The Silicon faculty, staff and students have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic situation with a steadfast, agile and focused approach.
Siliconites were alerted ahead of the lockdown about the COVID-19 outbreak. All the activities and events on campus were cancelled from 25th March 2020 onwards. The on-campus student residents were advised to leave for home. Students who chose to stay back on campus, did so in accordance with COVID-19 protocols..
The Counselling Cell of the institute provided online services to students and faculty.
All academic activities were shifted to digital mode. Surveys were conducted at regular intervals to understand the well-being of Silicon faculty, staff and students. Counseling services were provided online wherever needed. Silicon faculty participated in various outreach programs to address the psychological needs of students, teachers and their families across the country.
Silicon quickly transitioned all the academic activities into digital mode while ensuring that the teaching delivery process was least affected. Some of the important activities include:
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Ajaya K. Tripathy, Ambarish G. Mohapatra, Saraju P. Mohanty, Elias Kougianos, Amit M. Joshi, and Gautam Das
, "EasyBand: A Wearable for Safety-Aware Mobility During Pandemic Outbreak", IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, IEEE, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 57-61, 0901,DOI: 10.1109/MCE.2020.2992034
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Arya, Lambodar Jena, Rajanikanta Mohanty, and Ramakrushna Swain
, "Role of Deep Learning in Screening and Tracking of COVID-19", in Proceedings of ICAC 2020, Springer, pp. 677-687, 0501.
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Bhagyalaxmi Jena
, "Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic", in Title: Challenges and Opportunities of COVID-19 IN INDIA, Kunal Books, Chapter. 28, pp. 246-257, 0201.Anita Mohanty and Subrat Kumar Mohanty
, "Impact of COVID-19 on Higher Education", in Title: COVID-19 and Education, Kunal Books, Chapter. 17, pp. 165-173, 0801.
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Biswamohan Jena, Loveleen Gaur, Biswaranjan Acharya, Bhagyalaxmi Jena, Manas Ranjan Pradhan, Mohit Vij, Anupama Baral, and Aurobinda Das
, "A Mobile Sanitizer Dispensing Unit" Application No. 202011044163, 1023.A fund named as Silicon Support Fund has been created to provide financial assistance to the students who have lost the earning member of their family. An independent committee is looking after the fund raising and fund disbursement.
Silicon has functioned proactively accommodating various measures to function smoothly during these difficult times.
Silicon collaborated with Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) for the drive-in vaccination of the 45 plus age group. Vaccination drives were conducted from 10 June to 31 July 2021. A special vaccination drive was also organized for our students, staff and their family members with BMC’s approval on 27 June 2021. A total of 19018 people were vaccinated (1st/2nd dose) over a span of 45 days at our vaccination centre, at an average of about 423 per day.
The Silicon faculty participated in various outreach programs by Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of India (GoI) like Paricharcha and Kishore Manch. The faculty participated in state level television programs to create awareness and advocacy about COVID-19. Counselling services were provided to people within and outside the state of Odisha. Video podcasts were released.
During the initial period of lockdown viz., 25 March – 12 June 2020, people within and outside Odisha were provided with counseling services as needed by Dr. Saswati Jena, in-house Counselling Psychologist, SiliconTech, Bhubaneswar. Over 100 people benefitted from these services.
Counseling services were also provided under the platform ‘Voices O’ Counselling’ by Dr. Saswati Jena along with Dr. Sareeta Behera, Post-Doctoral Fellow, NISER, Bhubaneswar, to support individuals facing mental health issues due to the COVID-19.
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