BIT Mesra, BIT Sindri, NIT Raipur win Tata Steel’s ‘Mind Over Matter’ Season 7

Pranav Pandey and Pratibha Patel from BIT Mesra, have gone home with a prize money of Rs one lakh and a trophy. They were the winners of Tata Steel’s ‘Mind Over Matter’ Season 7. The first runners-up were Aditi Sinha and Soumyadeep Singha from BIT Sindri, who received a cash prize of Rs 75,000. The second runners-up position went to Anirudh Roy and Shikhar Ranjan from NIT Raipur, who received a cash prize of Rs 50,000.

The three winning teams received certificates of recognition and pre-placement interviews (PPI). All other participating teams got certificates of participation along with goodie bags.

Aptly called, ‘Mind Over Matter’, this contest encourages research and collaboration amongst corporates, academia and students. The innovation programme has been challenging the sharpest, brightest, young minds from the premier engineering institutes across India for giving ideas and solutions on various real-life technical challenges related to steel making, for about seven years now. The students get the opportunity to be mentored by top R&D experts at Tata Steel in a two-month internship.

Launched in 2014, the objective of the challenge, according to Suresh Dutt Tripathi, VP, HRM, Tata Steel, was to “to engage with the brightest young minds and provide a platform for them to showcase their ability to research and innovate.”

The participating teams are invited to Tata Steel, where they create prototypes of their ideas guided by mentors from the Tata Steel R&D team.

For the first time, the grand finale and the award ceremony this year were organised using virtual platforms. Eleven teams presented their innovative solutions to the jury in the finale. Debashish Bhattacharjee, VP, technology & new materials business, Tata Steel, was the chief guest and also part of the jury, along with Vinay V. Mahashabde, chief R&D and product technology, Tata Steel, and Akshay Khullar, chief manufacturing (long product), Tata Steel.