What began as a student-led initiative over a decade ago has now matured into the digital backbone of the institute, and this year, IRIS took it even further. With a list of landmark module releases, significant technical upgrades, and improved user experiences across both web and mobile, we laid strong foundations for IRIS as we step confidently into its second decade.
IRIS Web Portal
New Launches
Employee Leave Management module
ELM Dashboard showing balances and calendar
The launch of Employee Leave Management module marked a significant step in digitizing administrative processes at NITK. Designed to simplify how NITK employees apply for, track, and manage their leaves, the module allows users with quick view of leave balances, simpler application workflows, and email updates. Head of Departments can monitor availability and assign substitutes, while the the institute gains complete control over record maintenance.
Within just a month of its launch (April 2025), the system has already processed over 600 leave applications—underscoring both its necessity and immediate impact.
Developers: Vedant Tarale, Aditya Raj Pandia
Product Managers: Ananya Chavali, Aadarsh LN, Fahim Ahmed
Principle Investigators: Dr. Sourav Kanti Addya, Dr. Basavaraj Talawar, Dr. Anand Kumar M, Dr. Biju R Mohan
Research Projects
The Research Projects module digitized the entire lifecycle of faculty-led, externally funded research projects—right from proposal submission and endorsement to fund tracking and inventory management. With streamlined digital approvals, automated generation of Utilisation Certificates, and granular budget oversight, the module enhanced administrative efficiency while ensuring compliance.
Developers: Sanjeev Holla S, Hrushikesh J, Anirudh Prabhakaran, Nikhil Kottoli
Product Manager: Danish Juneja
Project Investigators: Dr. Saumya Hegde, Dr. Mohit Tahiliani
GuestHouse Booking module
Booking Request 
List of Requests
Traditionally, booking of guest house for students had always been a challenging task, with requirements of multiple signatures from various authorities, the newly launched Guesthouse Booking module simplified the reservation process for NITK’s guesthouse facilities by digitizing requests, approvals, and allocation. With role-based requests and easier status stacking, it enabled smoother coordination and efficient management of room availability and occupancy records.
Developers: Bharath N, Anirudh V Gubbi, Hrushikesh J, N Dhruva
Product Manager: Shashank Gupta
PG Research Module
PG Research module faculty Dashboard
The PG Research Module, which was under development for over four years due to the complexity of workflows and changing academic curricula was finally launched. It now, streamlines the majority of the postgraduate research lifecycle at NITK by centralizing key processes—exams, forms, approvals, and evaluation—into a unified digital system. From comprehensive exam registrations and research proposals to synopsis and thesis submissions, each step follows a clearly defined multi-level approval flow. Newly integrated features for synopsis and thesis submission automate communication with external evaluators, sending evaluation requests and following up with timely reminders. Once accepted, evaluators receive the relevant documents and can submit their reviews.
A total of 80 Thesis were submitted and more than 600 external evaluators have been sent invitations for evaluation.
Developers: Abhishek Kumar, Gaurang Vellinkar, Samarth Mayya, Aditya Agarwal, Keerthi Bhushan, Vedant Tarale, Parth Mittal, Pranav Simha
Product Managers: Harsh Jain, Danish Juneja, Fahim Ahmed
Alumni Portal
The new Alumni Portal on IRIS enables a seamless transition for graduating students into NITK’s alumni network. Students are automatically enrolled post-convocation and issued alumni credentials, while pre-2016 graduates can register by submitting their details. Once onboarded, alumni gain access to a dedicated portal where they can update their profiles, generate alumni ID cards, view institute announcements, and stay connected with the NITK community. Built for scalability, the portal sets the foundation for upcoming initiatives such as mentorship programs, alumni contributions, and event participation.
Since launch, over 12 thousand graduates have been onboarded automatically, and more than 100 alumni—including those from the batch of 1977—have actively registered.
Developers: Sanjeev Holla S, Bharath N, Agnirudra Sil
Managers: Vedant Tarale, N Dhruva
Product Managers: Arjun R, Fahim Ahmed
Project Investigator: Dr. Sowmya Kamath
Guardian’s Portal
Guardian’s Dashboard 
SMS Logs management
The newly introduced Guardians Portal on IRIS enhances transparency and engagement by giving parents and guardians controlled access to essential academic information about their ward, allowing them to view attendance summaries, exam results, and important academic updates. This is further supported by BSNL SMS integration, which sends notifications for onboarding and other academic updates. 1041 parents were onboarded from the B. Tech Batch of 2028 and 7,000+ SMS have been sent.
Developers: Vedant Tarale
Product Managers: Fahim Ahmed, Surya Srinivas
Project Investigator: Dr. Rekha Bhat
Revamped Alumni and Corporate Relations Website
The Alumni and Corporate relations website was revamped to better highlight alumni contributions, provide updates on alumni events, and guide users toward signing up on the IRIS Alumni Portal. The corporate relations page showcases details of MoUs and CSR initiatives undertaken by the institute.
