NI to extend LabVIEW Academy project in India

BANGALORE: National Instruments, a technology pioneer and industry leader in virtual instrumentation, will extend its LabVIEW  Academy Project in various Universities of India in order to prepare students for modern days engineering and science challenges.

Ray Almgren, National Instruments' vice president, Product Marketing and Academic, told CIOL on the sideline of the recently held Educators Day 2008, that LabVIEW Academies will be set up at various colleges with latest equipment and syllabus. The students trained under the project will be will be offered certificates on successful completion of the course which will make them qualified to use NI's equipments in the industry.

According to Almgren under the LabVIEW project, colleges will be equipped with flexible software and modular hardware that work with mainstream computer technologies to help integrate theoretical concepts with real-world applications. This virtual instrumentation, gives engineering and scientists the ability to capitalize on the ever-increasing performance of PCs and define their own solutions, whether in the classroom for a design project or in the research laboratory.

NI is also working with the teaching community of engineering colleges with a view to keep them abreast with latest advancements in technology. The LabVIEW project will provide educators an intuitive graphical interface for teaching theory, design, simulation, prototyping, and deployment of custom designs to a range of hardware targets.

NI has collaborated with academia in colleges around the world to provide the latest, industry-standard technologies to help inspire students to pursue engineering and science degrees, facilitate their learning experience, and improve retention. NI  provides products and resources to universities in more than 110 countries and more than five thousand classrooms, the NI vice president said.

Almgren is of the view that traditional disciplines like electrical or civil engineering play a vital role in the development of any economy. Today, there is a general concern that not many students who pass out from engineering colleges are not competitive enough face the industrial challenges adding that under the LabVIEW project, each year, thousands of engineering graduates were entering the workforce with extensive knowledge.

Growth drivers

According to the NI vice president, despite the global recession there will be little impact on company's business. He said the LabVIEW, PCI and Compact Real project lines have been driving the company's  growth world wide and Asia in particular has been a strong contributor to the revenues.

He said that NI has scaled down growth projection to 10 percent for the 2008 Q4. "The growth in first three quarters of 20008 had been 17 percent for NI, with volatility in markets we expect a dip in our growth during Q4," the NI VP said, while adding that military and education spending will continue to be constant across the global market.