AICTE, CSIR to host Covid-19 drug discovery hackathon

A hackathon for potential drug discovery to beat the Covid-19 virus outbreak will be launched, announced on 25^th May 2020 at a Bennett University webinar by Anil Sahasrabudhe, president of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

The hackathon is sponsored by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Council (CSIR) and AICTE. CSIR laboratories, startups, and other private companies will work on the submitted ideas. The subject of the global webinar, organized by BU's Computer Science Engineering Department on 25^th May 2020 was 'AI Covid Solutions.

Sahasrabudhe said that it could assist by professionals and academics from diverse fields such as computer science and molecular biology to help find solutions. It really is an interdisciplinary effort for which we are encouraging people from all disciplines to take part in it," he said.

On initiatives taken to promote digital learning before and during the pandemic, he said that AICTE had allowed students to transfer 20% of course credits to their academic records from the government's online learning portal, Swayam.

He said AICTE was talking about ways to increase the digital learning platform contribution to 30% or 40%. "Wherever experiential learning occurs, it should be in face-to-face mode, but others could be of the candidate's choice; the possibility has arisen of 'any time learning'," he said.

AICTE had engaged 15 companies to deliver online learning products for its National Education Alliance for Technology (NEAT) platform initiative ahead of the nationwide lockdown. While students in India initially paid for customized learning courses, many of the learning programs have now been made free after the nationwide lockdown.

Students today enjoy learning from home. Several products are available in AI, IoT, Computer and Deep Learning, Quantum Computing etc ... these are available at no cost for another month or so, "he said.