Mangaluru: The international conference on Advanced IT, Engineering and Management ‘SACAIM 2016’ was inaugurated on Thursday, November 10 at 9:15 am in the St Aloysius Institute of Management and Information Technology (AIMIT) auditorium.

The conference is organized in partnership with Santa Clara University, State University of New York, North Dakota State University, Le Moyne College, Fairfield University, and Wilmington University in the U.S., and Mercator School of Management in Germany

The papers presented at the conference will be published by the International Journal of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJLTET).

The dean of Information Technology at AIMIT, Prof Santhosh Rebello delivered the welcome note with his thoughts on design and system thinking. He observed that IT on its own does not deliver much, it is the application of IT to humanities and applied sciences that is more important and with the concept of smart city in mind, the right application of IT becomes all the more critical.

The chief guest Dr Shreekumar, Registrar, Yenepoya University in his inaugural address brought forward an important aspect of the functioning of the bureaucracy in India and how programs like SACAIM are rightly addressing the issues under the e-governance track. Based on the current bureaucratic process, he said students should think about how to apply IT to develop a new model to reform bureaucracy. Even though technology has rapidly become mainstream driving mechanism, what we need to focus on, is the right thinking behind the development of this new model of governance.

In his presidential address, Fr Denzil Lobo SJ, Director of AIMIT, mentioned why we should reflect on the reality of non-existence of an upper limit to knowledge. He delved into the impact of drastic technological advancement and how that has helped derive the largest known prime number, and also in the application of nanotechnology in creating a glass disk with a storage capacity of 360 terabytes of information that can survive for billions of years without damage or data loss. Students he said should transcend the initial rejection and opposition to new ideas and get into the orbit higher thinking.

The vote of thanks was delivered by Mrs Hemalatha. The 90 plus research papers will be presented at the Beeri campus in parallel during this two-day program.

The valedictory program is scheduled at 4:15 pm on November 11, 2016.