Co-curricular Activities

2024-2025

Cybersecurity Workshop 

The Department of IT at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC), organized a Safer Internet Day seminar on 11th February 2025 to educate IT students about cybersecurity and responsible digital behavior. Srinivas Vedula (Director IT) and Mohammed Abdul Qayum (Senior Director IT) led the session, discussing key topics such as network security, data privacy, phishing, smishing, financial scams, and fraudulent job offers. The session emphasized the importance of verifying sources, avoiding suspicious links, enabling two-factor authentication, staying informed about cyber risks, and adopting preventive measures. Students gained valuable insights into safeguarding their digital footprint and identifying online threats, making the event a meaningful and enriching experience.

2023-2024

Throughout the year, workshops and seminars were conducted for all the students of the department. 

workshop on computer networking

The Department of IT organized an insightful workshop on computer networking from January to March 2024. Conducted every Saturday from 12 PM to 2 PM, the sessions were led by Mr. Daniel Joseph, a renowned security analyst at Amazon and also an alumni .This workshop was specifically designed for first-year BSc IT students, offering a comprehensive introduction to networking concepts and security protocols. Mr. Joseph shared his expertise, providing practical knowledge and hands-on experience that enhanced students' understanding of the subject. The interactive format allowed participants to engage deeply, fostering a collaborative learning environment.Overall, the workshop was highly beneficial, equipping students with essential skills and a strong foundation in computer networking.

workshop on Advanced Excel

On July 21, 2023, the Department of IT held an enriching workshop on Advanced Excel, conducted by Mr. Ashish Deora, Tech Product Manager at Great Place to Work® Institute (India) and an alumnus of our college. The session, from 11 AM to 2 PM, was aimed at first-year BSc IT students. Mr. Deora shared his expertise, covering advanced Excel functionalities. His hands-on approach and real-world examples made the session highly interactive and beneficial. Students gained valuable skills that enhanced their data handling capabilities through excel.

Figma and Canva

On 15th July 2023,the Department of IT hosted a highly engaging and informative workshop focused on two prominent design tools, Figma and Canva. The workshop was organized by Miss Rochelle Fernandes and saw enthusiastic participation from students of FYBSc IT. The primary objective of the workshop was to familiarize students with these powerful design platforms and enhance their skills in digital design.The Figma and Canva workshop began with an introduction to Figma, highlighting its cloud-based, collaborative design features. Participants explored the interface, and practiced creating a simple user interface using frames, shapes, text, and components. The sessions also covered Figma's prototyping and real-time collaboration capabilities. The Canva session followed, introducing Canva's ease of use for graphic design. Participants navigated Canvas Library of templates and elements, completed a design project to create a social media poster flyer using Canvas drag-and-drop interface, and learned tips and tricks for producing professional-looking designs

Building Recommendation Engines on Scale

On 9th March, 2024, a workshop on ‘Building Recommendation Engines on Scale’ was conducted by Mr. Pranshu Bhatnagar in the Knowledge Center of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. The students of MSc. BDA of St. Xavier’s College attended the workshop. The workshop began with an introduction of Mr. Bhatnagar by a student, Uzair Khan. Mr. Bhatnagar started the workshop by understanding the student’s knowledge in the Machine Learning Domain. He then went on to explain the topic and where Recommendation Systems are used in the industry. He continued the workshop by explaining the different recommendation systems models and explained them by using Machine Learning Terminologies and correlating them with real world applications. He finally concluded the workshop by answering the doubts of the students. The workshop ended with a vote of thanks from the student representative.

AI and Data Science mentorship program

Empathy AI Pvt Ltd conducted a 4-week AI and Data Science mentorship program designed to provide aspiring data analytics individuals with hands-on experience and guidance from industry experts. The mentors of the program hailed from renowned product companies such as Microsoft and Google, as well as top consulting firms like TCS, Capgemini, and Infosys.

2022-2023

Seminar on AI-ML in Music

On the 7th of September 2022, the Information Technology Dept. held a talk on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in music along with the felicitation of Dr. Jyoti Singh, on the event of her retirement and as a former head of Department for IT (2008-2016). She will always be known for her profound contributions in raising the bar of the department and taking it to new levels by helping the department transition into autonomy in the year 2011. The expert speaker who discussed the applications of AI and machine learning and how varied they are was Dr. Paritosh Pandya, a renowned computer scientist, IIT Bombay. The employment of artificial intelligence in classical Indian music in a peculiar and novel application, was showcased to the FYBScIT audience. He continued to enthrall the audience with numerous demonstrations of how AI can visualise and animate music by altering the pace, tone, and pitch of the music. ‘Can we use digital computerization technology to make Indian Classical Music’, was a question that Dr. Pandya left the students as food for thought. He also gave numerous examples of how cutting-edge algorithms can identify "raags" and accurately anticipate the type of raag using a programme called "Kansen." He acknowledged that this was an unusual use of AI.

