Microsoft launches 'Academic Accelerator'

Plans to bridge the gap between industry and academia

Software giant,  Microsoft, on Thursday launched 'Microsoft Academic Accelerator', a new programme aimed at building a long-term association between industry and academia in India.

“With the vast and growing pool of engineering graduates (over 500, 000 per year) in India, it is imperative to invest in skill-building and high-tech jobs. We saw an opportunity that is there between the academia and the industry to be bridged,” Vinod Anantharaman, head (business development), Microsoft India (R&D), told mediapersons in Hyderabad.

It is initially collaborating with 10 Indian engineering colleges for the programme. The programme currently has two main components — a series of workshops that span a spectrum of relevant to modern-day high technology industry, and a series of student hackathons that give all students at the 10 campuses an opportunity to work collaboratively in team environments to build real-world applications that leverage the latest Microsoft platforms including mobile and cloud.

While the workshops are tailored to the curriculum at each partner college, based on the needs of computer science faculty and their specific tasks, and get delivered by seasoned Microsoft engineers who are domain experts on that particular area, the hackathon series, delivered under the 'code.fun.do' brand name, are open to all passionate coders at partner college campuses.

During 2012-13, the pilot year of the programme, apps such as Awesome Logo, Lengua and SudoCam were developed by students and are now made available on the  Microsoft's app store.

“The students are working on 15-16 such apps now," Anantharaman said, adding that during the 2014 fiscal, Microsoft was planning to touch over 4, 000 students (including more than 2, 500 at code.fun.do) and should be creating over 250 apps, including 30-odd ‘great’ apps for the store.