds come together to innovate, collaborate, and thrive. I²IT addresses student diversity, enriching the educational journey for all.

Diversity in Demographics

I²IT prides itself on its diverse student body, comprising individuals from various regions, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. With a commitment to inclusivity, the institute actively recruits students from across India, ensuring a vibrant mix of perspectives within its academic community. Whether hailing from bustling metropolitan cities or tranquil rural areas, students find a welcoming home at I²IT, where diversity is celebrated and cherished.

Academic Diversity

At I²IT, diversity extends beyond demographics to encompass academic interests and aspirations. As a leading institute specializing in information technology and engineering, it attracts students passionate about computer science, engineering, information technology, electronics & telecommunication and related fields. However, the institute recognizes the importance of nurturing multidisciplinary talent and encourages students to explore diverse academic avenues. From computer engineering to data science, students have the flexibility to tailor their education to align with their interests and career goals, fostering a rich tapestry of academic diversity.

Promoting Inclusivity

Creating an inclusive environment goes beyond merely admitting students from diverse backgrounds; it involves fostering a culture of respect, acceptance, and belonging. I²IT prioritizes inclusivity through various initiatives and support systems aimed at ensuring every student feels valued and empowered. From mentorship programs to cultural exchanges, the institute provides platforms for students to connect, learn from each other, and celebrate their differences. Additionally, dedicated counselling services and student support networks are in place to address the unique needs and challenges of individuals, fostering a sense of community and belonging.

Innovation and Research

Diversity fuels innovation, and I²IT recognizes the significance of harnessing diverse perspectives to drive technological advancements. The institute fosters a culture of innovation and research, through its Pralhad P Chhabria Research Center that encourages students from diverse backgrounds to collaborate on cutting-edge projects and pursue ground-breaking ideas. Through interdisciplinary research centres, hackathons, and innovation challenges, students have the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills to real-world problems, transcending boundaries and making meaningful contributions to society.

Affordable Education

Recognizing the importance of accessibility, I²IT is committed to providing quality education at an affordable cost. By offering scholarships, financial aid, and merit-based awards, the institute ensures that talented students, regardless of their financial constraints, have the opportunity to pursue their academic aspirations. Additionally, industry collaborations and internships provide students with valuable hands-on experience and exposure to real-world challenges, enhancing their employability and facilitating a smooth transition into the workforce.

In conclusion, International Institute of Information Technology (I²IT) stands as a testament to the transformative power of diversity in education. By embracing students from diverse backgrounds, fostering inclusivity, and promoting international engagement, I²IT creates a vibrant learning environment where innovation thrives, and talents flourish. Through its commitment to affordability and accessibility, the institute ensures that every aspiring student has the opportunity to unlock their full potential and contribute to the ever-evolving field of information technology and engineering.

At I²IT, diversity is not just a buzzword; it’s a cornerstone of excellence, shaping the future leaders and innovators of tomorrow’s world.

About the author: – Dr. Bhavana Kanawade, Associate Professor, Department of Information Technology, I²IT. Dr. Bhavana is also Chief Coordinator- Student Affairs, I²IT. To get in touch with Dr. Kanawade, you can send a mail to bhavanak@isquareit.edu.ininfo@isquareit.edu.in

Visit – www.isquareit.edu.in to know about the institute.

When I ask anybody what his/her understanding of the term “learning” is, I get so many different answers. Some say, getting new things, information, knowledge, skills, experience, view, behaviour, opinion, perspective or visualization and many more. Wikipedia, terms learning as the process of acquiring new, or modifying existing,
knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, or preferences. \

As an intellectual being, we are continuously evolving ourselves using one tool – LEARNING! In fact, I call it as learning. It can be acquisition of new set of information, interpretation of new perspective or application of existing theory or knowledge in an altogether new perspective/ scenario. As humans, we use this method to improve our thinking, and I realized that our actions are born from our thoughts. Our thoughts are products of our values, and our values come from our own belief system. Most people misinterpret learning as formal education – which is sub of learning. Formal education refers to the bare minimum set of information, skill sets and knowledge that are required to survive in this world. However, that is not sufficient for developing human life. The world is evolving day by day with new set of information, challenges, diversity and many more.

