VIT University student bags Cambridge International scholarship

“It is offered to approximately 80 students selected according to academic merit from all the departments at Cambridge,” says Akshath Sharma. He is the only Indian to have been inducted directly after his B.Tech, with the master’s requirement waived.

In addition, he has been awarded full-funding, under the aegis of the Cambridge International Scholarship. “Limited students from around the globe are selected for this scholarship with only a small proportion being awarded to engineering students among thousands of applications made, which included the IITs-but it was Akshath they chose,” says Dr Satyajit Ghosh, senior professor at the university.

“This is not only a first for VIT University, but is also a spectacular achievement by any standards” says Satyajit Ghosh, senior professor, School of Mechanical and Building Sciences (SMBS), who taught and mentored, Akshath’s thesis entitled “A novel geo-engineering application to mitigate cyclones over the Bay of Bengal”.

“My final year project involved a computational study involving Geoengineering modifications for mitigation of cyclones over the Bay of Bengal, which was carried out under Prof. Ghosh,” says Sharma.

Akshath, had secured the second rank in the B.Tech Mechanical Engineering programme year with a CGPA of 9.64.He feels that VITs project-based learning (under the FFCS scheme) enabled him to work on a research project, a full year in advance culminating in the definitive final year project.

“VIT gave me the complete freedom to choose whichever field I wanted to do research in from my first year onwards” University founder-chancellor G.Viswanathan said Akshath’s achievement had not only made India proud but VIT University too.