Developed using Next.js for better SEO performance, the website has garnered over 22,000 hits since its launch in January 2025.
Developers: Agnirudra Sil, Fahim Ahmed
Project Investigator: Dr. Sowmya Kamath
Department Website revamp (In progress)
The revamp of existing department websites was initiated to standardize the UI/UX across all departments and enable easier content management through an integrated CMS. While the development phase has been completed, data migration is currently underway, with the official launch expected shortly thereafter.
Developers: Minank KP, Pranav Simha
Product Manager: Vandana S
Project Investigator: Dr. Biju R Mohan
Revamped IRIS About Us Website
The “About Us” page of IRIS was redesigned to better reflect our journey, milestones, and the impact we’ve created across the institute. The revamp focused on presenting the modules and its features in a more detailed manner, while also highlighting the contribution of the developers.
Developer: Fahim Ahmed
Product Manager: Arjun R
Manager: Parth Mittal
Revamped CRF Website (In progress)
The development of the new CRF website is also underway which would lead the path for integration of the upcoming CRF procedures on IRIS.
Developer: Debajyoti Pandit
Product Manager: Shashank Gupta
CDC: 6 Months Internship
In view of the evolving trends in placements and internships, a dedicated six-month internship feature was introduced in the CDC module. This allows eligible students to formally apply for such opportunities, with provisions to continue applying to future placement companies if an offer hasn’t been received. Complementing this, a new category was added to Gyan where students undergoing six-month internships can share insights on their preparation, interview experience, and on-the-job learnings.
Developers: Anirudh V Gubbi, Bharath N, Harshit Gupta
Product Manager: Shashank Gupta
Manager: N Dhruva
Mess Feedback and Analysis
A new Mess Feedback and Analysis system was rolled out to gather structured feedback from students about their dining experience. Integrated within IRIS, this system notifies students to submit monthly feedback. The responses are aggregated and visualized for Mess Committees and Hostel Office.
Developer: Calisto Mathias
Manager: Vedant Tarale
Useful Links
Useful Links was introduced as a centralized links aggregator, offering quick access to important websites and resources across the institute. It compiles links to institute services, department portals, club websites, and official documents.
Developer: Bharath N
Product Manager: Fahim Ahmed
Manager: Sanjeev Holla S
IRIS IdP – SAML Authentication
To simplify authentication across institute-wide applications, IRIS introduced its Single Sign-On (SSO) supported via the SAML 2.0 protocol, allows third-party apps developed by NITK faculty or students to integrate “Sign in with IRIS” as their authentication mechanism. This enables secure, seamless access without the need for separate credentials, providing only basic identity details such as name, email, roll/ID number, and optionally, IRIS roles. As part of this initiative, IRIS also became a registered Identity Provider under the Indian Access Management Federation (INFED). About 70k+ authentications have been performed.
Developers: Akshay Revankar, Sushanth S Rao
FTTH Selfcare Portal
The FTTH (Fiber to the Home) Selfcare Portal was developed to streamline the management of campus internet connections for NITK Resident Employees using the FTTH service. A total of more than 230 connections are managed.
Developer: Akshay Revankar
Ruby Version Upgrade
The most significant undertaking by IRIS Team this year was the migration of the IRIS Rails application from Ruby version 2.6.1 to Ruby version 3.4.1 and Rails version 6.1.1 to Rails v 7.0.8.7. This involed significant application level changes inorder to account for deprecations, dependancy clashes and core changes with Ruby itself. Two sandboxing deployments were set up to test all the changes and functioning of the core modules before the production deployment. With the upgraded Ruby and Rails versions we expect better performance. This also clears blockers for future integrations with other services for used monitoring, logging and also a complete deployment architecture overhaul.
Contributors: Vedant Tarale, N Dhruva, Sanjeev Holla S, Parth Mittal, Sushanth S Rao, Addhyan Malhotra, Akshay Revankar, Amogh Umesh, Vinayak Vatsalya, Abdul Wasey
Enhancements and Fixes
Course Registration refactor
The refactor aimed at segregating the Course Registration controller out of the Courses controller. Along with it, involved addition of a registration type field for students giving them an option to choose whether its a Elective, Open Elective, etc. Additionally, some UI improvements are being made to the faculty green forms.
Developer: Sanjeev Holla S, Agnirudra Sil, Nilansh Gupta
Product Manager: Fahim Ahmed
Managers: Vedant Tarale, N Dhruva
Admission Contact Verification
Introduced OTP-based phone number verification for parents’ contact details, now mandated for all B.Tech students. This process is executed during the time of admission to ensure authenticity.
