Microsoft India hosted AXLE 2018, a Microsoft and academia collaboration showcase. For the past five years, Microsoft has been working closely with the students and faculty of some of India’s top colleges through the Microsoft Academia Accelerator programme. This day-long event presented a line up of speaker sessions and panel discussions from Microsoft and faculty. It also showcased 16 top engineering projects from across campus hackathons conducted over the year.
Academia Accelerator is one of Microsoft’s most comprehensive campus engagement programmes aimed at building a deep, long-term association between industry and academia in India. Students displayed solutions based on popular technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality at the showcase held at Microsoft campus in Hyderabad. Learning, accessibility and road safety were amongst some of the favoured themes which were showcased. The shortlist of projects was a result of a yearlong engagement where more than 2,000 students participated across 16 colleges and built over 350 projects.
Senior leadership of Microsoft came together to discuss topics such as AI, Machine Learning, and the need for the IT industry and academia to work together to fuel innovation.
“Academia Accelerator aims to provide insights to students about important technology trends and practices and also adding the layer of cutting-edge industry know-how to the existing computer science curriculum, thereby. The success of this programme is testament to the great engineering talent we have in India. We have seen significant uptake for the Academia Accelerator programme in the last five years as students recognise the importance of understanding technology trends and undergoing practical training sessions during their formative years,” said Anil Bhansali, Managing Director, Microsoft India (R&D).