Mobile Accessibility Workshop

On 20th January, 2023, a special workshop was organized by the Information Technology Department as part of the Mobile Application Development course for the students of SYBSc.IT, in the newly inaugurated Fr. Bonnet computer Laboratory at St. Xavier's College. Mr. Sushil Pandit, the speaker from XRCVC, highlighted the importance of accessibility in applications, particularly for differently abled people. He introduced assistive technologies like screen readers, magnifiers, and alternate keyboards. The session included testing for accessibility, demonstrating how to use screen readers in Android systems, voice over in iOS systems, and NVDA in laptops and computers. The TalkBack feature was a key takeaway. The session was engaging and thought-provoking, with 36 students attending and learning valuable insights.

Life Skills Workshop - No fire Cooking

On 28th January, 2023, a special session was organized by the IT department to enhance students' survival skills: cooking. The Session was conducted by Ms. Lydia Fernandes, faculty of Information Technology department, where she along with two First year students, Krishna Agrawal and Isha Agrawal, demonstrated recipes of 4 types of sandwiches which can be prepared using no fire and electricity. 

The session was presented in an enthusiastic way. Students from FYIT and SYIT attended the session and also tried their hands at making the different sandwiches. The session was also streamed live on the projector which displayed the recipe as it progressed on the table. A total of 28 students attended the session. The students found it easy to prepare these sandwiches to carry as part of their meals for short breaks instead of eating out all the time. The session was also well technically coordinated by Mr. Aaron Johns, faculty of IT Department.

Workshop on Real World Applications of React Native

On 28th January 2023, a Workshop organized by the Information Technology Dept., was conducted on the Real World Applications of React Native by Mr. Anmol Mahatpurkar, an alumnus of St.Xaviers College, Mumbai. He is currently working as a software engineer with Airbase Inc. The workshop introduced react native, a framework built on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and its applications in the industry. It showcased the skills needed for UI/UX development and demonstrated a Netflix clone, Nextflix. The workshop covered essential technical concepts like components, properties, and State, and demonstrated the use of OnPress and Model View Controller. The workshop concluded with a Q&A session on upcoming coding languages, career opportunities, and using modern tools like Chat GPT for efficient workflow. 

2021-2022

• Workshops 

  (August 6th, 2021 – September 10th, 2021) - Mr. Kushal Sen

Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt Ltd. The workshop was mainly for M.Sc(BDA) Part-1 students. It was a 12 hours’ workshop.

Topics covered: Introductions to algorithm, Introduction to C Programming Language, Datatypes and Looping Structures, Functions Declaration and Definition,              Introduction to Git Hub and how to use it, Code Debugging (Using GDB), Structures in C, Pointers in C. It was an Interactive Hands-On workshop to understand C Language and Programming concepts from the basics. Programming concepts were taught with the help of examples. At the end of the workshop a project was assigned to the students.

• NLP Workshop (March 5th, 2022 – March 30th, 2022 )–Mr. Debjyoti Paul Data Scientist, Amazon Ads. 

The workshop was held over a period of four weeks. The workshop was mainly for M.Sc(BDA) Part-1 students.

2020-21

Certificate course on Python for Data science

In collaboration with Xavier’s Institute of Engineering, Information Technology department organized a certification course on Python for data science. It was of 10 weeks duration from 10th May to 11th July, 2020.

Faculty Development Program

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) organized a 6 days’ faculty development program for faculties of M.Sc(BDA)  on 22nd, 23rd and 24th of July, 2020 and   23rd, 24th  and 25th Feb, 2021. 

A six day faculty development program titled “Reigniting the Research-Spark: Exploring New Methodologies and Perspectives”, was conducted by the college from 15th Match to 20th March 2021, which was attended by all staff.

Operating System workshop  (19th Oct. ’20 – 31st Oct. ’20) Mr. Kushal Sen Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt Ltd

The workshop was mainly for M.Sc(BDA) part-1 students. All the 36 students attended this workshop. The workshop was held over a period of two weeks on Mondays and Saturdays. The concepts on Operating system were explained with the help of PPT and practicals were carried out on Linux Shell using Linux commands and shell scripting. The following topics were discussed : The Linux Operating System , System Structures , Process management ,Process Control Block (PCB) ,Process Scheduling , CPU Scheduling Algorithm , Process Synchronization, Memory Management, Paging , Segmentation and Fragmentation.

