Tag Archives: computation

Event: Computational Science Symposium – 1-day conference on CS for Science from ThoughtWorks’

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This year, ThoughtWorks’ Engineering for Research arm is organizing the first Computational Science and Engineering Symposium. The forum will host scientists and researchers from across scientific disciplines, alongside engineers and technologists to discuss and design solutions for computation challenges. We see this as the beginning of a computational-science community building exercise in Indian context.

The Symposium will delve into the three important trends that are disrupting the field of computational science: Data Deluge, Artificial Intelligence, and Complex Modeling and Simulation.

Agenda

8.00 AM – 9.00 AM Registration and Breakfast
9.00 AM – 9.30 AM Welcome Note, E4R Vision and TWI Commitment Sameer Soman, Managing Director, ThoughtWorks India; Harshal Hayatnagarkar, Computer Scientist, ThoughtWorks India
9.30 AM – 9.45 AM Opening Keynote Dr.Raghunath Mashelkar, National Research Professor, Chairman, National Innovation Foundatin and President, Global Research Alliance
9.45 AM – 10.30 AM Computational Astronomy and Astrophysics: Challenges and Opportunities Dr. Yashwant Gupta, Centre Director – National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune
10.30 AM – 10.45 AM Tea Break
10.45 AM – 11.30 AM Data-driven scientific discovery (4th Paradigm of Science) Dr. Vidyadhar Mudkavi, Director – Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, 4th Paradigm Institute, Bengaluru
11.35 AM – 12.20 PM Large-volume and Long-term Data Management Dr. Aparna N, Group Head – Data Centre, National Remote Sensing Centre
12.20 PM – 1.15 PM Lunch Break
1.15 PM – 2.00 PM A small boy and a hammer: Case studies in Data-Intensive science Dr. Mihir Arjunwadkar, Director – Centre for Modeling and Simulation, University of Pune
2.05 PM – 2.50 PM Trends in Data Storage & Analytics Dr. Milind Bhandarkar, Founder CEO of Ampool Inc.
2.50 PM – 3.05 PM Tea Break
3.05 PM – 4.05 PM Breakout sessions 3 tracks: Data Engineering (Dr Neeraj Gupta & Milind Bhandarkar), Data Science + Artifical InteIligence (Dr. Abhijit Kulkarni & Devangana Khokhar), Modeling and Simulation (TBD)
4.05 PM – 4.35 PM Vote of Thanks Unmesh Joshi, Head of Technology, ThoughtWorks India
4.35 PM – 5.30 PM Open Forum Q & A and Networking

Event Details

The event is in Pune, on Saturday, 24th March, from 8am to 5:30pm, Thoughtworks office, Yerawada, Pune.

The event is free, but by invitation only. To request an invitation register here.

Turing100 Lecture: Talk on the Life and work of Edsger Dijkstra

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Persistent System presents a talk on the life and work of Turing Award Winner Edsger Dijkstra, on 22 March, 2pm to 5pm, at the Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent, SB Road.

In 1972, Edsger Dijkstra was given the Turing Award for fundamental contributions to programming as a high, intellectual challenge; for eloquent insistence and practical demonstration that programs should be composed correctly, not just debugged into correctness; for illuminating perception of problems at the foundations of program design. Dijkstra is famous for his graph algorithms (shortest path, minimum spanning tree), for writing the first Algol-60 compiler, which was the first high level language with explicit recursion (which was implemented using stacks), structured programming, and a whole lot of important contributions to practical and theoretical computer science.

He is also the guy who killed the goto.

In this event, Ravindra Naik, Principal Scientist at TRDDC Pune, will touch upon some of the contributions of Dijkstra like – Design of Algorithms, Program Design, Programming Languages, Formal Specification & Verification and OS & Distributed Processing.

This will be followed by a talk on “Art and Science of Programming” by Shailaja Shirwaikar HOD, CS Nowrosjee Wadia College. The talk will present Dijkstra’s programming methodology. From writing short, readable and efficient programs to illustrating his point through the choice of apt examples, Dijkstra was an artist programmer. Structured programming, developing loop invariants to separation of Concerns, and Dijkstra’s emphasis on formalism in development of programs has eventually lead to the Science of programming. The formal approach of program development gives the programmer the confidence in the program developed by him and debugging would be unnecessary. Dijkstra believed in disciplined method of programming which is very relevant to the students of programming.

The event is free for everyone to attend. Register here

About the Turing Awards

The Turing awards, named after Alan Turing, given every year, are the highest achievement that a computer scientist can earn. And the contributions of each Turing award winner are then, arguably, the most important topics in computer science.

