Dr. Sujit Kumar Panda completed his B.Tech in 1999 and M.Tech in 2006. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Philosophy and Computer Science and has been teaching for the last 21 years. He has published 9 papers in different journals nationally and internationally along with 6 patents. He has been working with GIFT since 2012. In 2020, he published a paper on “A Non-contact Framework Based on Thermal and Visual Imaging for Classification of Affective States during HCI”

GIFT Bhubaneswar

Being a HOD of the CSE Department of GIFT, what are your roles and responsibilities towards the students?

The role of any professor is towards the nation-building of highly skilled students. When students take admission to our college, we ensure the all-round development of students. They may do a job, or be an entrepreneur for which we give our best support. We are not a training center and we give high priority to education and nurturing of students into world-class citizens with high moral and ethical values.

How do you try to bring in a practical approach toward subjects and make them industry-oriented?

As we offer engineering courses, we do have practicals as well as theory subjects. This is done everywhere, but here at GIFT, we design our own practicals. We have another lineup called ‘beyond syllabus.’ Here we teach students new emerging technologies like IoT and Blockchains, this will help them to be industry and market ready. We conduct multiple projects throughout the whole course instead of limiting it to the final years, this helps students to showcase multiple talents in different subjects and have a better understanding as they do it themselves as well as it reflects greatly on their CV.

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What are the challenges you faced/ are facing to uplift the quality of education of your department?

Attendance in the class is a worldwide issue, which is a big challenge because if students don’t show up, they don’t learn. If they don’t learn, they can’t perform and simultaneously kill the whole process of education. We encourage our faculty members to be more interactive and make most classes interesting by having something planned other than studies, like activities. We also have a mentoring program, where each faculty is assigned 30 students. This is where they can interact directly with students, understand their issues and find out if they are facing any problems both in education and social life throughout the degree.

What do you see as GIFT’s greatest strengths?

We have a College Management System which is the backbone of our institution, which has the database of all students and stakeholders. Students can watch their attendance, performance and upcoming tests on the website. Along with our Mentoring System which I had talked about previously, all and any discussions are also recorded, this helps the higher authorities understand and learn from the students and their behaviours. We also have a great student counselling system where we not only give placement support to the final year but the support starts as early as 2nd Year, helping them along the way using TI (Technical Interview) and PI (Personal Interview).

How did GIFT operate during COVID 19 and what strategies were formulated and used to keep education ongoing? Is any of those strategies still in effect?

It was a challenge to transfer from offline mode to online mode. We took the help of online platforms such as zoom. All the faculties developed online versions of their course materials and ppts were made available to all. Labs were also organised using NPTL platforms along with audio and video aids during classes.

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What valuable advice would you like to the students for them to have a prosperous career ahead?

The first and foremost advice I would like to give is to complete their courses, show up at class and have a continuous learning process to build up your fundamentals as well as make you industry ready both for job as well as startup, projects are very important as well. Along with this communication is very important, both orally and in writing when working professionally. Internships are another important part of education which will give you a taste of your future career and will also help you decide if you want to pursue this line or not. Job is not the only path after graduation, higher education and your own startup is also available.