Although India is rapidly producing engineers, there are far too few Indian students pursuing careers in circuits and systems, a major problem for a country where multimedia technology is expanding every day. Adding to the problem, there is no interaction between university research labs and high schools in the country. Getting high school/secondary students interested in circuits and systems before they head for college will help boost the number of college students pursuing careers in this important field.
The First IEEE Circuits & Systems Society Outreach Workshop on Machine Intelligence is designed to do just that. On 18 – 20 May 2012, 55 high performing students from 34 schools in Kerala, India were selected to attend the workshop, where they learned all about intelligent systems, circuit and systems, pattern recognition and image processing. The workshop included lab sessions on image processing and understanding creativity and emotions for intelligent machines. Many students found the sessions on emotional intelligence in robots, bioinformatics and geoinformatics appealing as career options. They also had fun interacting with research scientists from industry and academia who participated in the workshop.
(View the full list of programs here.)
The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (IEEE CAS) supported the workshop through its outreach program funding (the program was one of 15 proposals selected worldwide). It was the only IEEE CAS outreach-supported program in India for 2011-2012. The Machine Intelligence Research Group of the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala (IIITM-K) organized the event. Another workshop is scheduled to be held in December.