IEEE – the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. Tag lined “Advancing Technology for Humanity”, IEEE's core purpose is to foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.

IEEE aims to accumulate the technological expertise, knowledge and innovation from all around in world, bring it under one roof and channelize it towards solving the problems and making the world a better place to live in, for everyone. In order to gain that reach, over the years, IEEE has developed a well defined structure for itself to spread across the globe.

A student branch chapter of IEEE bridges the gap between students and professionals, University and Industry, Education and Corporate sectors. It enables the under graduate and graduate students to hone their skills, be more productive and contribute to the society. Such diligence is extracted, appreciated and duly rewarded by IEEE through various contests, conferences and seminars. Student branch serves as a platform for the students to network within themselves, to get exposed to the cutting edge technologies, to showcase their leadership qualities and most of all to expand their network and get to know and interact with eminent people in their field around the globe.

The student branch at BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus got its official recognition as an IEEE student branch in May 2010. But the students of the campus have been active members of IEEE since the year of inception of the campus, i.e.; 2008. At the time of the official recognition of the student branch, it comprised of 40 student members (for the year 2010-11), and the number grew to 76 the very next year (for the year 2011-12). The membership drive is on for the calendar year 2012-13, and the response received till now is highly promising.

Apart from its phenomenal strength, the student branch also takes pride in its quality of work and involvement in the IEEE activities, before and after the formal inception. Guided by the faculty advisors - Prof. M.B. Srinivas – Dean, Administration, Prof. Moorthy Muthukrishnan – Head of the Department (EEE), and Dr. G. Geethakumari – Assistant Professor (Computer Science Dept.), and steered by the selected core team, the student branch has played a key role in conducting various events in the college on behalf of IEEE.

Before the inception of the student branch, students from the BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus volunteered in the TENCON 2008, held at the University of Hyderabad.

The IEEE Student Branch, BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, launched the branch activities in thecampus with a guest lecture by Mr. Phil De La Zerda, Director of Worldwide Sales and Business Development, Intel Developer Product Division. Titled “Winning with Parallelism Today”, the talk covered the latest ideas on parallelism and parallel programming.

After the selection of core team for the student branch of IEEE in the campus, which was conducted in December 2010, three events were conducted on behalf of the student branch for the science day, i.e; 28th February 2010 on campus.

An interactive session with Mr. T.L. Prasanna Venkatesan, IEEE R10 GINI Coordinator was arranged on 8th September 2010 to enlighten the students on the benefits of IEEE membership. It was a one hour session where the students from various Departments put forward their interests and sought his view on how IEEE would help them realize their goals.

The student branch also takes the pride of conducting the third IEEE Computing Colloquium along with the IEEE Computer Society Chapter – Hyderabad Section, on 25th September 2010. The following speakers were invited.

This is the first of the branch’s student-for-student initiative activities, directed towards encouraging some of the technically well equipped students to come forward and share their knowledge with the other students. It also aimed at raising money to make the branch self sufficient to conduct future activities on a large scale, for there was an inadvertent delay in receiving the seed money from the IEEE. This workshop was conducted by D. Ravi Teja, the Student Branch Chairman, on Joomla – a free and open source Content Management System. It turned out to be a massive success and his effort was appreciated.

The student branch of IEEE - BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus, in association with the IEEE Computer Society – Hyderabad section conducted a tutorial on “Web Services: Architectures, Design and Deployment” on 26th March 2011. The tutorial gave the audience an insight into Web Services, SOAP based standards and RESTful architectures. It also focused on how to consume web services by showing how to implement applications, which can display Flickr photographs, Twitter/facebook updates, etc using RESTful web services. And finally the audience were given a hands on experience of creating and deploying SOAP and REST based services on web server and how to using them in simple applications.

In addition to the activities conducted on campus, the student members make it a point to participate in the IEEE section events, thereby increasing their exposure in addition to expanding their knowledge base. This persistent enthusiasm shown by the student branch members and faculty advisors, the support from our beloved Director - Prof. V.S. Rao and the absorbing serenity and elegance of our new born campus, won us the opportunity to conduct the INDICON – 2011 on our campus, with a theme – “Engineering Sustainable Solutions”. INDICON, the prestigious annual conference of IEEE India Council, has been held since 2004 and covers the fields of Computer Sciences and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Life Sciences, Technology Management among other areas of discipline of the IEEE. The conference brings together researchers, academicians and professionals in the fields of engineering from all over India to share their original research work and contributions. The papers to be presented have been picked by eminent Technical Program Committee involving stalwarts from education and corporate sectors.
The conference will be held from 16th -18th December. The proceedings of the conference are published through the IEEE Xplore after the conference.