This years’ edition features personalities like Dr. John C. Mather of Goddard Space Research Centre of NASA and head of the COBE Project, Dr. Josh Bongard the from the field of robotics, known for his work on evolutionary robotics and Mr Kalyan Bannerjee of MindTree, Dr Loren Acton, astronaut, Dr Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google Inc and Mr Manish Tripathi also known as honorary director of Mumbaias dabbawalas.

Crossfire, an interactive panel discussion at the event will see participants like Sujatha Ramdorai (academician), Prof. Anil Gupta (founder of Sristi), PV Indiresan (ex director of IIT Madras and columnist for Indian Express), Dr AS Rao (advisor to the ministry of science and technology) and others to discuss future action plans to catapult India into a global knowledge economy. Rashmi Bansal, the editor and co-founder of JAM magazine will act as the moderator.

The workshops series include Light Painting Workshop by Kshitij Anand, showcasing the technique of using a light source as a paint brush; an Animation Workshop conducted by the Nikhil Madan, RoboSapiens, India using the animation software MAYA; an iRobo Tricks Workshop by RoboSapiens, India on Multi Functional Autonomous Bot; a workshop on JAVA FX conducted by Sun Microsystems and a forensics workshop by CSI a company based in the UK.

Various events on coding, infotainment, robotics, business management and many more have over 7 lakhs of prize money to be won. To mention the most popular events across the categories – ByteCode, an Online Programming contest; Ventura, A Business Plan contest with prize money worth Rs. 3 lakhs along with Innovation Fund of up to Rs. 40 lakhs; Dalal Street, an online stock market simulation event; Avishkar, a design event and Anveshanam, a paper presentation contest.

For further details logon: www.pragyan.org