ACM-India (Association for Computing Machinery) And CSI-Pune (Computer Society of India Pune Chapter) invites you for an event to felicitate Prof. Mathai Joseph on his 75th birthday. 16th June, 4pm, at Persistent Systems, SB Road.
With a distinguished career that spans industry (TRDDC) and academia (TIFR, University of Warwick), Mathai is among the few who have witnessed the story of the Indian software industry unfold.
On this occasion, there is also a talk by Pankaj Jalote, director of IIIT Delhi (earlier HoD CS at IIT-Kanpur).
A Career in Research in Engineering
Talk by Prof. Pankaj Jalote
There is sometimes a lack of clarity about what research is, how is engineering research different from engineering, and what does it mean to be an effective researcher. In this talk we will first discuss what research is, relationship between science and engineering research, difference between academic and industrial research, between applied and basic research, etc. Then we will discuss how research is evaluated and some aspects of building an effective engineering research career.
About the Speaker
Pankaj Jalote is the Director of IIIT-Delhi (Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi). Earlier he has been an Assistant Professor at University of Maryland College Park, Chair Professor at IIT Delhi, and Head of Computer Science Department at IIT Kanpur. He has also been Vice President at Infosys for 2 years, Visiting Researcher at Microsoft in Redmond for 1 year, and Interim Vice Chancellor of Delhi Technological University (DTU) for six months.
He has a B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur, MS from Pennsylvania State University, and Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of five books, some of which have been translated in Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc, and the Indian edition of his text on Software Engineering was adjudged the bestselling book by the publisher. His main area of interest is Software Engineering. He has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Intl. Journal on Empirical Software Engineering, and IEEE Trans. on Services Computing. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and INAE.
followed by
Felicitation of Prof. Mathai Joseph
Prof. Mathai Joseph will be in conversation with Anand Deshpande, Persistent and Venkatesh R, TRDDC.
Registration and fees
The event is on Saturday, 16th June, at 4pm. At Dewang Mehta auditorium, Bhageerath, Persistent Systems, SB Road.
We visited the Philips Healthcare Innovation Center in Pune last month, and spoke with Rekha Ranganathan, VP & Global General Manager, Mobile Surgery & Value Cardiology and Head of Healthcare Innovation Center at Philips.
Philips is doing interesting R&D and Manufacturing work in the healthcare space in Pune, and it was good to learn about the details from her and the Philips team.
Centers like the Philips HIC are good representatives of Pune’s strength in R&D and Manufacturing in core engineering. We hope that in the near future, Philips gets more actively connected with the tech and startup ecosystem in Pune.
Here are excerpts from our interview …
Can you give us an overview of Philips Pune?
BV Vectra mobile fluoroscopic system aka C-Arm X-ray image intensifier that is used in orthopedic surgical procedures, including trauma, spine, and pain management. Developed at Philips HIC Pune.
Philips has a long history in Pune, going back to the Philips Consumer Electronics Factory (established in 1971). The Philips Healthcare Innovation Centre (HIC) in Pune marks another milestone for Philips in India. It was set up in 2012. Philips Healthcare Innovation Center plays an essential role in Philips’ commitment to develop and produce meaningful products and solutions that help improve healthcare for people all over the world. In line with its strategy to expand the company’s global footprint, Philips commenced operations at its first green-field manufacturing facility for imaging systems in India, at Chakan Pune.
HIC Pune is one of the six global Philips’ facilities devoted to manufacturing healthcare technology. It is specifically designed with manufacturing flexibility in mind so that it can quickly adapt to the ever-changing market needs and deliver quality healthcare products that meet international standards, across the globe.
What types of healthcare technologies are being developed here at Philips Pune?
Intuis is an advanced, entry level catheterization lab (cath lab), and is part of Philips’ strategy for extending access to affordable cardiac care in tier-II and tier-III cities in India. It is designed, developed and manufactured at the Philips Healthcare Innovation Center (HIC) in Pune, India.
Since its inception, HIC Pune has launched six global products in the mobile surgery imaging & diagnostic space: Allura FC, Allura Centron, BV Vectra, Primary Diagnost, Mobile DiagnostOpta and Intuis. The last two being the latest releases from the unit. HIC Pune has successfully installed 1000 systems in more than 80 different countries, including countries from western European regions such as France, Italy, Austria, etc.
The state-of-the-art facility integrates research & development, sourcing, testing, assembly and manufacturing under one roof. The team of experts and best-in-class talent from top educational institutes work closely together to bridge the gap between better technology and actual clinical needs. The team’s rich experience in medical product development ensures that the products are designed for quality and reliability. The centre manufactures both interventional and diagnostic X-Ray systems.
How does Pune fit into Philips Healthcare’s global value chain (R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing)?
We are global management hub for Mobile Surgery which is part of the image guided therapy group. We are also one of the few centers globally that caters to emerging and developed markets end-to-end. We are the headquarters for few of the product segments globally in DXR. This means we are responsible for the product strategy, technology roadmap, product program, new product development and life cycle maintenance. Our products are shipped to 80 countries around the world – more products shipped globally. We will also be transferring the manufacturing of our premium mobile ‘C-Arm’ products from our factory in Best, Netherlands to Pune and evolving our current supply base here to meet the challenges of global quality, demand.