When I did some deep thinking about how to improve my learning, I began asking those around me and every answer seems to right and a valid perspective of these complex phenomena called learning. One can always get new set of learning from one’s colleagues, friends, family and all members of society at large. Interpretation given by a hawaldar, a vegetable vendor, a child or even a homeless person on the road side can influence one’s thought process. When one appliesone’s sixth sense, (I call it as common sense) with this new interpretation in one’s work environment; the corporate honchos called it the “out-of-the-box” thinking. Let me share a story. There was once an expert musician. Whenever he played violin, it rained; even in a desert. Once he went to watch a circus. In one of the performances, a bear was dancing to a tune played by the violinist from the circus. The musician approached him and said, ‘You can make only a trained bear dance to your tune. But my music can make any animal dance!’ The circus’ violinist rejected this claim as sheer nonsense. An argument ensued, resulting in a duel. The circus’ artist called in a lion to face the musician. The lion, on hearing his music, began to gyrate in an ecstatic dance. Next, a cheetah was called and that animal too began to dance. The circus’ artist send in a tiger next. The musician continued to play nonchalantly. But the tiger was not enchanted by his music. On the contrary the tiger charged towards the musician. The audience scattered in terror. The musician threw his violin in the air and ran for his life. Luckily, he managed to escape from the tiger.

The trainers soon caught the tiger and locked it up in a cage. The exhausted musician now accepted his defeat; however he was still astounded as to why his music failed to charm that particular tiger. The circus artist explained with a smile, ‘The reason is very simple. That tiger is tone deaf. It is a birth defect and this particular tiger does not have ears or even the apertures for hearing. The audience soon noticed this and tried to escape. But you were so involved in your playing that you failed to notice this simple fact!’

Moral of this story is that awareness about present makes a lot of difference in learning. When one is at the receiving end and acquires required information related to things and environment around oneself, then one can make relevant interpretation and live a smart life.

Learning is an evolving process and always starts with acquisition of information, experience and degree of correctness of information sources. When this is correctly received then judgment or interpretation can be used to handle any kind of challenges.

The author of this article is Prof. (Dr.) Risil Chhatrala, Associate Professor & HoD, Department of Electronics & Telecommunication, International Institute of Information Technology, I 2 IT, Pune. (www.isquareit.edu.in) (risilc@isquareit.edu.in)

Neural networks are adaptive learning systems, inspired by the biological neural systems. These may be trained with input-output data or may operate in a self-organizing mode. The basic block in an NN is the mathematical model of a neuron as in Eqn. 1. Three fundamental components of a neuron are the connection links that provide the inputs with weights for = 1,…, , an adder that sums all the weighted inputs to prepare the input to the activation function along with the bias associated with each neuron, and an activation function maps the input to the output of the neuron.
(1)
an activation function f is typically a sigmoid function. The scalar parameters of the neuron, the weight and the bias, are adjustable. Single input neuron, multi-input neuron, and multi-input multi-neuron models are shown in Fig. 1.

Neuron activation functions
Several activation functions have been used in neural networks. The simplest of all is the linear activation function used as a linear approximators. This function can be uniploar with saturation levels of 0 and 1or bipolar with saturation levels of -1 to +1 as shown in Fig. 2(a). The threshold and signum functions outputs vary abruptly between 0 to +1 and -1 to +1, respectively as shown in Fig. 2(b). These are used in perceptrons for classification problems. The sigmoid and Gaussian activation functions are nonlinear, differentiable, and continuous. These properties extend the application of neural networks from linear analysis to complex and nonlinear analysis applications. The sigmoid functions are a family of S-shaped functions. Logistic function, as shown in Fig. 2(c), is the most widely used sigmoid function andit has lower bound of 0 and upper bound of 1. Another commonly used sigmoid function is the hyperbolic tangent function with lower bound at -1 and upper bound at 1 as shown in Fig. 2(c). In both of these sigmoid functions, for inputs grater than 0, output initially rapidly and later slowly increases. For inputs less than 0, output rapidly decreases and later slowly decreases. Gaussian functions are symmetric bell shaped functions it represents the input with zero mean and standard deviation equals to one. Standard normal curve is the Gaussian function with bounds 0 and 1. It peaks at zero input and is more sensitive around zero input and less or zero sensitive at tails. In Gaussian

complement, more sensitive at tails and zero at zero input.

Keywords: Neural Network, Neuron Model, Activation Functions, Linear Bipolar, Signum, Sigmodial, Log-sigmoid, Hyperbolic, Tan-sigmoid

Dr. S. Mohan Mahalakshi Naidu
Associate Professor – Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering Department

“We are the sum total of our experience. Those experiences, be they positive or negative make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives.” – B. J. Neblett.

