Lecture series, awards to mark PEC foundation day on Nov 9

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 3

Punjab Engineering College (PEC) will launch a ‘lecture series’ to mark its 99th foundation day from November 9. This series will be conducted throughout the session as the institution will enter the 100th year of its existence.

“These won’t be normal lecture series but will be headed by very eminent personalities of various fields. To start with, the institution will host the first lecture on November 11 by famous computer scientist Dabbala Rajagopal ‘Raj’ Reddy, winner of the Turing Award and Padma Bhushan,” said Prof Dheeraj Sanghi, Director, PEC.

Dr Reddy is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mellon for over 50 years. “These lectures will go on for the entire session. We will try to conduct one every week on different topics. These lectures will give students a platform to listen to those who have served society with great zeal,” added Sanghi.

On celebrating the foundation day amid the Covid-19 restrictions, Sanghi said a virtual ceremony would be conducted wherein, like the previous years, distinguished awards will be presented.

“Like every year, we will be awarding our alumni with distinguished awards. However, this time it will be online. The Punjab Governor and UT Administrator has agreed to attend the function. Students will be also joining the celebrations,” added Sanghi.

Special screening

of pictures

The institution has asked its alumni to send old pictures and interesting stories relating to PEC. “It’s a part of the celebrations. So far, we have received some old and rare photographs. PEC has its alumni around the world and we are expecting to receive more interesting stories and pictures to share with the media fraternity and students,” said Sanghi. PEC, which is a deemed-to-be university, started in Lahore as Mugalpura Engineering College in 1921 and later moved here in 1953 as PEC affiliated to Panjab University. The institute became a deemed university in 2003 through a notification of the MHRD and was rechristened as PEC University of Technology in 2009. It offers eight different undergraduate BTech programmes and 14 postgraduate MTech programmes in various disciplines of engineering and technology.