FISAT Professors Cup 2023

This is the biggest sporting event of the year for faculty members of colleges in the state. All Kerala FISAT Professor Cricket Tournament. This is the second edition of the event and was held from 23 to 27 January 2023. A total of 16 teams participated in the tournament this year. 

The plush green ground witnessed a clash of the two best teams - FISAT and COE, Thalasserry in the finals on 27th. In a very high scoring match, COE Thalasserry scored 122 on the board with a loss of 8 wickets. FISAT did a great job of chasing the target and winning the cup.  Mr. Anoob. Jose, Asst. Prof. Mechanical Dept did a brilliant job of scoring a 66 runs from just 39 deliveries, taking FISAT to victory in style with a six in first ball of the last over. As the "Captain Raju" lifted the cup the whole FISAT cheered up for this thrilling win of the tournament. 

The highlight this year was that all matches were streamed live through the official channel of FISAT. The credit goes to Mr. Jitesh from multimedia, who climbed 30ft to the top of the platform to stream the match live!! Add to this, the commentary by "Tony Greg" of FISAT, Daniel from S7 CSE, who did a wonderful job!!

You can watch the final match here: 

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Republic Day Celebrations

Every year, we celebrate the Republic day, the regular way - Flag Hoisting, message from the Principal, National Anthem and sweet distribution. This year was different, grand. 

The speciality this year was the presence of the first batch of NCC cadets. Oh, sorry, I forgot to post here about this new addition to our campus. We installed an official unit of NCC at our campus last year. Dr. Prasad J C , Professor, Dept of CSE is the care taker officer. He was in fact instrumental in installing the unit in our campus. After a long process, NCC of FISAT started in 2022 and is attached to 22 Bn-KERALA REGIMENT NCC and has total strength of 52 which includes girl cadets.

Today was the first Republic day event for the NCC cadets. The cadets' beautiful parade thrilled the campus, their presence adding a special charm to the celebrations this year. There were many guests too, including students, parents of cadets, faculty members, non teaching staff, previous management committee members and even one Alumni, Mr. Greg Xavier from the 2003-2007 batch. 

The celebrations started as the cadets accompanied the Principal and Vice Principal through the red carpet to the Flag Post. After the flag hoisting and the National Anthem, the Principal, Dr. Manoj George gave his message. Wishing everyone the greetings on the 74th Republic day, in his speech, Dr. Manoj stressed on two things, the importance of following ones duties & responsibilities and  hard work. He urged everyone to use their best efforts to build the country and find opportunities here rather than leaving it - a trend that has come up recently. He quoted the Prime Minister during his speech to motivate everyone to strengthen the nation and society by following the right path. This was followed by the message by Dr. C Sheela, the Vice Principal. She paid respects to the all the freedom fighters and bowed her head in respect for all those who participated in the freedom struggle of India. 

This was followed by the spectacular march past by the cadets. Dressed in uniforms, they displayed a great coordination and energy during the parade. This was indeed the highlight of the day. A memento was presented to  Mr. Elias Varghese, RD Attendant and All India Commander who trained and prepared the cadets for the parade. A great honour for the Unit. 

Dr. Prasad delivered the vote of thanks and the event was declared over. Sweets were distributed to everyone present. What a great event it was. I am sure this will remain the same for year to come - thanks to the NCC Unit, FISAT and its members. 

Happy Republic Day Wishes to everyone!!!

Jai Hind!

Visit to Matter Material Testing and Research Laboratory, Kozhikode

A team of 19 MTech first semester Structural Engineering and Construction management ( S1 SECM) students and 5 staff members  including Dr. Jiji Antony, Professor & Head of CE, Dr. Kavitha P E, Dr Asha Joseph, Associate Professors,  Ms Nincy Jose, Assistant  Professor, and Mr. Pauly P K, Lab instructor, visited the Matter Material testing and Research Laboratory at Kozhikode on 13 December 2022. The  purpose of the visit was to familiarise the students with  modern material testing methods included in the Advanced Structural Engineering Lab of 2022 MTech curriculum.

Enthusiasm was very high as the college bus started from the campus at 6.00 am. Everyone was eager to to visit the largest material testing lab in South India,  set up by Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS) Ltd, : the  a 98-year-old cooperative, and one of the world's largest labour contract cooperative societies. The lab, accredited by National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL), has advanced facilities to undertake a wide range of materials testing in construction, geotechnical, metallurgy, chemistry, environmental and microbiology domains.

