Lucknow boy, who topped IIT-Bhilai, receives President’s gold medal

Lucknow: Bringing laurels to his hometown Lucknow, Shashwat Jaiswal, 23, recently received the President's Gold Medal from President Droupadi Murmu for being the top performer in IIT-Bhilai's graduating class of 2023.Shashwat scored a 9.8 cumulative grade point average (CGPA) out of 10.A computer science engineer, Shashwat is currently pursuing PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which is among the top five universities for computer science studies."Even before finishing my BTech last year, I had both domestic and international job offers from companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Accenture, but I didn't pick them as I wanted to pursue research," he said.Prior to this, Shashwat had two more stints abroad. He earned research fellowships from the Canadian govt to conduct research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, for two consecutive years – in the summer of 2022 and 2023. "Here, I conducted research on improving the performance of edge systems like drones and conserving resources like batteries in 2022; and detecting attacks and anomalies in the same in 2023," Shashwat said.Shashwat is credited with leading the development of the EVM Management System (EMS) 2.0 for the Election Commission of India on behalf of IIT-Bhilai, through his startup Saeternus Innovations Pvt Ltd. This was a one-year-long project worth Rs 3.6 crore. EMS 2.0 facilitated the General Elections of 2024 by providing critical software infrastructure for various election processes and stakeholders involved."This system allowed for seamless management of ECI's hardware inventory of EVMs, VVPATs, and control units along with facilitation and tracking of other election processes like various stages of inspection, randomisation, and transportation of machines. EMS 2.0 went live in the middle of 2023 and shall be used for all state and national elections henceforth," said Shashwat, an alumnus of St Francis' College, Lucknow.His mother, Archana Gupta, said: "Shashwat's passion for computers and research has brought him to a level where not only his parents and teachers but the entire society is proud of him. His goal is to bring a change in society and the world through technical research and innovation."
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