IIT Madras will host its annual technical festival—Shaastra 2011—over five days between September 28 and October 2. The organizing team of Shaastra 2011 strives to create a platform to promote creative thinking and help students interact with the industry and other tech-enthusiasts across the country.

The festival will include 50 events and 8 workshops. The 13th edition of Shaastra, with the tagline “Inspire the Future,” will designate a set of events under the banner of Department Flagship Challenges, to promote specific branches of engineering such as biotechnology, civil engineering, and chemical engineering. This year also marks the comeback of some popular events such as Robotics, Aerofest, Junkyard Wars, Shaastra Main Quiz, Project-X, Shaastra Cube Open. The competition is expected to be very intense this year since the prize money has only got bigger. Shaastra 2011 will beat last year’s record of Rs. 15 lakh in prize money. Apart from the sheer scale of the event, its quality too has received certification. Shaastra, which attracts 20,000 students from across India, has the distinction of being the first student-organized event in the world to be ISO 9001:2008 certified.

Most of these events have an online qualifying round. The deadline for submission of entries online is September 10. Events such as Robotics and Contraptions require at least a week of planning. Some events require the participants to pre-register (pre-registration is free), the deadline for the same being September 10 as well.

Shaastra 2011 will reach out to 800 colleges through the “Outreach Program” and invite students to the myriad events and workshops at the festival. A series of pre-Shaastra events called Shaastra Sampark will be held in Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad with the intention of taking Shaastra to the doorsteps. Sampark Bangalore will be held on September 18. For more details log on to http://www.shaastra.org/2011/main/home/.