Knowledge comes from learning; but ‘experience’ comes from living. A life without problems and challenges is like a school without lessons. Teaching was not always my passion. Mrs. Kale my Geography teacher was the first to appreciate my skills and said that my voice was apt for a teaching profession. I doubted, but she believed. After my post-graduation I started my career in corporate world and worked in the industry for close to two years. But destinyhad its own plans and I chose to join the teaching profession and today being a teacher for almost a decade, here’s what I would like to share.

No matter how deep our knowledge of a domain is… no matter how many degrees we have…no matter how smart we are… no matter how fast we climb the ladder to leadership… no matter how good the infrastructure of the college is… no matter how impressed the peers and parents are… our students will NOT learn a single thing unless they know that as teachers we really care about them.

Mahatma Gandhi once listed the top three qualities that a teacher should possess – ‘MAMTA’, meaning love, affection and caring, ‘SAMTA’ – meaning equality and impartiality and finally ‘KSHAMTA’ – meaning ability and capability. As a teacher I have imbibed these values and practice them; making them an integral part of who I am as a teacher. And I must say that I have seen the impact that this has had on my students’ learning.

This brings a question in my mind – can I be the teacher that students expect me to be?The kind of teacher who encourages students to believe in themselves, to find hope in the classroom, to strengthen the roots and give wings to my students’ aspirations so as to help them follow their dreams, to believe and never give up.Every day, I believe that I can be better than what I was the day before.

Together with I2IT, I wish to nurture our students beyond textbooks and face the world and succeed in their future. Just like my teacher, I never doubt my students and their capabilities. I believe in them to experience life and grow.

The author of this blog article is Rakhi Wagh, Assistant Professor,Department of Engineering Sciences, Hope Foundation’s International Institute of Information Technology, (I²IT), Pune (www.isquareit.edu.in) (rakhiw@isquareit.edu.in)

Mathematics is a constantly improving branch of knowledge. It is influencing our day-to-day life;however, commoners do not understand its impact. Most people think that mathematics is a branch of knowledge that includes only techniques of calculation of numbers and of shapes and sizes of various objects. The general impression is that mathematics is difficult to learn, understand and apply in the real-life situations. For many people it is a brain twister, creating fear in the mind. In school education, most of the dropout students have apprehensions about mathematics and they rarely take up the subject again in their life. The actual fault lies with educationists, who don’t put forth the beauty and applicability of math. The subject is presented in such a way that most of the students find it complex and intricate. This leads to the question that what kind of mathematics needs to be introduced in the school level of education?

Generally,learning mathematics starts with the introduction to numbers and arithmetic operations, followed by introduction to geometrical shapes and their properties. The enhancement of learning process can be done by correlating these ideas with the day to day life of students. There is an obvious confusion in the mind of most students that mathematics is just limited to arithmetic. However, mathematics is much more than that. Thus, doing calculations very fast does not indicate that one is good in mathematics. There are people who have the ability of calculating fast and even create unique records, but are not recognized as mathematicians; although it is important that, to become a mathematician one should be able to identify create a close association with numerical calculation sand arithmetical operations.

Recreational mathematics is a branch of mathematics where mathematics meets entertainment and is useful in learning mathematics. It creates interest and motivates students to appreciate various concepts of mathematics. This kind of mathematics eradicates the fear of mathematics among students and helps them develop interest in the subject. Nowadays most educationists promote and incorporate recreational mathematics at school level. Just a trivia – in medieval India recreational mathematics was part of our education system.

Defining recreational mathematics may be difficult; but it encapsulates many things such as riddles, puzzles, games, numerical calculations, optimization techniques, the popular Sudoku problem etc. Though mathematics deals with abstract concepts which are difficult to understand, recreational mathematics helps students in the development of these concepts in a very interesting way. Recreational mathematics present many challenges for students to learn which can reinforce mathematical concepts and widen students’ thinking capabilities.

Many researchers and mathematicians have contributed to this branch. There are mathematicians who have shifted their focus from pure mathematics to the development of recreational mathematics. Raymond Smullyan is one such mathematician. This American mathematician devoted his career towards development of logical puzzles. This creates a strong background for computer programmers to build logic. Such puzzles encourage students to think logically, which will help them develop their programming abilities.

Mandar Vijay Datar (M.Tech. SET)
Assistant Professor (Engineering Mathematics)
Department of Engineering Sciences,
Hope Foundation’s International Institute of Information Technology, Hinjawadi, Pune