IIT Madras is celebrating its Golden Jubilee this year to mark 50 years of unparalleled service to the nation. On this occasion, Shaastra aims to leave an indelible mark on the Golden Jubilee celebrations of IIT Madras. The tenth edition of Shaastra, the annual technical festival of IIT Madras, will commence from October 1, spanning four days and concluding on the evening of October 5. Shaastra embraces the spirit of engineering by providing an intellectually stimulating environment for students to exhibit their skills across a multitude of technically challenging, thought provoking events traversing all fields of engineering.

Golden Jubilee Shaastra 2008 will undertake bold new initiatives of prodigious relevance like the Shaastra Conclave, Industry Open House, Shaastra Nights and Golden Design Challenges, to name a few. Shaastra Conclave, a grand-gala event conceived to mark the Golden Jubilee of IIT Madras, is intended to be a forum for the best brains from diverse fields as they congregate at Shaastra to express their views on technological advancements and the contribution of the IITs to India since their establishment.

Shaastra Nights, one of the largest and most enterprising of all Golden Jubilee initiatives, promises to add a completely new dimension to Shaastra. Featuring scintillating laser shows, stunning pyrotechnics, holographic projections, illusions and other state of the art technical wizardry, Shaastra Nights guarantees to be a colourful and mesmerising spectacle.

With an aim to exploring the unique possibilities offered by cutting edge technologies that will be incorporated in the utilities of tomorrow and addressing the pressing problems faced by developing nations today, the Golden Design Challenges (GDC) and an Industrial Open House (IOH) have been designed. While IOH seeks to showcase a wide spectrum of technologies and products being developed by the industry, the GDC are a series of challenging socially relevant engineering problems that address the issues of traffic congestion in urban areas, road accidents due to speeding vehicles, the spread of diseases by mosquitoes, amongst others. Attractive prize money and the possibility of commercialising the winning prototypes are on offer.

Visit www.shaastra.org or mail contactus@shaastra.org for more details.