Apeejay College of Fine Arts, Jalandhar hosted a UGC sponsored International Conference, the first of its kind in the region, on Communication and Computing Technologies on 25-26 February 2011. This two-day Conference organized by the Department of Computer Science witnessed a huge gathering of academicians, research scholars technocrats, engineers and IT students on its first day.

Specialist in the area of Cloud Computing, Dr. Jinjun Chen, Senior Lecturer, Swinburne University Centre for Computing and Engineering Software Systems, Australia was the Conference Chair. He is a distinguished scholar who also delivered the Presidential Address of the Conference. Cloud Computing is the buzz word these days and rapidly becoming an industry and an academic area. Cloud Computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another web service or software like a web browser while the software and data are stored on servers. This area offers the benefits of being cost saving and convenient. Dr. Hardeep Singh, Professor from the Department of Computer Science and Engg. GNDU, Amritsar the ‘think –tank’ behind this conference was the Conference Co-Chair. He praised the college, calling it one of the possibly best venues for hosting a Conference of this stature and status.

Dr. Bhanu Prasad, Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida USA, an expert in the area of Artificial Intelligence was the keynote speaker. Artificial intelligence is based on the claim that the intelligence is not the sole property of humans but can be artificially simulated by machines.  Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing are both highly technical and specialized dynamic research areas and are the backbone of upcoming applications in computing technologies. On the first day papers were presented on the topics – WWW Applications and Technologies, High Performance Computing, Programming and Integrative Technology, Computer Vision, Image Processing, Security and Privacy Distributed System and Mobile Agents Mobile Computing.

For the first Technical Session, the Guest of Honour was Dr. Yogesh Chaba, GJU, Hisar. the Session Chair was Dr. Karanjeet Singh Kahlon, GNDU, Amristar and the Judge for the best paper was Dr. Deepak Garg, Thapar University, Patiala. For second Technical Session, the Guest of Honour was Dr. A. K. Verma, Thapar University, Patiala, the Session Chair was Dr. Gurvinder Singh, GNDU, Amritsar and the Judge for the best paper was Dr. Harsh Verma, NIT, Jalandhar. The convener of the conference is Ms. Roopali Sood, and Mr. Jagmohan Mago and Mr. Munish Gupta are the organizing secretaries.

This Conference is a magnificent opportunity for the students, researchers and teaching fraternity of the entire region to acquaint themselves with the latest in Communication and Computing Technologies. The proceedings on the first day of the conference were followed by a cultural evening in the honour of the international resource persons. The evening sparkled with the finest that Indian performing art has to offer. A skit on Common Wealth scam, mimicry on Global Warming, Gazal, Sufi Song and Santoor performance by the students of the college were appreciated by the foreign dignitaries.