Developer: Vedant Tarale
Sign In with Apple
Integrated “Sign in with Apple” as an additional authentication method on IRIS, enhancing user convenience and privacy. APIs were also enabled to extend this functionality to the IRIS mobile app.
Developer: Anirudh V Gubbi
Hostel Complaints Improvements
Enhanced the module with advanced filtering options across multiple fields to streamline ticket management for Hostel Complaints Authority and CCC. Additionally, introduced a report generation feature to track and analyze monthly complaint resolution data.
Developers: Aditya Raj Pandia, N Dhruva
Product Manager: Akash Gowda
New Service Requests
Significant enhancements were made to the Service Requests framework, which served as the foundation for the Employee Leave Management module. 5 new templates were also introduced for CCC to support Captive Portal provisioning, institute subdomain and email requests, and VPN access for NITK employees.
Developer: Vedant Tarale
Dashboard Improvements
Enabled view of the number of classes required to maintain 75% attendance through student dashboard attendance cards, helping students track their attendance more effectively. Additionally, minor UI improvements were made, including an option to hide CGPA from the dashboard.
Developer: Bharath N
Manager: Vedant Tarale
Infrastructure module improvements
Enhanced the module by enabling forwarders and approvers to view the club affiliation of the convener directly from the request. Additionally, an admin booking feature was introduced, allowing infra approvers to create bookings on behalf of users, with automated confirmation emails sent to the concerned individuals.
Developer: Minank KP
Product Managers: Fahim Ahmed, Arjun R
Manager: Vedant Tarale
Mess Allotment reservation
Introduced batch-wise seat caps within mess allocations to reserve a specific number of seats for certain batches. This feature was particularly useful in scenarios like first-year boys messes, where options are limited, ensuring that adequate seats remain available for them even when the mess is open to others.
Developer: Vedant Tarale
Product Managers: Fahim Ahmed
Convocation 2024
For the 2024 Convocation, a new requirement was introduced to generate a structured seating list after registration that enabled two students to be called on stage simultaneously—one from the left and one from the right column of the auditorium. This arrangement significantly streamlined the degree awarding process, reduced on-stage confusion, and helped conclude the ceremony over an hour ahead of schedule, making it one of the smoothest convocations conducted at NITK in recent times.
Developer: Vedant Tarale
Product Managers: Fahim Ahmed
SAML Dashboard (In progress)
A dashboard was developed to monitor the use IRIS SAML and the service providers it is being connected with.
Developer: Utsav Bhamra
Product Managers: Vedant Tarale
FCM upgrade + Sentry migration
Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), a push notification service by Google, is used by IRIS to send push notifications to the flutter app and also on the web platform. Following the deprecation of older FCM endpoints the FCM gem along with the necessary application code were updated to ensure that push notifications service remains active.
On a similar note a migration was done from the deprecated sentry-raven gem (which was used to push application runtime errors to Sentry) to the sentry-ruby gem.
Contributors: Vedant Tarale, Dhruva N, Devaansh Kumar, Vinit K Puranik
IRIS App
The IRIS App team is proud to report significant growth over the past year, with installs increasing from 7,000 to over 18,000. Our active user base has more than doubled, rising from 3,100 to 6,800.
New Launches
Flutter Version Upgrades
The IRIS app saw two major Flutter upgrades over the year—first from v3.0 to v3.19, and then to v3.27. These upgrades brought improved performance, better stability, ensuring the app stays up-to-date with the evolving Flutter ecosystem.
Developers: Shashank G and all app team members
Hostel Dashboard
Serving as a centralized module for all hostel-related functionalities, Hostel Dashboard includes access to digital hostel and mess ID cards, real-time mess menu updates, a timeline of mess allotments, and a streamlined interface for logging hostel complaints. Additionally, it offers a transparent view of mess finance and provides quick contact information for hostel authorities, ensuring students have all essential hostel services at their fingertips.
Developers: Nishant A S, Akshat Bharara
Product Manager: Akash Gowda
Credits Tracker
Introduced in the app to help students seamlessly monitor their academic progress, it provides a comprehensive overview of earned credits, both semester-wise and category-wise (e.g., Program core, electives, Mandatory learning courses), allowing students to stay informed about their graduation requirements at a glance.
Developers: Vishak Kamath, Shashank Jain, Shashank G
App Widgets
Two home screen widgets are now available for both Android and iOS platforms—Profile Widget and Timetable Widget. The Profile Widget allows students to quickly view essential details like name, roll number, department etc. without opening the app. The Timetable Widget provides a real-time glance at the day’s schedule, helping students stay on track with their classes effortlessly.
Developers: Vishak Kamath, Aman Revankar
Mess Feedback
Integrated into the app to collect structured, recurring feedback from students regarding their dining experience. Students receive monthly reminders to submit feedback about their mess experience.
