Qualcomm Incorporated announced eight winners of the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (QIF) program in India for the academic year 2018-19. QIF, a program created by Qualcomm India’s R&D team, focuses on Masters and PhD students from top institutes across the country to cultivate new and forward-thinking ideas. The winners - up to two students and sponsoring faculty advisor(s) - will receive an award of INR 10 lakhs (approx. $15,000) each, plus assignment of Qualcomm India researchers as mentors to facilitate close interaction with Qualcomm India Research.
The third edition of the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship, India Program received a total of 95 high quality submissions from students on topics like:
The eight winning teams of the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship, India Program 2018 are:
The QIF committee selected AvisekLahiri and Abhinav Agarwalla recommended by Prof. Prabir K Biswas and Prof. Pabitra Mitra from IIT-Kharagpur, for their proposal on “Domain Adversarial Networks for Bridging Cross Domain Semantic Gaps in Computer Vision” as the Second Year Fellowship Winner for the academic year 2018.
Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Science and Technology, encouraged the winners to actively consider commercialising their ideas. “The DST is actively promoting new areas of Science & Technology. The Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship program aligns with this objective and I am pleased to see that it encourages young research scholars to develop their ideas through active support and mentorship. I am excited to see their interest and desire to invent and innovate. There has never been a better time to try to convert ideas into commercial solutions. I look forward to seeing wider participation in the coming years.”
“The response to the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship, India Program is growing each passing year and we are impressed by the various proposals sent to us,” Dr. Dhananjay Gore, Senior Director Engineering, Head of Qualcomm Research India, “The Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship is an initiative meant to foster research and innovation across a broad range of technical research areas.”
Speaking at the awards presentation, Mr. Parag Kar, Vice President, Government Affairs, Qualcomm India Pvt. Ltd. said, “It is enriching to be able to meet and interact with the teams who have participated in bringing different innovations to the table. We congratulate the winning teams and look forward to working closely with them as they work to bring their research goals to reality.”
The Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (QIF), India Program was launched in 2016 with an aim to engage with the academic community to encourage and support advanced engineering research; this included predominantly Graduate, Post Graduate and PhD, students from top institutes across the country. This annual program works to amplify student knowledge and foster a culture of innovation and invention amongst the academic community. QIF invests in University research students, engineering schools, professors and students to advance their research and accelerate the development of key technologies.