Dr. Shampa Chakraverty is one of the eminent professors at NSIT and her name needs no further introduction. Being the HOD of the Department of Computer Engineering, she is credited with the excellent management of the department as well as for ensuring quality education for students. Excerpts from the interview –
Q. How long have you been associated at NSIT and how will you describe your experience here?
A. I have been with NSIT for the last 23 years. It has been an enriching experience with creative thinking and initiative as the main driving factors.
Q. What are your areas of interest from research perspective?
A. My areas of research interest include Information Retrieval, reconfigurable computing and hardware and software co-design for multiprocessor distributed architectures. Being a researcher in computing, enormous day to day challenges keep us exploring new and inter-disciplinary areas.
Q. What are the various projects that you currently mentor or have you mentored in the past?
A. Most projects are team-work including B. Tech and PhD students. Some of them are:-
– Cuckoo search and fuzzy-rules based design of high-availability and reconfigurable multiprocessor architectures.
– Agents-driven adaptive e-learning path optimization.
– Lexical cohesion, overlapped semantics and lexical chaining for context-based text classification.
– Population-based approaches for tuning statistical and contextual features for Text classification with Support Vector Machines.
– Developing collaborative and adaptive e-governance interfaces.
– Design exploration for fault tolerant system design on FPGAs
Q. To what extent do you feel that the present curriculum at NSIT is capable of imbibing quality computer knowledge to the students?
A. The primary objective of a UG curriculum in Computer Science is to produce engineers with good analytical abilities, a firm grasp on the fundamentals of computer science and a holistic understanding of engineering as a discipline and the underlying science. I do feel that our curriculum has the necessary ingredients to achieve that. That said, we need to revise and enhance our curriculum, especially make it more flexible and elective centric. I am glad to say that the process has already begun.
Q. Being the HOD of COE, how has your association been with all its various facets over the years?
A.Our Department has a dedicated faculty and TRFs who are engaged in different areas of research. We have a wonderful student body; our best assets. I have enjoyed motivating and steering the academic and technological activities of the Department with active cooperation from my colleagues. Over the years, we have undertaken a number of student paper presentation contests, workshops, conferences, talks by experts, laboratory development exercises and interaction with the industry.Q. What are your suggestions to students looking forward to pursue their career in computer engineering sphere?
A. With computing spreading out to almost all branches of knowledge times are really exciting for students of computer engineering. Be it core technology, management, law, travel, music or lifestyle – pick any field and you can utilize your knowledge of computing to improve it with innovative tools. My advice to all students would be to learn each subject taught with due sincerity; that helps build your repertoire of ideas. Then explore the applicability of new ideas by taking up projects, participate in design contests and venture to publish your works. Do spend some time to appreciate fine arts and socio-legal-ethical issues.
A.Our Department has a dedicated faculty and TRFs who are engaged in different areas of research. We have a wonderful student body; our best assets. I have enjoyed motivating and steering the academic and technological activities of the Department with active cooperation from my colleagues. Over the years, we have undertaken a number of student paper presentation contests, workshops, conferences, talks by experts, laboratory development exercises and interaction with the industry.Q. What are your suggestions to students looking forward to pursue their career in computer engineering sphere?
A. With computing spreading out to almost all branches of knowledge times are really exciting for students of computer engineering. Be it core technology, management, law, travel, music or lifestyle – pick any field and you can utilize your knowledge of computing to improve it with innovative tools. My advice to all students would be to learn each subject taught with due sincerity; that helps build your repertoire of ideas. Then explore the applicability of new ideas by taking up projects, participate in design contests and venture to publish your works. Do spend some time to appreciate fine arts and socio-legal-ethical issues.
Q. What modifications would you suggest towards the betterment of department?
A. Improvement is a continuous process contributed by each faculty, staff and student. In order to create an environment that fosters ideation, I would like to see interactive talks by professionals as an essential component of every subject right from the first semester. I look forward to regularize summer/winter internships in the campus and develop facilities to interact with industry for setting up laboratories and take up joint projects. I welcome more proactive engagement from our bright students in undertaking various departmental activities.
Q. Is there any provision for students to avail internet facility within the COE block?
A. Internet access is available in our LAN-configured laboratories and also through wireless access for project works.