Developer: Anirudh V Gubbi
Faculty Dashboard
Brought the faculty side of IRIS to the mobile app, offering a consolidated view of all their courses and teaching commitments. In addition to the dashboard, several supporting modules were introduced to enhance functionality—allowing faculty members to view and edit course details, manage course representatives, and seamlessly create corresponding courses on Moodle. The user experience of the faculty attendance module was improved as well.
Developers: Shashank G, Akshat Bharara
Product Manager: Akash Gowda
Eduroam AutoConnect
Simplify the process of connecting to the campus Wi-Fi! With just one click through the IRIS app, students can now directly configure and connect to the eduroam network—eliminating the need for manual setup or repeated credential entry.
Developers: Nishant A S
NITK Maps
Provides an interactive and comprehensive map of the entire campus, including key locations such as academic departments, laboratories, hostels, lecture halls, administrative buildings, and recreational facilities.
Developers: Abhishek Satpathy, Shashank G
Useful Links
The module allows users to access important resources across the institute and the departments.
Developer: Shashank Jain
Alumni Dashboard
Brought the alumni interface of IRIS to the mobile app, making key post-graduation features easily accessible. It includes a digital Alumni ID Card, graduation details, and institute announcements.
Developers: Vishak Kamath, Shashank Jain, Akshat Bharara, Shashank G
Project Investigator: Dr. Sowmya Kamath
Mess Allotment
Mess allotments were made available directly through the app, allowing students to view and choose their mess preferences with real-time seat availability.
Developer: Akshat Bharara
Event Management
A new module was launched to manage a wide range of events, incorporating features such as schedule tracking, live points tables, access to rulebooks, and an interface for committee members to update event details. The Hostel Premier League 2025 was successfully conducted using this module.
Developers: Abhijith Sogal V, Shashank G, Vinit Puranik
Academic Calendar
Allows students to effortlessly keep track of important academic dates, including semester start and end dates, exam schedules, holidays, and other institute events.
Developer: Yuvraj Wale
Sign In with Apple
Introduced as a new authentication method within the IRIS app, enhancing user convenience and privacy. It allows users to securely log in using their Apple ID, streamlining the sign-in process. Additionally, Sign In with Google authentication was added to the iOS platform as well.
Developers: Anirudh V Gubbi, Aman Revankar
iOS and Android CI/CD
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines were introduced for both iOS and Android app development. These automated workflows streamline build, test, and deployment processes, ensuring faster delivery of updates, improved code quality, and reduced manual intervention.
Developers: Anirudh V Gubbi, Shashank G
Deeplinks (In progress)
Going forward, all the links to any of the web pages of IRIS NITK, when opened on a mobile phone or a tablet will redirect to the app (if the app is installed and the said module is available on app). This will offer better experience for all users as it saves them significant efforts to navigate to any particular module if directed to do so. It will come in handy for modules like Forms, Buy and Sell and many more!
Developers: Vishak Kamath, Shashank G, Nishant A S
Enhancements and Fixes
Attendance Improvements
Faculty Attendance module was updated to be similar to the functionality on the web. The updated module improves UI and adds additional features that make the module easier to use.
Developer: Shashank Jain
Course Registration revamp
Registering for courses has been made easier for the students with the introduction of the Student Course Registration module on app! It doesn’t end here, the faculty side features have also been added where the faculty can view and manage their courses and the respective registrations, all on the app.
Developer: Nishant A S
CDC 6 months internship
The CDC module was enhanced to support 6-month internships. Additionally, designated SPOCs (Single Point of Contacts) were introduced to streamline communication and coordination. The code was also refactored to remove redundant functionalities, upgrade loading times and enhance data management in App. The updated code reduces possible remote and local data issues and improves loading and rendering logic.
Developers: Vishak Kamath, Anirudh V Gubbi, Shashank G
CEMS-Infra Link
Integrated infrastructure booking with the Calendar and Events Management System (CEMS). Users can now directly book campus infrastructure — such as seminar halls, and other classrooms while scheduling events in CEMS, eliminating the need for separate bookings.
Developer: Nishant A S
Roles and Permissions refactor
Refactoring of the app’s roles and permissions system was undertaken to improve maintenance and scalability. The updated codebase now supports more access controls and simplifies management of user roles across various modules.
Developers: Udbhav N, Anirudh V Gubbi
New Tutorial Framework
Framework for User Tutorial for module has been developed to guide users on module functionality to enhance and improve the User Experience.
Developer: Nishant A S
CEMS improvements
Event fetching was enhanced to support multi-month and multi-day events, ensuring they appear accurately across all relevant dates. A toggle switch was added to let users filter between all events and only those from subscribed clubs. The “Manage Subscription” button and the toggle were relocated below the calendar for improved accessibility.