C Programming workshop(12th Dec ’20 – 15th Jan ‘21) - Mr. Kushal Sen Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt Ltd. 

The workshop was mainly for M.Sc(BDA) part-1 students. It was a 15 hours’ workshop. All the 36 students attended this workshop. 

Topics covered: Introductions to algorithm, Introduction to C Programming Language, Datatypes and Looping Structures, Functions Declaration and Definition, Introduction to Git Hub and how to use it, Code Debugging (Using GDB), Structures in C, Pointers in C. It was an Interactive Hands-On workshop to understand C Language and Programming concepts from the basics. Programming concepts were taught with the help of examples. At the end of the workshop a project was assigned to the students.

Advanced Python Workshop (2nd Feb. ’21 – 20th March ’21) – Mr. Sourav Karmakar , Data Scientist  Fidelity Investments, Bengaluru, India & Mr. Debjyoti Paul Data Scientist, Amazon Ads

This workshop was under ageis of RUSA. The workshop was held over a period of seven weeks. The Workshop was well organized and doubts were encouraged. Along with the topics mentioned above the lecturers also provided many tips and tricks on how to code effectively. It was a hands-on workshop which meant students were more involved. Assignments were also provided specifically for pandas and numpy topics.

Topics covered – Introduction to Python. Functions, Functional Programming, String Matching Decorators ,  Self-Defined Functions ,Lambda functions ,Map Reduce , Numpy and Scipy Packages in Python , Pandas Package in Python , Seaborn & Matplotlib Package in python , Object Oriented Programming (OOPs) in Python , Modules and Packages (How to make our own package).

Cloud Computing workshop : Prof. Aaron Johns conducted a 10-hour workshop on cloud computing and operating systems for M.Sc(BDA) Part-II students in the month of Aug-2020. All the thirty students attended the workshop.

Honours Program:

DevOps:

Prof Aaron Johns conducted an Honours Programme titled DevOps for the SY and TY honours students in the months of March and April, 2021. He introduced them to newer practices used for the development of software. He also showed how the collaboration between the development team and the operations team can help speed up the release cycle of software.

2019

• Mr Sumit from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) conducted a seminar which he began with a few team-building exercises that stressed on the need for clear and effective communication. His session gave the students a deep insight into the functioning of the corporate world. The highlight of the seminar was the fun manner in which he encouraged students to think outside the box by asking them to solve puzzles logically. 

• On 11 February 2019, the students of the first and second year attended a workshop on the INTERNET OF THINGS and CYBERSECURITY. The workshop was organized in collaboration with Rocheston, a New York-based Internet Technology Company. The session was conducted by Mr HajaMohideen, President and CEO of Rocheston. He made use of various devices which demonstrated the increased use of IoT such as soccer ball, toothbrush, etc. which collects data. This data can be communicated to other devices and device automation with little to no human interference can be achieved. The other half of the workshop was inclined towards the issue of Cyber Security. Insights on what makes the network vulnerable, malware, hackers, viruses, Trojans, etc, the data privacy and necessary steps required to avoid various cyber-crimes. 

•  Industrial visit to Tata Consultancy Services: On 18 February 2019, 20 students of First Year visited Tata Consultancy Services, Thane as a part of the Industrial Visit. Mr Rahul Kothari (TCS Employee) addressed the students in the first session where he gave a detailed explanation of the Agile Scrum Method. The implementation of it has shown good results in terms of profits for the company. Mr Gaurav (TCS Employee) gave a brief introduction about how the company works, its core area of expertise, etc. He also spoke about NQT, a national level aptitude test which is a mandatory test for job applicants.

BITMAP is a magazine conceived and created by the Department of Information Technology, St. Xavier's College, Mumbai in 2016.

Created to enliven the world of information technology for readers of all kinds, 'BITMAP' stands for 'Boring IT Things Made Accessible to the People'. This new, innovative magazine harbours a wide variety of content, stemming from the arguably fascinating world of IT (hence, the word 'Boring').

An Editorial Team, consisting of a small group of students from the technical streams of our college (BSc IT, BVoc Software), presides over each edition of BITMAP. The team is responsible for a lot of things, such as proofreading articles that are sent in by a well-informed pool of writers, and designing the layout of the magazine itself. The Editorial Team's work is supervised by the faculty of the Department of Information Technology.

You can download your e-copy below:

First Edition

Second Edition

Third Edition