National Instruments CEO motivates students to dream big

To showcase the latest tools and best practices in engineering education, National Instruments (NI) and the NICE (Nurturing Innovation and Creativity in Education) Committee have together hosted the 12th Annual Educator’s Day 2013 in Chennai. The event was participated by over 500 researchers, professors and academicians across the country. It emphasized the necessity of hands-on learning in making engineers industry ready.

National Instruments also unveiled an embedded hardware device “NI myRIO” to help students design real, complex engineering systems more quickly and affordably than ever before. In addition, the annual academic engineering excellence awards for VIMANTRA, NIYANTRA were also announced at the conference.
 
Dr James Truchard, President, CEO & Co Founder, National Instruments, said, NI believes in inspiring the next generation of innovators to solve the world's engineering grand challenges. By giving the students of today access to hands-on learning, students have the opportunity to do engineering and gain valuable skills that prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow.
 
Jayaram Pillai, MD, NI (India, Russia and Arabia), said, We believe that ‘engineering’ is an action  that you can only learn by ‘doing’, not by ’reading’. Educator’s day is aimed at driving powerful positive change in the existing engineering education system in India, through experiential learning.
 
Dr Truchard met the Vice Chancellor of Anna University and discussed the challenges in engineering education. Addressing the student gathering at Anna University, he spoke about the need for more hands-on learning and experimentation in the classroom.