MM School of Architecture organised a guest lecture on 26th February, 2018, by Dr. Rajendra Shende, former Director, United Nations Environmental Programme, Paris and a leading expert in sustainable technologies and policies. He is currently, Chairman, TERRE Policy Centre and advisor to Media India Group and Board of Council, IIM Rohtak’s Incubator-Bizdome and has launched ‘Smart Campus Cloud Network’ for bringing sustainability to educational campuses.

Prof. Aradhana Jindal, Principal welcomed the guest speaker and addressed the students and faculty, talking about the crowning achievements of Dr. Shende.

Dr. Rajendra Shende, then began the extremely informative and motivational talk on “Smart Campus Cloud Network”, which is basically a global network of the education campuses of schools, colleges, institutes and universities committed to make a tangible contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while focusing on efficient management of resources.

As per Dr. Shende, what could be the most appropriate place to begin the long journey by taking small but determined first steps towards meeting 17 comprehensive SDGs with their 169 targets in next 15 years other than the educational institutes. Education campuses are where youth talents are incubated, aspiring minds are molded, transformative actions are forged and development targets are prioritized. In a way, it is a Start-up of Start-ups to achieve SDGs.

Dr. Shende told that it is not surprising that most educational campuses are one of the major consumers of natural resources like electricity, water and other consumables. The network will establish a cloud hosted Internet of Things (IOT) platform for energy, water and air quality, which will encourage campuses to reduce their carbon footprint by inducing behavioural changes through analytics, and deployment of sustainable business models for energy efficient and green energy solutions.Also, the vision of the Smart Campus Cloud Network stems from the need of skilled resources and piloting of the projects essential for the larger objective of creating a world of Sustainable Living.

The motto of the network is “being smart by learning to be sustainable’. Therefore, Dr. Shende motivated the students to start the “learning by doing” sustainable network within our own campus which is basically to help the youth to be prepared for building Smart Cities of the future and contributing to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) through practical experience in their own educational campus.

With such inspirational talks, Dr. Shende had filled the young minds with great spirit. The lecture was followed by a brief interactive session and a token of respect was awarded to Dr. Rajendra Shende by Prof. Aradhana Jindal, Principal.