Developers: Shriya Bharadwaj
App Notification fix
Notifications on the app were restored by fixing the broken FCM integration. Auto subscribe has been set as default to all the users and hence there would be no hassle of setting it up in order to not miss any notification.
Developers: Shriya Bharadwaj, Anirudh V Gubbi, Shashank G
Academic calendar pop up view
A pop up card for all events on academic calendar which displays its details and with an “Add to calendar” button which eases the process of setting reminders for the events in the native calendar app.
Developer: Mohnish H Kumar
Infrastructure Booking for Club convenors
Added a club selection drop down for users with Club Convenor role.
Developer: Shriya Bharadwaj
Profile photo fetching issues
The issues regarding blank Profile photos on the dashboard and the excessive loading times were resolved.
Developer: Prabhav P
UI Revamp (In progress)
The app is undergoing a major UI revamp, featuring a cleaner design, improved consistency, and better accessibility across modules—delivering a much smoother and a more intuitive user experience. The release is expected in the upcoming few months.
Developers: Chirag S, Nishant A S, and all app team members
Product Manager: Chirag S, Akash Gowda
IRIS Systems
Load Testing
To ensure IRIS performs reliably under heavy load, especially during hostel allotment, extensive load testing was conducted using k6 by Grafana Labs, with monitoring via Prometheus, InfluxDB, and Node-Exporter. Over several weeks, we simulated scenarios using scripted test users and rooms to stress-test allotment endpoints. Dockerized test environments and retry simulations helped closely replicate actual user behavior. These efforts significantly helped in smooth hostel allotment process for all. More details: here
Developers: Devaansh Kumar, Vinit Puranik, Shanjiv A, Akshat Chaturvedi
Load Balancer upgrades
To improve security and access control for internal services exclusive to the IRIS Team, we migrated from basic authentication at the load balancer level to JWT-based authentication. This allows only users signed in to IRIS and possessing the “IRIS Team” role to seamlessly access protected services without manual credential entry. As part of this upgrade, Nginx was also updated to the latest version.
Developer: Abdul Wasey
System-wide monitoring solution setup using Zabbix
Deployed a comprehensive monitoring solution using Zabbix to enhance the reliability, visibility, and performance of our infrastructure. This setup covers our Proxmox cluster and all services that run on it. By leveraging tailored Zabbix templates for each service, we monitor critical metrics such as system health, resource utilization, service availability, and SSL certificate validity in real time.
We integrated with our Discord for instant alerting, ensuring rapid incident response and minimal downtime.
Developers: Abdul Wasey, Shanjiv A
Staging fixes and security improvements
Several backend and infrastructure-level fixes were implemented to enhance the reliability and security of the IRIS staging environment. A separate session cookie is now used per deployment to prevent session collisions, and volume support has been added for each deployed container to improve persistence and isolation. Additionally, the project was open-sourced under the MIT License, promoting transparency and collaboration with the broader community. Github Repository
Developers: Ashutosh Shukla, Shanjiv A
Ruby 3 upgrade testing support and Sandbox IRIS
To reliably test the upgrade to Ruby 3 before full migration, we replicated production setting and spun up multiple pre-production instances of IRIS. This allowed us to validate compatibility and stability, ensuring a smoother transition.
Developers: Devaansh Kumar, Vedant Tarale
Service migrations from Proxmox1, Proxmox4 and Proxmox5 to the newly acquired server cluster
Our infrastructure was upgraded this year when we received 5 new physical servers and set up Proxmox as a cluster on all 5 nodes. This was important for us since we could now handle up to 2 host node failure reliably without loss of any data. All services from our previous servers were migrated to the new cluster one by one using Proxmox Backup server leading to migration of over 30 services with zero downtime and almost no configuration changes.
Developers: Abdul Wasey, Devaansh Kumar, Vedant Tarale, Vinit Puranik
GitLab Dockerisation
Our Gitlab was running on a very old version and on old servers. We migrated gitlab onto the new proxmox server on the latest version and proceeded to separate Gitlab server and Gitlab Runners (which is used for running pipelines) onto separate containers in order to use resources more efficiently.
Developer: Abdul Wasey
MySQL DB replication (In progress)
We are implementing database replication to ensure high availability, scalability, and data integrity, critical for maintaining seamless operations in high-transaction environments. Replication creates synchronized data copies across multiple servers, enabling failover to minimize downtime during primary server failures, distributing read queries for load balancing to enhance performance, and providing redundancy for disaster recovery against hardware or network issues. This ensures reliable access to critical data, supporting IRIS’s need for uninterrupted service and robust data protection.
