The Alumni Committee of the Business Studies Department organized an online workshop titled "Future After Graduation" on Thursday, 17th February 2022 from 9 to 10 AM targeting business alumni and current bachelor's students. Dr Manjula, the coordinator of the Business Alumni Committee, welcomed all the participants, and then invited the speaker Mr Mohammed Al Moqbali, Tax Inspector at Oman Tax Authority, to deliver the workshop. At the beginning of the workshop, the speaker shared his personal experience on how to find a job opportunity. Then, he explained about different platforms and techniques that can help graduates find suitable job openings in Oman. The participants benefited from this workshop and they expressed their satisfaction as well. At the end of the workshop, Dr Surendar gave a vote of thanks to the speaker.
The Alumni Committee of the Business Studies Department organized an online session titled "Create Your Own Opportunities" on Thursday, 24th February 2022 from 9 to 10 AM. The targeted audience was business alumni and the current Bachelor's students. Dr Manjula, the coordinator of the Alumni Committee, welcomed all the participants and then invited Mr Mohammed Al Shuaili, an Administrative Assistant at Youth Sada, to deliver the session. His presentation focused on the importance of Oman Vision 2040 and the job opportunities it creates to the Omani nationals. He also explained some other important aspects, including entrepreneurship in future, how to understand yourself, entrepreneurial team building, sectors of investment in Oman, etc. At the end of the session, Dr Surendar gave a vote of thanks to the speaker.
The Research and Consultancy Committee of engineering department organized a training programme “Demonstration of the Aerodynamic and Electronic Component Cooling Design in a Subsonic Wind Tunnel” on 7th April 2022 at 12 Noon. Dr Arthur Davis Nicholas, Lecturer, Engineering department, organized this program and demonstrated the working nature of “Subsonic wind tunnel” which was erected in the welding workshop. This training session is a part of the research outcome of a TRC funded RG project “Optimization of Wind Turbine Blade Nomenclatures Using a Subsonic Wind Tunnel Facility”. The session was well received by the staff members with very good interaction. Around 23 staff members were participated in this event.
Here, you can find the brief of the wind tunnel facility that is functioning in the welding workshop.
Despite advances in computational aerodynamics, wind tunnels are and will continue to be a cornerstone in the design process for a wide range of Aerodynamics applications. This mostly stems from the difficulties of accurately and efficiently predicting turbulent flow fields computationally. To expand in-house aerodynamics capabilities, a general-purpose low-speed wind tunnel was designed and built in Welding Lab, Engineering Department, University of Technology and Applied Sciences. This wind tunnel is designed to reach test section speeds of up to around 80 m/s. To aid in the initial design, semi-empirical formulas are used to estimate aerodynamic efficiencies and the required fan-blower power as a function of various design choices. Tunnel geometry is selected to optimize test section air flow quality, test section size, and diffuser angle (to avoid boundary layer separation), while the overall tunnel size is constrained to fit in the allotted laboratory space. The proposed closed-circuit wind tunnel is vertically oriented to reduce footprint, and is 6.56 m long, includes a convergent, test section, divergent and honey comb structure. Convergent is designed at 2.1 X 2.1 m inlet cross-section with honey comb structure built for a 0.3 m depth. Test section is built at 0.5 X 0.5 m cross-section and 1 m length. It is followed by a divergent, with exit section of 1.7 X 1.7 m cross-section. Air flow is induced by a 7.5 hp 3 PH, 360 rpm, and squirrel cage induction motor driven exhaust fan of 1.6 m diameter. An MS 300 Delta VFD is set to regulate the rpm of the exhaust fan. A set of probe type velocity sensors, probe type temperature sensors and static pressure sensors are added to the test section facility to organize the flow inside the test section. A MSHRIY 8 channel data logger is connected to the sensors to read the flow conditions. Testing of Aerofoils for aircraft wing and wind Turbine Blades along with Vehicle Aerodynamics and Heat Sink testing can be performed in this wind tunnel facility. Currently, a batch of bachelor students are carrying out experimental analysis of NACA 4412 is tested for its characteristics.
The Staff development Committee of Engineering Department organized a webinar program on “Bio Fuel Combustion in CI Engines” on 14th April 2022 from 11.00 A M to 12.00 PM. The program was delivered by external speaker Dr. G. Kasiraman, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, SRM University, Chennai, India. He started his presentation with an overview to biofuel combustion and introduce the concept of fuel injection and heat release rate in combustion. Followed by he explained the different properties of biofuel and the related heat release rate. The application of biofuel in the automobile were also explained in the presentation. He compared the different types of biofuel parameters such as combustion duration, ignition delay, sample pressure and crank angle. Both internal and external staff members were benefitted with the presentation, it was very useful and effective.
