With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many sectors for digital transition, the Digital University of Kerala is trying to leverage the most by coming up with its innovation cluster consisting of incubation facilities, offering courses in emerging areas, research centres and 'Maker Village', one of the leading electronics hardware incubators in India.
Speaking to ANI, Dr Saji Gopinath vice chancellor of Digital University of Kerala said that sectors like education and commerce were already moving digital but since last two years due to the COVID pandemic, the transition has been accelerated.
"There are two aspects to it. One is the format is getting digitised along with it most of the sectors are also undergoing a major digital transformation. Be it agriculture or traditional retail suddenly you require large number of people with right skill set. Digital University of Kerala is focusing on it to equip people to develop a responsible digital world,"
With tie-up with CISCO, along with NASSCOM a 'ThingQbator' has been established which is aimed at facilitating early stage MSc/M.Tech students to work on their innovative ideas using digital technologies in a hands-on environment, turn their ideas into working prototypes and in the process come up with scalable solutions addressing local problems.
"ThingQbator works as a pre-incubator. Once after experimentation product development can be taken to the Maker Village in Kochi. Maker Village is one of the leading electronics hardware incubators in India, which hosts more than 80 startups with more than 40 patents applied. It is funded by the Ministry of information Technology and IT as well as Kerala Government," said Saji Gopinath.
Regarding how Maker Village works within the cluster of Digital University and help the students to develop a product or to start a company of their own, Dr A P James, associate dean (academics) said,
"Electronic Innovation is one of the main theme we offer students, not just research but translating it to innovative products. We help the students right from the formation of an idea to product design. Most of the products made by 80 odd start ups in Maker Village are completely made in India and is marketed in both nationally and internationally," he said.
Dr S Asharaf, dean (R&D), said that another emerging area catered is Blockchain, with Kerala Blockchain Academy (KBA) part of the digital university.
"Blockchain is a ledger platform that enables to record trustable data. We started one of the world's largest blockchain programme called ABCD programme. The aim set in 2018 was to train 3000 people but already we trained 6000 in various areas of blockchain technology that are also corporate-friendly. We run it now in an online mode with those attending programmes from 20 countries," he said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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