We chose MySQL Group Replication, MySQL Router, and ProxySQL, for its comprehensive, scalable, and fault-tolerant features. Group Replication was selected for its ability to synchronize data across nodes in single-primary or multi-primary modes, with single-primary mode chosen to ensure strict consistency by funneling writes through one node, avoiding conflicts in high-write scenarios. Before and after consistency is enforced to maintain data integrity across transactions through sequential execution. ProxySQL was picked for its efficient read/write splitting, routing queries to low-latency replicas to optimize performance. MySQL Router was chosen for its lightweight, low-configuration traffic routing to primary or read-only replicas, suiting simpler setups. This combination aligns with our goal of deploying a high-performance, fault-tolerant database solution. Through active testing, We aim to deploy a solution that ensures fault-tolerant, high-performance databases, delivering reliable and efficient operations.
Developers: Ashutosh Shukla, Mohd Arfath, Shanjiv A
Mentor: Sushanth S Rao
Cloud Disaster Recovery Setup (In progress)
Currently all database backups are stored on NAS which is present in our datacenter. However in case of full datacenter loss, there will be no way to restore the state of IRIS. For this reason we plan to run an instance of IRIS on cloud on standby mode that will only receive traffic if the datacenter cannot function. We will begin this by first migrating all backups to cloud. We have chosen AWS S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval as it is ideal for storing infrequently accessed data that still requires millisecond retrieval times. We are currently testing scripts to push backups periodically.
Developers: Ashutosh Shukla, Mohd Arfath
Project Investigators: Dr. Mohit P Tahiliani
Logs migration to Clickhouse (In progress)
We are migrating our logging backend from Elasticsearch to ClickHouse. This change was driven by the need for improved performance and reduced resource consumption. ClickHouse, being a high-performance columnar OLAP database, would allow us to handle log ingestion and querying with much lower latency compared to our previous setup.
Developers: Akshat Chaturvedi, Sushanth S Rao
IRIS Labs
Hardware
UDP Stack on FPGA
This project involved implementing a lightweight UDP ethernet stack , with ethernet at data-link layer, IP at network layer and UDP at transport layer. The build utilised verilog modules to buffer data from the RMII interface of Texas Instruments DP83848 (ethernet phy) .The buffered data underwent checksum through CRC, and the headers at each layer of TCP/IP were verified through a FSM. The testing involved LAN setup including a laptop and the FPGA board (Nexys 4 DDR), the data packets were generated through a python program and transmitted to the board, where the packet was decoded and the payload data was displayed on the LEDs, since the stack supported duplex communication, data packets were generated from the FPGA board aswell , with the position of switches as payload data, and wrapped and transferred to the Laptop, which was detected by Wireshark, decoded and the data was displayed on a GUI window.
Developers: Preetam Bolla, Ahan Shetty, Kushal Gowda, Syed Abubaker
Remote FPGA Setup
The remote FPGA setup consists of a remote desktop connected to a PYNQ-Z2 FPGA board and hosting a web server that allows users from different locations to access the system through a browser. The website provides SSH login instructions for advanced users to remotely connect to the FPGA via terminal. A dedicated interaction hub on the website displays a live camera feed of the PYNQ-Z2 board, allowing users to visually monitor the FPGA’s behavior in real-time. Additionally, the website includes four virtual buttons that simulate physical button presses on the FPGA. This simulation is achieved by the remote desktop sending serial commands to an Arduino connected to it. The Arduino controls a 4-channel relay module, with each relay corresponding to one of the FPGA’s buttons. When a virtual button is pressed on the website, the Arduino activates the appropriate relay to momentarily short the corresponding button’s pins on the FPGA, effectively emulating a real button press.
Developers: Keerthi Bhushan, Vignesh Karthik, Vinit Puranik
Software
Automatic Documentation (In progress)
Developed an automatic documentation generator leveraging generative AI and contextual understanding of the IRIS codebase to produce baseline documentation for code modules. A novel parsing and clustering algorithm was designed to extract, group, and structure relevant logic segments, serving as a robust starting point for future development and onboarding.
Developers: Rudra Gandhi, Akhil Sakthieswaran
Profanity Checker
A sister service developed for content moderation and to prevent the use of inappropriate language across student-submitted gyans and feedback modules to ensure a more respectful digital environment. The integration of this service has begun with the Gyan Module, and it will eventually be extended to multiple IRIS modules, given favourable circumstances.
Developers: Pranav Vinodh, Pranav Bhat, Anush Revankar
Semantic Code Search (In progress)
A review paper is currently in progress, focusing on recent advancements in semantic search techniques, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). The paper aims to consolidate state-of-the-art research and practical implementations.
Contributors: Shruti Hedge, Pranavee Harish, Aadarsh Ramachandran
Miscellaneous
Bootcamps and KSS
As part of our knowledge-sharing and onboarding initiatives, we conducted dedicated App, Web, and Hardware Bootcamps to equip NITK students with the technical skills necessary to join the IRIS development teams. The best performers from each track were onboarded to our team.
