Guest Lectures
Speaker: Mr. Nitin Jadhav
Designation: Oracle Financial Functional Consultant, Cummins India Ltd.
Date: January 22, 2025
The session began with a warm welcome by Rohan Patil from the Guest Lecture Committee, followed by Mr. Nitin Jadhav introducing the essential financial concepts.
Mr. Jadhav focused on fundamental finance topics, including demand and supply, depreciation, and inflation. He used real-world examples to explain the interactions between these concepts and their impact on financial planning and stability.
The speaker demystified complex financial terms like Cost to Company (CTC) and Income Tax (IT) returns, making them accessible for students.
He also highlighted the critical roles of financial institutions and regulators in the economy, emphasizing their influence on both personal finance and broader economic stability.
Speaker: Mr. Anshu Dwivedi
Designation: Software Development Manager-III, Warner Brothers Discovery, Inc.
Date: August 26, 2024
The session began with a warm welcome by Rithani Priyanka from the Guest Lecture Committee, followed by an insightful presentation on social media analytics by Mr. Anshu Dwivedi. He highlighted the vast amount of data generated daily by platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Mr. Dwivedi then explained the use cases of social media analytics, including customer sentiment tracking and brand reputation management. He showcased a case study on Eureka Forbes' Aquaguard, where he scraped data from Reddit, Google Play Store, and Twitter using Python, BeautifulSoup, and Google Play Scraper, analyzing customer reviews with NLTK Vader and Hugging Face transformers. He discussed how enterprises use social media analytics for decision-making and outlined challenges like data privacy issues and the complexity of analyzing unstructured data.
Speaker: Mr. Rahul Nair
Designation: Senior Data Scientist, LTIMindtree
Date: December 1, 2024
The guest lecture focused on the differences between traditional software systems and machine learning (ML) systems, emphasizing ML's ability to learn from data and make predictions, enabling businesses like Netflix to thrive by catering to diverse user preferences. Deep learning's role in solving complex problems, such as self-driving cars, was highlighted, along with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for feature extraction, mimicking human brain processes.
Learning paradigms were discussed, including Supervised Learning (labeled data), Unsupervised Learning (pattern discovery), and Reinforcement Learning (feedback-based learning). Transfer learning was emphasized as a cost-effective approach, where pre-trained models are fine-tuned for new tasks, reducing training time and improving performance.
The session included hands-on coding with frameworks like FastAI, PyTorch, and TensorFlow, demonstrating steps in the ML pipeline, including data collection, integrity checks, model training, and deployment using platforms like Gradio and Hugging Face. Challenges like large target data requirements and ethical biases were addressed.
Speaker: Dr. Ramesh Subramoniam
Designation: Professor of Practice, Operations Management, and Director of Undergraduate Research at Naveen Jindal School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas, USA.
Date: December 16, 2024
Organized in collaboration with GL ITBM, the guest lecture featured Dr. Ramesh Subramoniam, introduced by Dr. Vijaykumar Bharati. Dr. Subramoniam emphasized sustainability, discussing global challenges like COVID-19 and global warming, and how industries adapt using Environmental Social Governance (ESG), the circular economy, and remanufacturing. He highlighted the benefits of remanufacturing, including low investment, reduced warranty costs, and energy savings.
The session explored the transformative role of AI and blockchain, supported by a case study in the automotive sector where platforms like eBay drove cost efficiency, revenue growth, and sustainable practices. Emerging trends and essential skills for navigating changing job landscapes were also discussed.
The session concluded with a vote of thanks by Siddhi Kshirsagar, with Dr. Dhanya Pramod and Kanchan Patil expressing gratitude to Dr. Subramoniam for his insightful lecture on leveraging technology for sustainability and addressing global challenges.