With over 3,000 graduates that are currently empowering over 250 multinational and local blue-chip companies, the Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) is renowned for producing innovators, entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Obhasha Priyanka is a multi-talented IIT graduate who is currently employed as a Software Engineer at 99X technology. Following are excerpts of the interview with Obhasha who shared his thoughts on his journey towards becoming a software engineer.
Obhasha studied at Kingswood College, Kandy and graduated with a first class honors from University of Westminster last year. He started working at 99X technology right after the final year, even before his graduation as he had to do a one year internship at a company as part of his programme curriculum. With that he started the master’s degree at IIT to gain more value.
Higher education at IIT
He thought of doing higher education at IIT, mainly because it is one of the most reputable and oldest institutes in Sri Lanka and University of Westminster has great recognition. Even at a young age Obhasha was very keen to learn about computer technology, soon after the advanced level examinations he enrolled at IIT. “It was one of the best decisions I made in my life,” he said.
During his days at IIT, Obhasha held many leadership positions like the batch representative, Education Director of IEEE students’ a branch of IIT and organized several events and sessions. The institution gave him the chance to develop such leadership skills in addition to an excellent education.
Student life
At IIT, the student life is very balanced and students are given responsibility and ownership to initiate new thoughts, both academic and extra curricular activities, says Obhasha.
“I had an awesome time with the IIT choir, where it helped me a lot to gain valuable exposure. I also should mention the support that lecturers give me at IIT is really commendable. I believe our IEEE committee made a huge impact and conducted the first ever inter university hackathon in Sri Lanka, which led our IEEE student branch to gain a much exposure in Sri Lanka. IIT life is simply one of the best you can expect if you have the right attitude,” he commented.
One of the main achievements, Obhasha said was being a national finalist at the Microsoft Imagine Cup where they developed a very unique concept of a help oriented smart mug to prevent coronary diseases.
“Organizing the first ever inter university hackathon in Sri Lanka was another experience I had. It gave us a huge exposure in the industry and also among all universities in Sri Lanka.”
Shape for corporate success
The academic standards and quality, along with the most important part of the programme, which is the one-year long internship, that gives you the best experience. “That internship truly made my career a success since the most important factor for success in the industry is the positive attitude towards whatever you do. So I would say that the one year internship programme is the key to that success.”
Staff support
At IIT you can easily approach anyone and seek for knowledge support without any barriers. The support given by the staff was really helpful when we were doing group projects even over night, says Obhasha.
“The staff helped us a lot in many different ways. The academic staff at IIT will make sure that you are guided in the right direction while doing many extra curricular activities. The support from IIT was the best.”
IIT conducts internal postgraduate and undergraduate degrees from the University of Westminster (UOW), UK and Robert Gordon University. The University of Westminster degrees offered at IIT are Software Engineering, Business Information System, Business Management and Computer Science with specialization pathways in gaming and computer graphics development, mobile and web computing and multimedia computing.
IIT is an award winning campus, which has bagged many accolades for innovation in local and international competitions such as Microsoft Imagine Cup, National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA), APICTA, British Council-HSBC Youth Enterprise Award and e-Swabhimani.
With its strong international affiliations, outstanding resources and focus on quality higher education, IIT without a doubt is an ideal place for students to follow world renowned IT and Business degrees.
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