As India is celebrating Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, as a part of it Rashtriya Boudhik Sampada Mahotsav- IP (Intellectual Property) awareness campaign is being organised jointly by CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre (CSIR-SERC), CSIR-Central Leather Research Institute (CSIR-CLRI). On 18th July 2023around 350 school children from Chennai Girls Higher Secondary School were invited to participate the IP Awareness Programme event at CSIR Campus, Taramani, Chennai.
Mr. S. Udhya Shanker, Dy Controller of Patents & Designs, Indian Patent Office, Chennai was the Chief Guest of the function. Dr. N. Anandavalli, Director, CSIR-SERC and Co-ordinating Director, CMC, delivered the welcome address.
During the welcome address Director said reason for selecting school children as the audience for this function is, as young minds have lot of creative ideas it is important that they should be aware of protecting the intellectual rights at their young age. She also expressed that during the COVID-19 Pandemic period the country understood the need for self-reliance. As India is heading towards global leadership protecting our IP rights is very important. Dr. Subhendu Chakrabarti, Chief Scientist, CSIR-CLRI, introduced the Chief Guest to the audience.
At Session I - Mr. Udhaya Shanker delivered the IP Festival Lecture on “Introduction to IPR and its Impact”. In his address, in simple words he explained the students what is Intellectual Property and the importance of protecting it. He gave live examples so that the students can understand IPR and mentioned that IPR protects the owner of the original knowledge by excluding the others and further he/she can earn by commercializing the ideas.
He also explained what is Patent, Copy Right, Trademark, Design in detail. He also made the students understand that invention is nothing but addressing the day to day problems faced by the society and it is very important that one should know how to protect the knowledge treasure by means of patents, copyrights, etc. He also said to the students that they were chosen for this programme so that as they grow they will have a better knowledge on protecting the Intellectual Property which is also a treasure of this nation. He gave small quiz to the students to evaluate their understanding and the students did well.
At Session II – Dr.N. Anandavalli, Director, CSIR-SERC and Co-ordinating Director, CMC, delivered the lecture on “Artificial Intelligence – An Overview”. Dr. S. Maheswaran, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR-SERC introduced Dr. Anandavalli to the audience. In her lecture she remembered few of the great scientists of our nation and their contributions to science and human life. She mentioned the famous quote “necessity is the mother of inventions” and talked on some of the latest inventions that play a major role in our day to day activities. Right from the development of wheel how human evolved its uses to many other things.
She also talked on nature and admired its amazing way of doing things. She said Nature is the beautiful Engineer and expressed that Nature does a perfect work. She talked about animals and birds how they adapt to nature. Director in her very simple way made the students understand what is artificial intelligence. She highlighted that imitating the models, systems and elements of nature for solving our complex problems and also quoted some of the examples like invention of aeroplane based the flight of Eagle bird and reducing the noise on bullet train while entering the tunnel on seeing the motion of kingfisher birds, etc.
She also made the students understand the diversity of disciplines in the artificial intelligence and talked on nature inspired algorithms like (i) Evolutionary algorithms based on Darwin’s theory of evolution, (ii) Bio-inspired algorithm – based on the commonly observed behaviour in the animals and (iii) Swarm Intelligence Algorithm- based on the behaviour of insects living in the colonies and how that knowledge is used in our inventions like Robotics, Self driving cars, identifying traffic, etc.
The participating students were awarded with certificates. The students were made to visit the Labs of CSIR-SERC.