The Staff Development Committee of the Engineering department, organized online program titled "Research trends, challenges, future prospects of LEO satellite communications” on Thursday, 7th, April 2022 at 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM. The program session addressed by Mr. Antony Judice.AV, Lecturer, (Electronics and communication Engineering).
In his presentation, he explained about Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellites, Challenges of LEO Satellites and LEO Constellation with examples and explained about starlink, Starlink has a significant advantage over fiber in its widespread availability. Starlink plans to be available worldwide by the end of 2022. Users can expect download speeds between 100 Mb/s and 200 Mb/s and latency as low as 20ms in most locations. Both 5G and Starlink are different but equally competitive and complementary technologies. He given some satellite phone company service provider details like Inmarsat, iridium, thuraya and globalstar etc,
He elaborated Inter-Satellite Links (ISL), OWC (Optical Wireless Communication) OWC Simulated Results; satellite Software’s and Upcoming Missions etc.
The session was very interactive; many faculties from different department were participated in the discussions. The staff members felt that the presentation was very much useful and effective. Totally 16 staffs were participated.
The Business Studies Department organized a competition titled "Showcase Your Business Idea in 5 Minutes" on Wednesday, 8th March 2022 from 10 to 11:30 AM at the VIP Room. The main purpose of the competition was to encourage students to bring up creative business ideas, which can be implemented in reality. The competition was sponsored by three local businesses; Dexter's Lab Café, Waffle & Donut Café and Bukha. A total of 9 teams from different academic departments registered in the competition. Three judges were assigned to evaluate all the business ideas. The organizer of the competition, Mr Mohammed Al Sakiti, an HRM lecturer, announced the first three winners as follows:
- First place: Ibrahim Al Khamisi & Al Muhanad Al Balushi (45 OMR)
- Second place: Rahma Al Waili, Mohammed Al Shuaili & Aisha Al Risi (35 OMR)
- Third place: Baraa Al Kalbani (25 OMR)
The participants expressed their happiness to be part of this event and requested for more activities to encourage the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation among students at the university.
A data analysis workshop was planned for the community for two days under the banner of community programme and was conducted on 29 and 30 March 2022 from 4 to 6 pm. The objective of the programme was to give training on how to analyse data. The target audience was people without any programming background. The speaker used SPSS software for data analysis which does not require programming skills.
In the workshop, the speaker covered the following:
- Installation and introduction about variable view and data view
- How to enter data manually and how to import data from a dataset
- How to handle Likert scale data
- Data cleaning, including how to handle data with missing values and outliers in the data
- Restructuring of the dataset
- How to find the descriptive statistics [Frequencies, Mean, Median, Mode, Midrange, variance, Standard deviation, skewness and Kurtosis, Standard error etc.]
The speaker highlighted inferential statistics and data visualisation using SPSS.
Feedback was collected from the participants on a scale of 5, the result of the feedback was 4.5.
The Information Technology Department organised a webinar on “Scraping Data from Twitter”.
Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are huge data sources for any Data Science project. Data gathering from various sources and preparing it is the first and essential step in any data science project. To foster the process of preparing one’s own dataset for data science-related projects, the Research and Consultancy Committee, in collaboration with the Staff Development Committee, organised a webinar on data scraping from Twitter on 17 March 17 at 12 noon. The webinar was designed for data science enthusiasts who wish to start data science projects from scratch using Python. The webinar was delivered by Mr Mangesh Wanjari, Information Technology staff member.
The speaker started the session by highlighting the importance of social media in data science and the impact of social network analysis. Afterwards, the steps to carry out the social network analysis were covered.
Next, the speaker critically reviewed the various data sources and shed light on the importance of data scraping, among other data extraction techniques. Afterwards, Mr Mangesh discussed why Twitter is commonly used more than other social media channels.
The Tweepy Python package used for accessing Twitter API and how to get a Twitter developer account were introduced next.
After an informative introduction, the speaker demonstrated a hands-on session via the Google Colab platform. The demonstration covered many concepts, including:
- How to install the required packages
- How to access files from Google Drive or local drive on Google Colab
- How to connect to Twitter API
- How to scrape tweets based on keywords
- How to store the extracted data into Pandas DataFrame for further analysis
In the end, the speaker allotted some time for a questions and answers session. The participants received the content in a very positive manner.
The feedback was collected from the participants on a scale of 5, the result of the feedback was 4.7
In collaboration with the Registration Committee, the Staff Development Committee of the Information Technology Department organised an offline presentation on Academic Advising on Thursday, 24 March 24 2022. The workshop, titled "Academic Advising", was delivered by Dr Rajasekaran Selvaraju (Registrar of the Information Technology Department) to create awareness on academic advising to all Information Technology staff members. Dr Rajasekaran presented some of the essential terminologies and key concepts pertaining to academic advising and the registration process. The speaker demonstrated the features available in CIMS and explained how to fix the different issues which do arise during the process of advising.