The team reached the lab at 10.00 am,  received a warm welcome by ULCCS.  General manager Mr.Freddy Soman and Deputy general manager Mr. Anil Pottekkat took everyone to the conference room. Mr. Freddy in his short and crisp talk gave insight into  various projects undertaken by ULCCS all over Kerala, the motivation behind the formation of such a testing centre with immense facilities, support extended to various ongoing project works of departments and academia and its future plans to become an excellent research centre of the country. He briefed about the different divisions of the Lab and the expertise of people working on each division.

After the short introduction, the team visited the various labs of ULCCS, offering services for Construction material testing ( Soil, aggregate, concrete, asphalt, concrete masonry products, paving blocks etc)services,  Geotechnical investigations, Chemistry and microbiological services (drinking  water, waste water, waste water,   microbiological analysis of food, air, swab  etc) , Metallurgical testing services, Special products ( Geotextiles, GFRP, GRC, Aluminium Composite panels, waterproofing membranes, wood, plywood  services  etc.). It was a proud moment for FISAT, our Alumni Ms Sreelaksmi is in lead role as Quality Control Engineer of the lab.

The team from ULCCS demonstrated all the non destructive testing methods that  are specifically mentioned in the new syllabus well with the help of very sophisticated testing equipments available with the Matterlab. It was a great value addition to everyone.

ULCCS' hospitality was beyond words; they served a sumptuous lunch for everyone. They were eager to assist in any way they could, explaining how each machine worked, the principles underlying it, clearing up any doubts, and so on. Dr. Jiji Antony thanked the members of ULCCS for  arranging such a treasured  visit for us. She specially mentioned about the the cleanliness of the lab and premises, the hospitality of the people and their vision to become the research centre and wished all success for their future endavours. The team left the lab at 4 p.m.

The day was truly special, the visit added lot of value and will be cherished for a long time, everyone was back in campus late night after a long trip. 

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Dr. Asha Joseph, Associate Professor

Dept of CE

Experiencing Wind Tunnel Testing of Structures - RWDI Visit

It was back in 2021 November, when a bunch of students including me got introduced to the firm RWDI and also the world of wind engineering through a webinar under ASCE banner.  In a time frame of almost an year we battled waves of covid and many mutations and the exhausting academic schedule and finally the battle bore fruit on 28^th December 2022 when we could actually in reality see stuffs we usually watch on Discovery channels regarding building construction. 

After working on fixing a proper date we lost many committee members due to inconveniences.  So we were hit by the number of members coming in for this visit. So it was a group of ten students, two teachers and two drivers who all jumped into the FISAT mini college bus which took us all to the state capital. The bus has speed limiter and could only go at max speed of 50. But the group we had on board made us forget the Kerala heat and the boredom of travelling hundreds of kilometres. The only person on board who felt motion sickness was also the person who spoke endlessly in the front row. The topics in their debate cum discussion fluctuated between engineering technicals to general knowledge to life in general. Well I was referring to Neeraja ma’am and Unni sir, the latter having motion sickness.

Students had good time dozing off and gossiping back in the bus. Finally battling the traffic and heat we reached the facility in Kinfra park by 12pm. We were directly taken to a conference room and we were joined by the head of the Trivandrum firm Mr Rahul PS who explained to us the fundamentals of wind engineering and showed its growing importance in the world of construction. Rahul was a calm and composed person who had the rock solid experience in this field which very few in the nation has in reality. We had a walk through over the different stages in wind tunnel testing, right from building modelling in software, 3D printing and to the testing part. We were just witnessing a million dollar engineering business which involved hardcore analysis. 

The team who was there to assist us was very sweet and we took a couple of snaps with the team around the wind tunnel. It was an experience that all budding civil engineers must watch. Soon we waved our goodbyes and were leaving and that’s when Unni sir was gifted a 3D model that was printed, a building that was previously tested in the tunnel.

We got out of Kinfra and the next destination undoubtedtly was a pitstop for hungry tummies. We stopped at a famous restaurant (Thakaaram) which boasted of a flight hangar concept and a literal life size model of an Air bus flight in the middle. 

The food was sumptuous as we ordered kerala and Arabic cuisine on our table and recharged ourselves for the next meal. On the way we kept pestering the teachers to take us to the beach but the offer was turned down since it was already dark.We travelled for another couple of hours, had good tea and then later a lavish dinner from vytilla and reached college by 12am. Looking back into the day, even though we had to travel long distance the visit was worth it for the fun we had with friends and moreover the kind of knowledge we gathered from the industry.

Looking eagerly forward for such visits.

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Gokul Ajith, S7CE

Happy New Year!!