Faculty Development Programme on Meta-Heuristics & Its Applications – A Brief Report

                      A two Day Faculty Development Programme on Meta-Heuristics & Its Applications, was conducted in the college, on 27th & 28th May 2011. This was a joint venture organized by the Department of Mechanical Engineering & the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. The programme was inaugurated in the morning on 27th May 2011. Director Mr.VijayShrenivas, Joint Secretary Mr. Vikram, & Principal Dr. S. Kathirrvelu, graced the function. Administrative Officer Prof. S. Nagarajan, welcomed the participants of the FDP. The participants were 20 teaching faculty members drawn from various polytechnic & engineering colleges, such as Velammal College of Engineering, Sethu Institute of Technology, Sacs MAVMM Engineering College, Raja College of Engineering, Fatima Michael Engineering College, Anna University of Technology, Tirunelveli, & KLN College of Engineering.

                    On 27th May 2011, there were 4 sessions. In the I session, Dr. N. Jawahar, Professor & Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Madurai, explained all aspects of Heuristics & Meta-Heuristics. The II session was handled by Sri P. Subramanian, from IIT, Chennai, and his presentation was on Simulated Annealing & its real-time applications. In the III & IV sessions, Dr. K. Rameshkumar, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amirta Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, explained the concept of Particle Swarm Optimization – popularly identified as PSO. He highlighted the realtime application of PSO, with the help of MAT Lab.

                On 28th May 2011, the FDP continued with focus on recent trends in the new technology of Meta-Heuristics. In the V session, Dr. B.S. Girish, Assistant Professor, Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Space Science & Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, explained the concept of Ant Colony Optimization – popularly known as ACO. He highlighted the scope for research in this domain and advised the staff to explore in this new area of technology. The next three sessions were handled by Sri P. Subramanian, from IIT, Chennai. He explained the basic ideas of Genetic Algorithm and Simulated Annealing, and showed the applications of these new concepts in the current scenario of technological achievements.

Finally, the Faculty Development Programme came to a close, with the vote of thanks proposed by Prof. Sivakumar, Department of Mechanical Enginneering.