Awareness Drive on Pre-Incubation Funding Opportunities Available at Chitkara University

The pre-incubation center of Chitkara University supports student projects by giving them prototype funding for developing good quality prototypes. This center is sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India and it is entitled NewGen IEDC. Additionally, at Chitkara University we promote industry-academia collaborations for working on real world industrial problems under our Technology Enabling Centre (TEC)initiative, which is also sponsored by the DST. We conduct annual hackathon entitled NOVATE+ to invite innovative project ideas (preferably joint industry-academia projects), which can be supported with prototype funding. The 5th edition of this hackathon i.e. NOVATE+ 2023 was announced in April 2023 and the last for submitting entries is May 15.

To spread awareness among students and faculty members of the university about all these initiatives, several awareness sessions were delivered by Mr. Sagar Juneja – Assistant Dean, CURIN and Coordinator – NewGen IEDC and TEC in the different departments of the university. Details of these sessions are given below.

On April 12, Sagar Juneja conducted an interactive session with the first and second year students of the Mechanical Engineering Department on How You can Win Prototyping Funding for your Innovative Projects from Chitkara University NewGen IEDC?
Similarly, a session titled How Pre-Incubation Centre is Fueling Innovations in and around the University? was conducted for the ME and Phd scholars of Chitkara University on April 13. Thee session was coordinated by CURIN.
Two sessions were held on April 14, one was conducted with the students and faculty members of the Pharmacy Department and the other was conducted with the Applied Sciences Department with the same objective of promoting pre-incubation funding support available at Chitkara University.
On April 19, Sagar Juneja conducted an interactive session with the CSE Department of the university, which was titled Why Every Student Must Apply for Pre-Incubation Funding? He directed the students on how their innovative ideas could be a start of their entrepreneurial journey. Around 175 students attended this session.
On April 20, Sagar Juneja along with his team member, Chanpreet Singh (Project Manager, CURIN) conducted a session on rapid prototyping techniques for the Department of Interior Design, Chitkara School of Planning and Architecture (CSPA). The objective was to encourage students to use 3D printing in their work. In Chitkara University, we have a very good 3D printing facility. The same session was repeated for another batch of CSPA on April 25.

On April 24, an awareness session titled Pre-Incubation Funding Roadmap and Challenges was conducted with the CSI Student Chapter, Department of Computer Applications that was attended by around 150 students along with faculty members of the department.

On May 12, Sagar Juneja delivered a session titled Insights into Innovations in Medical and Assistive Technologies from Chitkara University. This session was conducted for the students and faculty members of Chitkara School of Health Sciences and it was attended by close to 75 students and faculty members of the department.