Dear Friends, Fellow ITians and Samganaka Abhiyantriks,

It is with happy thoughts and fond memories that I write this letter to all of us.

We are one of a kind. We all share a very unique common heritage: of living together through sine dies and end-sems, night-outs and Lankatings, Morvi, Viveka and Vish.., midnight strolls under the leafy promenades of BHU and contemplating fundu ideas on the Ganga Ghats, and, AKT and AKA.

A mere mention of these sepia-tinted (at least for the old-timers) images brings back a flood of memories - some good, some bad but each of them indubitably unforgettable - of those four years in Benares, studying Computer Science and Engineering but living a dream, that defined and made us who we are today. And it is time to recapture and relive those days of magic where time lazed along with us.

These were some of the thoughts that prompted some of us to meet a month back. We all remembered our IT days fondly and wanted to reestablish the link to our Alma Mater (to be able to give something back) and rebuild the frayed and jaded bonds between ourselves. Appropriately, we met in the bachelor pad of Soumitra (batch of ‘98) in Silicon Valley. The eight of us who were present in this first meeting spanned the gamut of our department's existence: while Sanjay Dani (batch of ‘87) represented the first graduating class, Soumitra brought up the rear. By our second meeting, we had representatives and contacts from all of the graduating classes. It felt great. And the ideas, heretofore being merely discussed through distribution lists and personal emails, began to take concrete shape.

We all agreed that the best possible path to realize our dreams was to form an Alumni network supported by the requisite infrastructure - websites, database, programs, core teams, members and volunteers and liaisons with our department. Fortunately, Professor K. K. Shukla, present Head of the Department is an active promoter of our endeavors and is very interested in establishing such a network. He understands that such a forum is essential for a healthy development of the institute (It might not be out of context to mention the commendable work being done by other IIT Alumni organizations). And as a first step in this long march, we plan to have an IT-CSE Alumni get-together in April ‘03. Through this, we hope to bring face to face as many alumni as possible to reconnect, relive and renew their bonds.

Since 1987, approximately 450 of us have graduated in 15 years. Of these, nearly 15-20% call Silicon Valley their home. If most of these 60-90 alumni respond to our call, as hoped, and make our first alumni convention a success, we would have established one of the first nodes of our alumni network - a Silicon Valley Chapter. We hope that this will provide the necessary impetus to create such chapters across United States, India and the rest of the world - we definitely go places. The collection of these will form the CSE Alumni group, which will eventually become an integral part of the larger IT Alumni family.

And, I am happy to mention that some of the support infrastructures are already taking shape as I write. Sanjay, who has taken the initiative to establish ITBHU.org, the umbrella organization for ITBHU alumni, helped us establish the CSE homepage at http://www.itbhu.org/chapters/dept/cse/ being maintained mainly by some of the present final year CSE students. Please visit this site and give your valuable suggestions to improve the site and also time and expertise to build it. We hope that this will become not just a repository of all alumni information but also a "Limbdi Corner".

But, we still need to do a lot. We have to define our mission, vision and goals. Establish contacts will every alumnus. Plan, organize and channelize our programs. Respond creatively, financially and technically to the needs and requirements of our department and future members of the alumni family. The list is long and will keep expanding. We need you and your active collaboration to be able to do this.

A formal e-invite with details is being sent to all of our interested alumni and their family (either in Bay Area or further away) for the April 26th Convention. Please mark your calendars. It is being held in Santa Clara City. Please accept our gracious invitation and make this event a grand success.

I have rambled for long; but I can't help it. I am excited. And I hope you are excited too. So, please spread the word (along with this letter and the invite) around. It is time for the Samganaka Abhiyantriks to come together. It is time for Kashi Yatra again.

Yours Sincerely,
Ganesh Sharma Tyagali.
Convenor.

This is the message sent by the present Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department, Dr. K.K. Shukla to the First CSE Alumni Get-Together in USA.

Dear friends,

Congratulations on re-vitalizing the spirit of CSE IT-BHU.

In these times of immense competition the only way ahead is networking of all kinds of resources- people, ideas, knowledge and expertise.

As HoD for the next 21/2 years, I wish to take this opprtuinity to assure you that I will try my best to maximize student participation in all decision making within the department and will keep the administration transparent.

The core of the department is formed around the students and faculty. Together, we can steer the dpartment along a path of evolution. In fact, we have no choice - either we evolve or face extinction.

Alumni can contribute in a number of ways - fund raising is actually last on my list- since, it is more important to evolve democratic processes, have motivated faculty and assure the students some minimum guarantee about the quality of education and accuracy of evaluation.

You can motivate the existing students to DEMAND quality in classrooms and transparency in evaluation.

Help us in modernizing of curriculum (both theory and practicals)

Help us with memberships of digital libraries.

Provide CBTs, video lectures, lecture notes (on CDs or paper) etc.

Promote mentoring

Provide career counselling and placement guidance.

Suggest latest literature for self study by the students.

Suggest topics for BTech Projects and seminars.

Provide targeted funding of well defined development activities.

In the end I would like to quote our Vice Chancellor's slogan:

THINK OR SINK !

Best wishes for an enjoyable and fruitful meet, and wishing you a bright future,

This is your friend and facilitator,

KKS

The first Get-together of the department alumni has been planned in Silicon Valley. This is a result of wishes and efforts of many of us who wanted to recreate the memories and reestablish the bonds. The meet promises to be a combination of fun and some serious networking. Please take time to meet your seniors and juniors and relive (the horrors and joys) your student days.
The invitation for this meet follows. Please spread the word around and forward this invite to any and all of IT-CSE Alumni that you know of (especially, your batchmates).
For more information, you can contact Ganesh @ Gansharma@fastmail.fm.

Dear Friends and Co-Alumni,

Thanks,
Ganesh S Tyagali,
(Batch of '94)
Convenor.

• Prof. A.K. Agrawal (Professor)
  Database System, Programming Languages & Compilers, Theory of Computation
  
  
  
• Prof. A.K. Tripathi (Professor)
  Parallel/Distributed Computing, Software Engineering, Operating Systems
  
  
  
• Prof. K.K.Shukla (Professor & Head)
  Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Machine Vision
  
  
  
• Dr. R.B. Mishra (Reader)
  Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Computing, Application in Robotics & Medical Computing System
  
  
  
• Mr. V. Srivastava(Lecturer)
  System Analysis & Design, Programming Languages & Discrete Mathematics
  
  
  
• Mr. Bhaskar Biswas (Lecturer)
  Database Systems
  
  
  
• Mr. Ravi Shankar Singh (Lecturer)
  Multimedia Systems, Remote Sensing