Cisco thingQbator, Paradise of student makers and entrepreneurs in campus

Have you ever thought about a place in your campus where you can reach anytime, make anything, network with each other? Any one of you ever used a common lab or  classroom as your work space?

Here Cisco is coming with an initiative of an open maker space in which students can visit any time, build innovative projects, do μ learning etc. "Cisco thingQbator" is a network of maker spaces in partner Universities where students can learn about digital technologies in a hands on environment, turn their ideas into working prototypes and in the process come up with local solutions to local problems.

The name “thingQbator” (a combination of  ‘Internet of Things’ and ‘Incubator’. thingQbator) was started as an internal incubator to identify and fund IoT ideas originating in Cisco’s engineer community.

CISCO is also giving a wonderful opportunity for students by cohort program. In Cohort program students identify a problem space and a technological solution for that and then apply for cohort program with that solution. CISCO will select 60 students from approximately 20 teams from each thingQbator through some filtration methods and selected students will get an opportunity to work in thingQbator for one year for their project. During this one year time period CISCO will give all the infrastructure facilities as well as components and equipment for the project. This cycle will repeat until the student reaches an MVP level prototype for the project. In the end CISCO will select 3 teams from each thingQbator for a felicitation program in which students can meet investor mentors etc and communicate to a big crowd.

There are 6 thingQbator in india now. IIT Varanasi, IGDTU Delhi, Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetha Coimbatore, TRIDENT Bhuvaneswar, MNIT Alahabad are the campuses which partnered with CISCO for thingQbator program.

Here are few teams who made success from thingQbator.

Team SAK :- Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetham, Coimbatore

ParkingHeros :- IGDTU, Delhi

Vindicators :- Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetham, Coimbatore

BEND :-Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetham, Coimbatore

VGrow:- IITMK, Trivandrum