The App Bootcamp focused on Dart basics, Flutter widgets, navigation, local storage, APIs, and BLoC-based state management. Over 80 students participated, and 200 minutes of hands-on tutorials was uploaded to our YouTube channel to aid asynchronous learning.
The Web Bootcamp introduced participants to core web concepts including Web Fundamentals, Ruby programming, MVC architecture, authentication & authorization, and database associations & validations. A comprehensive 6-video playlist was made available on YouTube, with 70+ students engaging actively.
The Hardware Bootcamp provided exposure to SoCs and RISC-V architecture, interconnects, firmware fundamentals, and driver essentials over four intensive offline sessions, drawing participation from over 50 students.
To reinforce learning, weekly coding assignments were shared via GitHub Classroom, allowing students to practice in a version-controlled and review-friendly environment.
In addition, we organised a hands-on session, Introduction to Self-Hosting, which covered the setup of personal cloud services, media servers, and VMs—empowering students to take control of their hosting infrastructure.
Media & Publicity
Socials
This year, the IRIS team ramped up its digital presence with over 30 posts on Instagram and crossing 100 tweets on X (formerly Twitter), while also maintaining an active presence on LinkedIn. We experimented with new content formats like Instagram Reels, including a Spotify-style year wrap-up, a short skit on Eduroam, and interactive product demos to creatively engage the student community and showcase our work.
Contributors: Mayank Tiwari, Shrinivas S Hongal, Chirag S, Kushal Gowda, Vinit Puranik, Parth Mittal, Fahim Ahmed
IDE Bootcamp
Team IRIS had the privilege of showcasing the IRIS Portal and its various modules at the Innovation, Design, & Entrepreneurship (IDE) Bootcamp held at NITK Surathkal, one of the locations for this nationwide event organized by AICTE and Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell.
With 300+ students from across India in attendance, we had the opportunity to engage with a diverse audience from various institutions. Our team proudly demonstrated the impact of IRIS at NITK, receiving positive feedback and fostering connections throughout the event.
Statistics
The above graph represents the Controller-wise Hits over the past year. The top modules were:
1. Students with 9M+ hits
2. Courses with 5.5M+ hits
3. TimeTable with 5M+ hits
4. Roles (actions required to check access and roles of users) with 4.5M hits.
IRIS’ Daily Active Users 
IRIS’ Daily User Activity
IRIS saw a peak of 6464 active users on 10th October 2024, and the user activity peaked on 14th May being the highest courtesy of even semester grade finalisation.
List of Team Members
Core Team
| Sl. No. | Name | Position | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | Vedant Anup Tarale | Tech Lead | 2025 | Electronics & Communication |
| 2. | Fahim Ahmed | Admin Lead | 2025 | Information Technology |
| 3. | N Dhruva | Head of Maintenance | 2025 | Electronics & Communication |
| 4. | Anirudh V Gubbi | Head of Development | 2025 | Computer Science |
| 5. | Devaansh Kumar | Systems Lead | 2025 | Computer Science |
| 6. | K Vinit Puranik | Systems Lead | 2025 | Electronics & Communication |
| 7. | Shashank G | App Lead | 2025 | Computer Science |
| 8. | Sanjeev Holla S | Web Lead | 2026 | Information Technology |
| 9. | Minank K P | Web Lead | 2025 | Information Technology |
| 10. | Aadarsh L N | Product Lead | 2025 | Computer Science |
| 11. | Keerthi Bhushan M | Labs Hardware Lead | 2025 | Electronics & Communication |
| 12. | Hriday Mehta | Labs Software Lead | 2025 | Mechanical |
Web Team
| Sl. No. | Name | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | Aditya Raj Pandia | 2026 | Electronics & Communication |
| 2. | Bharath N | 2026 | Information Technology |
| 3. | Anush Revankar | 2026 | Artificial Intelligence |
| 4. | Pranav Simha N | 2026 | Electronics & Communication |
| 5. | Agnirudra Sil | 2027 | Civil |
| 6. | Utsav Bhamra | 2027 | Computer Science |
| 7. | Nikhil Kottoli | 2027 | Computer Science |
| 8. | Nilansh Gupta | 2027 | Mechanical |
| 9. | Debajyoti Pandit | 2027 | Information Technology |
| 10. | Abhimanyu Kapoor | 2028 | Computation and Data Science |
