LASE programme at IIT Bombay: LASE stands for Liberal Arts, Social Sciences, and Engineering, and was a one-of-its-kind multidisciplinary program launched by IIT Bombay in 2021.It was aimed at giving the undergraduate students a chance to move out of their respective engineering departments at the end of first year, and customise their degree as per their interests. The students under LASE would graduate with a Bachelor of Science at the end of four years in one of the following: Natural Sciences; Engineering Sciences; Social Sciences; Art and Design. The idea behind the programme was to give greater flexibility to students who may be interested in disciplines other than their respective streams of engineering. It aimed to provide an alternative of a choice-based education to a student at IIT Bombay, as opposed to a predefined branch of engineering. The programme also came on the back of the New Education Policy advocating for multidisciplinary education. Under LASE, a student could take any number of courses from any department at IIT Bombay. An undergraduate student pursuing an engineering degree at IIT Bombay graduates with a Bachelors of Technology (BTech) at the end of four years.
 Intelligent Grievance Monitoring System (IGMS) 2.0: Recently, the union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology, MoS Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions launched the Intelligent Grievance Monitoring System (IGMS) 2.0. It is a public grievance portal and Automated Analysis in Tree Dashboard portal of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG).It has been implemented by IIT Kanpur. The Dashboard provides instant tabular analysis of Grievances Filed & Disposed, State-wise & District-wise Grievances Filed & Ministry-wise data. It will also help the officials identify the root cause of the grievance. This portal will help the DARPG with creation of draft letter for selected scheme/ministry and expedite the grievance redressal process by the concerned ministry/department. It has been enabled with Artificial intelligence (AI) capacity.
Sastra Ramanujan Prize: Ruixiang Zhang, Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA will be awarded with the 2023 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for his outstanding contributions in mathematics. The prize was instituted in the year 2005.It is awarded every year by the SASTRA University on its campus near Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, on Ramanujan’s birth anniversary, December 22.The prize is conferred annually to mathematicians from across the world who is less than 32 years of age, working in an area influenced by the Srinivasa Ramanujan. The age limit is 32 years to commemorate the fact that Ramanujan accomplished a phenomenal body of work in this short span. Cash prize: It carries a citation and an award of $10,000.This award has gained global repute ever since it was instituted. Other recipients: Manjul Bhargava and Akshay Venkatesh
Project Udbhav: Project Udbhav was started in 2021 by the Indian Army in collaboration with the United Service Institution of India, a defence think-tank. It is an initiative to rediscover the profound Indic heritage of statecraft and strategic thoughts derived from ancient Indian texts of statecraft, warcraft, diplomacy and grand strategy. It focuses on a broad spectrum including Indigenous Military Systems, Historical Texts, Regional Texts and Kingdoms, Thematic Studies, and intricate Kautilya Studies. At its core, Project Udbhav seeks to bridge the historical and the contemporary to integrate age-old wisdom with modern military pedagogy.