The feedback was collected from the participants on a scale of 5, the result of the feedback was 4.44
The Information Technology Department, University of Technology and Applied Sciences - Ibri, organised “YOU TURN” – a brainstorming session with international software experts on 29 March 2022 to inspire students who aim to build a successful career path in software in the Information Technology sector. The main objective of this session was to provide awareness for students in understanding the real environment of software firms.
Ms Rama Rajagopal (Lead Data Engineer, Microsoft, Washington, USA), Mr Rose Jehilan John (System Analyst, TCS, Atlanta, USA), Mr Rajan Chellappan (Software Architect, Flexera Software, UK) and Ms Saritha Annadurai (Senior Software Engineer, eBay, California, USA), were the guest speakers of the brainstorming session.
The programme began with student Mr Issa Juma Musabah Al-Yahyaai introducing and elaborating on the objectives of the event. Bringing out the importance of understanding the ecosystem prevailing in software firm across the globe, he said, “In everyone’s life, there should be a turning point for reaching success. Students are looking for a turning point, motivation, and awareness. The “YOU TURN”, brainstorming session was organised by the Information Technology Department to inspire students to be successful in careers in software development and the IT sector”. He reiterated that this type of brainstorming in real life situations in software firms will bring clarity to those who aspire to choose the software industry as their career path.
While greeting the initiating the brainstorming, Dr Amal Bati Said Al Abri, HOD of the Information Technology Department, said that this exercise will get the motivated students to get insight into the real time experience of software industries. She also motivated students to join student clubs such as the programming club, networking club, and math club that are initiated by the Information Technology Department.
The first speaker, Mr Rajan Chellappan, software architect, Flexara, UK, presented a talk entitled “Being Corporate Ready – Journey to become a software engineer”. He started with a three-dimensional view by explaining the What, Why and How of the IT industry. Then he focused the various types of services provided by IT firms including Internet software and services, IT services, data processing and outsourcing services, and product-based services. He presented the benefits of seeking a career in the IT industry, industry top trends, and the ways to get into the IT industry. The speaker said, “Any industry is increasingly driven by the growth of software and, students can enhance knowledge and build projects in booming domains which has huge potentials such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, IoT, Virtual Reality, Block Chain, Cloud Computing, and so forth”.
Ms Saritha Annadurai, senior software engineer, eBay, California, USA, focused on the title “Job skills required for becoming software engineers”. She started her presentation by explaining the software development life cycle, programming skills development, most popular coding languages, importance of team building, the ways to apply for software jobs, and so on. She focused on two primary skills that are required for students: software skills (Python for AI, Machine Learning (ML), and Big Data projects, C++ for gaming projects, Java-HTML-C-Python-Javascript for web application projects and Golang, SQL for cloud computing projects) and soft skills (creative skills, problem solving, critical thinking). She also said, “Ninety-nine percent of the software industries use agile methodology as software process model, and water fall model is no more used”.
In the final session, Ms Rama Rajagopal, lead data engineer, Microsoft, Washington, USA, and Mr Rose Jehilan John, system analyst and assistant consultant, TCS, Atlanta, USA, joined for the questions and answer session. Students from IT specialisations and other departments asked various interesting questions. These guests provided the insights and answers for the queries such as projects handled by Microsoft, internship in Microsoft, AI, ML and Data Science projects, popular programming languages used by IT firms, roles of software analyst and project manager, managing relationships with clients, use of free open source software tools in multi-national companies, registration procedure for IT jobs, IT certification examinations and courses, the importance of innovation and research skills, course projects in interviews, and difference between on-site and off-shore projects. While discussing the importance of innovation and research skills, Mr Rajan said: “Never give up, success point starts from failures, start innovations, think differently”. Ms Rama specially stated that: “Microsoft handles projects in AI, ML, Data Sciences, Data Security and Augmented Reality projects that helps people living with disabilities”. She also motivated the students to participate in Microsoft internship programmes, coding hackathons and competitions. While talking about client expectations from developers, Mr Rose said that communication and analytical skills plays a vital role.
162 Members participated as per MS-Team Attendance Report. A feedback session followed by a rating was also done that had a score of 4.31 out of 5.00. The participants were awarded with eCertificates.
Dr Wilfred Blessing N.R, the coordinator of the event, introduced the guest speakers with their technical profile apart from their company profile, project experience, technologies expertise and awards received. He was responsible for planning and visualizing this brainstorming session.
Ms Yasara Mohammed Ali Al Hinai, Advanced Diploma IT student, welcomed the student participants, guest speakers, and the faculty members. Diploma IT student Ms Amira Mohammed Al Maamari presented the vote of thanks.
The Head of IT department, Dr Amal Bait Said Al-Abri, HoS Ms Fatima Said Al Shamli, DC Members, coordinator, and lecturers also participated in the brainstorming session.
