A short term course on "Mathematics in Engineering" sponsored by TEQIP III was organized by the department of Applied Sciences, Punjab Engineering College (Deemed to be University) during June 04-09, 2018. Around 30 research students and teachers of various engineering institutes from the region participated in this course. The participants not only got exposure to various Mathematical Techniques by listening to expert lectures by inviter speakers but also made presentations in which they discussed the mathematical techniques used by them in their respective fields of research.
As the name suggests, the course was designed to emphasize the role of Mathematics in Engineering. The main objectives of the Course were Discrete Mathematics, Calculus and Differential Equations, Probability and Statistics, Number Theory, Optimization and Mathematical Modeling. All these objectives were attained to a great extent and the participants were so motivated that on the valediction day they wished that there was more time for their presentations.
The course was inaugurated by Professor Balwinder Singh, Dean Faculty Affairs, PEC. An introduction of the PEC and the Department of Applied Sciences was given to the participants by Professor Harminder Kaur, Head of the Department of Applied Sciences. During the six days of the workshop, a total of 22 one and a half hour sessions were conducted. Professor Uma batra from PEC discussed Mathematical Modelling of various problems in Material Science whereas Professor S S Dhami from NITTTR and Professor A Manna from PEC discussed Mathematical Modelling of Mehanical and Electrical Systems in their respective sessions. Dr. Sucheta explained the basic concepts and various methods available to solve problems of unconstrained optimization. Professor Vanita Verma from PU discussed constrained optimization problems, various solution techniques for such problems, and applications of Linear programming. The synergy between Mathematics and Computer Science was well elaborated by Professor S Sofat during his session, wherein he also explained the role of Discrete Mathematics in Computer Science. Professor M Raka from PU emphasized the Role of Number Theory in Cryptography in her talk. Big Data Analytics were explained by N Aggarwal from UIET in great detail during his session. Numerical Methods to solve differential equations arising out of various physical systems and the Mathematics used at the backend of these methods was explained very nicely in a series of lectures by Professor S Tomar from PU, Chandigarh. Various concepts of Linear Algebra and its Applications were discussed by Professor S Bhatia from UIET, Chandigarh.
Professor Suman Kumar from IIT Ropar, discussed Stochastic Geometry and its applications in the field of Wireless Network Communications. Professor A Gupta, again from IIT Ropar, discussed mathematical models of Transportation systems. The concept of Cellular Automata and its use in the modeling of linear traffic flow was explained very nicely by him. In another talk he explained that these techniques are being successfully used in the study of Transportation in Biological systems as well.
MATLAB basics, Cryptography, Coding Theory, Communication Channels, Secret Writing, Quantum Computing and Data Structures were some of the themes on which the participants made presentations.
The participants were also taken for a tour of PEC during the course, where they visited the state of the art facilities in the Cyber Security Research Center, Smart City Center and Solar Power Systems Center. The visit was coordinated by Professor R Sehmi and Dr. K K Gogna.
The course concluded with the valedictory function where Professor Parveen Kalra, Dean Academic Affairs, PEC, congratulated the participants and the organizers and emphasized on the need of more such interactions between engineers and mathematicians.
