Mahindra Ecole Centrale (MEC), one of the top engineering institutes in Hyderabad, under the auspices of Indian Geotechnical Society (IGS) Students Chapter at MEC, recently organised a workshop on ‘Sustainable aspects of geotechnical and transportation engineering’. The objective of the workshop was to take stock of and disseminate state-of-the-art knowledge on sustainability to undergraduate level students and university faculty at large and to boost interaction between the industry and the academia to jointly address the issue.

The workshop discussed sustainability aspects in the fields of geotechnical and transportation engineering, and guest talks given by experts from both industry and academia helped to build a broader understanding of the topic. The event witnessed participation of over 70 college/ university students and faculty from various parts of Hyderabad. The workshop was organised by Dr. Hari Prasad, Dr. Saladi Subarao and Dr. Avirneni Deepthi of Civil Engineering Department at Mahindra Ecole Centrale and IGS Students Chapter members.

Professor Bishnu P Pal, Dean – Academics, MEC and Prof. Arya Kumar Bhattacharya, Dean –  Research, MEC spoke at the workshop and highlighted importance of such initiatives by the students, faculty, and also initiatives on research front of Mahindra Ecole Centrale.

Prof. M.R.Madhav, visiting professor, Civil Engineering Dept., IIT Hyderabad shared insights on the issues that plague the industry in his talk on “Geotechnical challenges in infrastructure development”.  Dr. Ramana Reddy, senior manager, L&T, presented a lecture on “Sustainability in Geotechnical Engineering” and the way forward.

Dr. Digvijay S Pawar, assistant professor, IIT Hyderabad delivered a talk on “Simulations for Driving Safety Study” and how these can be sustainable. Venkata Subba Rao, director, IBI Group presented a lecture on “Sustainable Transportation Solutions for Urban India” and how these will lead the way in the future.

On the occasion, Prof. Pal said, “Mahindra Ecole Centrale’s academic curricula is focused on the holistic development of the students and to prepare a rounded engineer for tomorrow, who are expected to be managers to lead a technical group in an industry.  Sustainability is going to be an important dimension in the context of planning future development likely to happen. Participating students and academia at the workshop had very good interactions and discussions on how to make this happen. We will continue to provide more such academic and industry interaction platforms to brainstorm on upcoming technologies to benefit the student community.”

Mahindra Ecole Centrale (MEC) is a leading private engineering institute in Hyderabad that marks the foray of the USD 20.7 billion Mahindra Group into the higher education sector.