About Turing 100 @ Persistent Lecture Series

This is year 2 of the the Turing 100 @ Persistent lecture series. The series started in 2012 to celebrates the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth by having a monthly lecture series, and the success of the talk series in year 1 has resulted in the series being continued in 2013. Each lecture is be presented by an eminent personality from the computer science / technology community in India, and covers the work done by one Turing award winner.

The lecture series has featured, or will feature talks on Ted Codd (Relational Databases), Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn (Internet) Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (Unix), Jim Gray, Barbara Liskov, and others. Latest schedule is here

This is a lecture series that any one in the field of computer science must attend. These lectures will cover the fundamentals of computer science, and all of them are very relevant today.

All the slides and videos of all the talks in the last year are available here.

Fees and Registration

The event will be at Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems, SB Road, from 2pm to 5pm on Saturday 22 March.

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here

Turing100 Lecture: Talk on the Life and work of Andrew Chi-Chih Yao

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In 2000, Andrew Chi-Chih Yao was given the Turing Award In recognition of his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity. For more details of his work, see the Turing Awards website

Jaikumar Radhakrishnan, of TIFR will talk about “Combinatorial Limits on Efficient Computation”, followed by Srikanth Srinivasan, Dept. of Mathematics, IIT Bombay, who will talk about “Yao’s complexity-based theory of pseudorandomness.”

The event is free for everyone to attend. Register here

About the Turing Awards

The Turing awards, named after Alan Turing, given every year, are the highest achievement that a computer scientist can earn. And the contributions of each Turing award winner are then, arguably, the most important topics in computer science.

About Turing 100 @ Persistent Lecture Series

This is year 2 of the the Turing 100 @ Persistent lecture series. The series started in 2012 to celebrates the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth by having a monthly lecture series, and the success of the talk series in year 1 has resulted in the series being continued in 2013. Each lecture is be presented by an eminent personality from the computer science / technology community in India, and covers the work done by one Turing award winner.

The lecture series has featured, or will feature talks on Ted Codd (Relational Databases), Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn (Internet) Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (Unix), Jim Gray, Barbara Liskov, and others. Latest schedule is here

This is a lecture series that any one in the field of computer science must attend. These lectures will cover the fundamentals of computer science, and all of them are very relevant today.

All the slides and videos of all the talks in the last year are available here.

Fees and Registration

The event will be at Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems, SB Road, from 2pm to 5pm on Saturday 25th January.

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here

Pune’s Vivek Kulkarni, Architect at Persistent, publishes book on Theory of Computation

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The Persistent Systems Blog has just published an article about Vivek Kulkarni, a Principal Architect at Persistent, who has published a book, “Theory of Computation” with Oxford university press.

Here is the description of the book:

The book begins with basic concepts such as symbols, alphabets, sets, relations, graphs, strings, and languages. It then delves into the important topics including separate chapters on finite state machine, regular expressions, grammars, pushdown stack, Turing machine, parsing techniques, Post machine, undecidability, and complexity of problems. A chapter on production systems encompasses a computational model which is different from the Turing model, called Markov and labelled Markov algorithms. At the end, the chapter on implementations provides implementation of some key concepts especially related to regular languages using C program codes. A highly detailed pedagogy entailing plenty of solved examples, figures, notes, flowcharts, and end-chapter exercises makes the text student-friendly and easy to understand.

Vivek has written 15 textbooks used in Indian colleges. His latest book is his first with an international publisher. More about his background:

He has more than 18 years of experience in academia and software industry. He has served as a subject chairman for multiple subjects for the Board of Computer Engineering, University of Pune. He has also worked in organizations such as BMC Software, Symantec Corporation, and Tech-Mahindra.

On how he got into writing textbooks:

In my 3rd year as a Computer Engineering student, I was studying Computational Theory and I couldn’t find any reputable Theory of Computationbooks in the market. 5 days prior to the final exam, I finally found a book. Despite being a tough read, I managed to study for the examination. In those 5 days I realized the importance of computational theory for any Computer Science graduate. As a result of this influence, I decided to take up teaching after graduation. My first job was at Cummins Engineering College in Pune, India where I taught only Computational Theory. Few years down the line, I also served as subject chairman on the Board of Computer Engineering, University of Pune.

In 1998, I published my first book on the subject and now with over 15 books on the subject used widely across throughout universities, I wanted to write a reference book, which would be followed by all the Computer Engineering/Science graduates across India and also as a reference book for those who would wish to learn the subject. I am extremely passionate about the subject and still very active as an academician. I voluntarily teach this subject to many engineering graduates from Pune.

And on how was it writing a book with a full-time job:

Hectic is the simple answer. I worked on all Saturdays and Sundays since August 2011 till March 2013, including holidays. Together with many other personal responsibilities, it was a tireless period.

Read the full article