A third year student of electronics and telecommunications, Rohit says, “I was thrilled when I first received the news, although I had won the nationals, I didn’t know that I’ll make it to final four.” The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), UK has centres in countries around the world and conducts examinations on a national level based on research in varied fields done by engineering students. The national winner then goes for the international competition. With participants competing from 40 countries, Rohit is the first Puneite to make it to the nationals and the finals.

A research paper titled A Semantically Secure Public Key Cryptosystem Algorithm—Design and Implementation is in the offing this November. Rohit always aspired to make it big in the field of research. When asked how he developed interest in research, he says, “I was in Dynan Prabhodhini. From Std VIII onward, we had to do different projects for which we had to carry out the research. Gradually, I developed a keen interest in this field.”

Interestingly, Rohit has developed an algorithm related to cryptography. “But I’m not interested in patenting it,” he says. Giving ancedotes about the algorithm, he recalls, “I was into intensive reading and suddenly one day I solved this particular problem. Since I wasn’t sure about it, I approached my mathematics teacher V V Joshi who helped me understand the problem better. Later, Professor Madhuri Joshi, HOD of E&TC at COEP and Nitin Narappanawar, faculty of Department of Embedded Systems at IsqIT guided me further.” In fact, Madhuri Joshi and Narappanawar were also co-authors of Rohit’s paper, A Probably Secure Public Key Crytosystem based on Diophantine Equations, that was published in the international journal of IADIS International Conference held in Lisbon, this July. “Also my college director, A D Sahasrabuddhe encouraged me to fulfill my endeavour,” says Rohit.

Rohit’s parents hold posts in administration. “But no one in my family has been into research or a related field”, he says. A scholar by nature, Rohit has incidentally also scored a creditable ,520 out of 1,600 in GRE.