MIT students lend hand to local talents
A group of current students and alumni of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have formed a platform to help students in Bangladesh transform their innovative ideas into business enterprises which will spur social development.
Kolpokoushol, the initiative, aims to encourage its participants to acquire a variety of skills, and employ those skills towards solving local and community specific problems.
Its ideas have been derived from the unique environment and creativity nurtured at the world's one of the top universities.
"The platform is engaging with the young minds of the country to inspire, develop and deploy new ideas and possibilities," said Nazmus Saquib, founder and director of Kolpokoushol.
"Our students can't turn their ideas into enterprises due to lack of knowledge, information, infrastructure and finance," Saquib said.
"Our aim is to provide them with proper guidance so that they can turn their innovative ideas into business enterprises," said Saquib, who is doing his PhD in social computing at MIT.
The opportunity is open to students who have a strong background and interest in the fields of engineering and sciences at the undergraduate level.
"Students from business, fine arts, young professionals and college and school students can apply too, as long as they are able to excel the application," said Saquib at a media briefing at Sonargaon Hotel in the capital.
The initiative comprises a six-day workshop for students from undergraduate level and includes a three-day learning on interactive problem solving, rapid idea generation, hardware prototyping, automated human emotion analysis, automated speech sentiment analysis, virtual and augmented reality, mechanical design technique, data visualisation and analysis tools and technical product management.
At present, 60 students from different universities are participation in the first workshop under the initiative.
The workshop is being held at two venues located in Dhanmondi -- the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) campus and the EMK Centre.
They are also partners of the event.
The participants working in groups will share their projects or products on Wednesday.
The programme is facilitated by Toru -- the idea tree, an innovation hub of Bangladesh -- that supports the transformation of innovations to social enterprises.
Standard Chartered Bangladesh is the major sponsor of the event and Microsoft is the technology associate.
"I hope the initiative would be a step forward for the youth in terms of skill building and complementing the mainstream academic education and driving the youth towards the global knowledge pool,'' said Bitopi Das Chowdhury, head of corporate affairs of Standard Chartered Bangladesh.
Saif Kamal, founder of Toru, said: "To make successful enterprises of the future we need to bridge the knowledge gap prevailing in the country."
"Our association with Kolpokoushul is the beginning of this journey to equip the youth to build better sustainable solutions for greater social inclusion."
The selected projects and products will receive all sorts of support so that they can become commercially viable, according to Kamal.
Kolpokoushol plans to arrange at least one workshop annually and take the event outside of Dhaka.
Aamra Technology, Renata and BD Apps are part of the initiative.
Comments