| 11. | Harshith Vellapha | 2028 | Information Technology |
| 12. | Aditi Pandey | 2027 | Information Technology |
| 13. | Shouryadip Chakraborthy | 2028 | Electronics & Communication |
App Team
| Sl. No. | Name | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | Abhishek Satpathy | 2025 | Information Technology |
| 2. | Yuvraj Wale | 2025 | Electrical & Electronics |
| 3. | Chirag S | 2026 | Computer Science |
| 4. | Shashank Jain | 2026 | Information Technology |
| 5. | M Vishak Kamath | 2026 | Electronics & Communication |
| 6. | Aman Revankar | 2026 | Information Technology |
| 7. | Nishant A S | 2027 | Electrical & Electronics |
| 8. | Akshat Bharara | 2027 | Computer Science |
| 9. | Abhijith Sogal V | 2027 | Civil |
| 10 | Mohnish Hemanth Kumar | 2027 | Computer Science |
| 11. | Prabhav P | 2028 | Information Technology |
| 12. | Udbhav N | 2028 | Computation and Data Science |
| 13. | Shriya Bharadwaj | 2028 | Artificial Intelligence |
Systems Team
| Sl. No. | Name | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | Mohd Arfath | 2025 | Mechanical |
| 2. | Abdul Wasey | 2026 | Metallurgy |
| 3. | Ashutosh Vikash Shukla | 2026 | Information Technology |
| 4. | Akshat Chaturvedi | 2026 | Information Technology |
| 5. | Shanjiv A | 2027 | Computer Science |
| 6. | Mohanish Khatri | 2027 | Electrical & Electronics |
| 7. | Abhyuday K Hegde | 2028 | Computer Science |
Product Team
| Sl. No. | Name | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | Vandana S | 2025 | Electronics & Communication |
| 2. | Akash Gowda H U | 2026 | Mechanical |
| 3. | Arjun R | 2026 | Computer Science |
| 4. | Shashank Gupta | 2026 | Information Technology |
| 5. | Surya Srinivas | 2027 | Electrical & Electronics |
| 6. | Penakacharla Harshith | 2027 | Chemical |
| 7. | Suggula Vamshi Krishna | 2027 | Mechanical |
| 8. | Siddharth Srivastava | 2027 | Mining |
Labs Hardware Team
| Sl. No. | Name | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | V Vignesh Karthik | 2025 | Electronics & Communication |
| 2. | Preetam Bolla | 2025 | Electrical & Electronics |
| 3. | Kushal Gowda C R | 2026 | Electronics & Communication |
| 4. | Syed Abubaker Bin Junaid | 2026 | Electronics & Communication |
| 5. | Ahan Prasannakumar Shetty | 2027 | Electronics & Communication |
| 6. | Adhitya Santhanam | 2027 | Electronics & Communication |
| 7. | Adithya A | 2027 | Electronics & Communication |
Labs Software Team
| Sl. No. | Name | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | Harshith Puram | 2025 | Computer Science |
| 2. | Druvika Nuthalapati | 2025 | Electrical & Electronics |
| 3. | Pranav Vinodh | 2027 | Information Technology |
| 4. | Aadharsh Ramachandran | 2027 | Computer Science |
| 5. | Pranav Bhat P | 2027 | Information Technology |
| 6. | Rudra Nikunjkumar Gandhi | 2027 | Electronics & Communication |
| 7. | Pranavee Chinmayee Harish | 2027 | Electronics & Communication |
| 8. | Shruti Ramesh Hegde | 2027 | Electronics & Communication |
| 9. | Akhil Sakthieswaran | 2027 | Computer Science |
Media Team
| Sl. No. | Name | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | Shrinivas S Hongal | 2027 | Mechanical |
| 2. | Mayank Tiwari | 2028 | Civil |
Alumni Mentors
| Sl. No. | Name | Batch | Branch |
| 1. | Akshay Revankar | 2018 | Electronics & Communication |
| 2. | Sushanth Satesh Rao | 2023 | Electrical & Electronics |
| 3. | Parth Mittal | 2024 | Electronics & Communication |
| 4. | Danish Juneja | 2024 | Electronics & Communication |
| 5. | K A Gaganashree | 2024 | Electronics & Communication |
| 6. | Gaurang Velingkar | 2023 | Information Technology |
| 7. | Salman Shah | 2019 | Information Technology |
| 8. | Harsh Vardhan Jain | 2022 | Electronics & Communication |
| 9. | Guhan Sidharth M | 2023 | Mechanical |
| 10. | Vithik Shah | 2021 | Information Technology |
Faculty
| Sl. No. | Name | Role |
| 1. | Dr. Mohit P Tahiliani | Faculty Advisor, IRIS, NITK |
| 2. | Dr. Anand Kumar M | Professor-in-Charge, MIS Office |
| 3. | Dr. Basavraj Talwar | Former Faculty-in-Charge, MIS Office |
| 4. | Dr. K V Gangadharan | Dean Planning and Development & CSD Coordinator |
MIS Officers
| Sl. No. | Name |
| 1. | Mr. Gangadhara B |
| 2. | Mr. Arun Kumar |
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