Nebula'08
The inaugural edition of Nebula, Nebula'08, was launched in September 2008 and was open to all students enrolled into Indian Univerisities. The contest was held in three rounds - Planetary Stage, Emission Stage & Stellar Nursery.
The prize money was as follows:
- Rs. 30,000 for First Prize
- Rs. 20,000 for Second Prize
- Rs. 10,000 for Third Prize
Nebula'08 was an instant success with over 1200 students registering for the event from all over the country. Planetary Stage was an online quiz where the participant had an hour to answer 20 objective-type questions. Focus of the questions was to test the fundamentals of the participant in areas like circuit theory, signals and systems and feedback. Over 60 participants cleared the quiz to enter Emission Stage.
In the Emission Stage, the qualifiers were given two subjective-type questions. They were introduced to a design problem and asked to compare two provided solutions for various performance metrics. The problem would expose them to non-idealities and trade-offs involved in design. The participants had 3 weeks to understand the system and submit their reports. As the Emission Stage concluded, 12 students were invited to visit our design center in Bangalore for the Stellar Nursery.
Stellar Nursery was held on 20th December. All the 12 finalists were asked to design an analog system from scratch, using a few basic components. The students could interact and discuss with our design engineers to provide a complete solution. The challenge was to address a real-world problem in design while having the opportunity to discuss with resourceful engineers, in a scenario as real as possible in a team. At the end of the day, 3 solutions were declared as prize-winners.
Eeshan Miglani from IIT-Madras (fourth from left) won the first prize, Timir Nandi from NIT-Surathkal (first from right) won the second prize and Muthusubramaniam NV from IIT-Madras (not seen in the picture) won the third prize.
Nebula'08 came to a conclusion on the evening of Stellar Nursery with a prize-distribution ceremony followed by dinner where the finalists could interact with the founding members of Cosmic.