What are you future plans for expanding the role, scope of Philips Pune?
In the coming years, Philips HIC plans to expand its production capacity to get maximum efficiency from its factory in Chakan and will also look to widen its R&D portfolio, to bring in smart healthcare solutions for India and for the world , from its manufacturing base and the R&D centre in Pune.
What kind of R&D, Tech, Manufacturing capabilities exist at Philips Pune? Can talk a bit more about specific tech capabilities, skill sets, labs, manufacturing set up?
MobileDiagnost Opta is powerful compact mobile digital X-ray system is designed for all-around performance and fast return on investment. It moves through crowded spaces in the OR, ER, ICU, and general wards with freedom and ease, bringing digital imaging right to the bedside. Speed, power, performance, and affordability make MobileDiagnost Opta a good option for smaller clinics, hospital that require multiple mobile DR systems, or facilities looking for a single system to cover most application needs.
Philips Pune has an ‘end-to-end’ System Development Capability with strong competence on System Architecture, Imaging Chain, Mechatronics, System Software and System Engineering. We have created 6 New Products and released to Global Markets within a span of 4-5 years. In the 5 years since inception, we have been granted 5 patents. We create a strong culture of innovation – we have an internal “Innovation Day” to encourage idea sharing; some of which also have potential for patents. We also work closely with our global organizations to participate in competitions globally and develop the innovation ecosystem.
What challenges did you face in setting up this center?
Availability of technical talents who had experience in ‘End-to-End’ Product development was a problem early on. Also, the creation of full eco system with Supply base, Supply Chain, Manufacturing and Innovation along with understanding of global customer requirements was a key challenge.
What advantages do you see in the Pune tech and manufacturing ecosystem?
Pune has a good core engineering and manufacturing ecosystem. According to latest Zinnov research Pune has the highest number of Core engineering R&D centers and there is a good eco system of suppliers located around Pune. Also the availability of good technology and engineering talent here.
What challenges do you run into at Pune? (Hiring, Quality Talent, Infrastructure, etc.)
Hiring good system architects is a challenge. We are looking for systems architect with high-level thinking, who can have a global approach to product development.
Is Philips India/Pune plugged into the startup ecosystem?
Not yet. But we hope to explore the possible synergies.
CSI Pune presents a talk on “Research in Programming” by Sriram Rajamani, Assistant Managing Director of Microsoft Research India, on July 5, 6pm, at Persistent, SB Road.
Abstract of the Talk
Most people think about programming as a routine implementation activity,
primarily done in the industry, and primarily for economic gain. In this talk
it will be explained, why the topic of programming is an important subject of
research and scientific enquiry, with several interesting and hard questions,
such as: How do you write correct programs? How do you write programs that run
fast on modern multicore processors? What does it take to program the cloud?
How do you debug a large program? Some research projects at Microsoft Research
India will be presented, that aim to address some issues in these questions.
About the speaker – Sriram Rajamani
Sriram holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Currently, he is the assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India. More information on him can be found at: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/sriram/bio.aspx
Fees and Registration
This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here
Just to be clear, we are talking about real mining, the kind where you dig up the earth and extract minerals – not data mining. Software technology is becoming an increasingly important part of mining, and is used in all aspects of mining, including use of sophisticated data analysis and modeling to locate mining sites, analysis to make mining processes more efficient, and also to to improve mineral recovery, and automation to allow remote mining, underground tunneling.
According to the press release, the mining innovation center in Pune will have about 300 engineers focusing on disciplines such as image processing, advanced data mining and analytics, automation and control systems, human factors design and logistics.
This is just one more development that cements Pune’s position as one of the top destinations for technology development at the intersection of software and the “harder” engineering disciplines like manufacturing, mining, automobiles, computer aided design, and computer aided engineering.
Actually, the headline of this article contains a number of inaccuracies. First, the research is just by Ramesh Raskar, but is the work of a group of people, and Ramesh Raskar, Associated Professor at MIT’s Media Lab, and Director of the Camera Culture Group is one of the people in the group. Second, the camera (like everything else in the universe) is not faster than light; but what it does to is simulate the capture of a scene at trillions of frames per second, thus allowing it to capture things like light passing across a scene. Also, because of confusions in the past, I need to point out that we’re talking about the MIT in USA.
More details on the invention (which is actually done by cleverly bending light and then analyzing the results with a computer) can be found here
In any case, the question is, why is this article on PuneTech? Yes, Raskar is a Punekar – he did is engineering in COEP. However, so what? I am against the idea of Indians getting very excited about major achievements by people who grew up here, but really blossomed in environments outside of India.
However, Raskar continues to be relevant to Pune for the following reasons:
He is keen on collaborating with individuals and companies in Pune on various projects.
The last one I see as the most important, and far-reaching. Specifically, Dr. Raskar is interested in collaborating with individuals, entrepreneurs, companies, or institutions on at least two of his projects, if not more. Here are details:
He is hoping to see that his EyeNetra invention reaches the maximum number of people in India – specially rural India. EyeNetra is the handheld, android-based, cheap device to detect vision problems including lens prescription, astigmatism, and cataract. Raskar is looking to collaborate with someone in India who can make this happen – either as a for-profit enterprise, or as a social enterprise. For more details see this PuneTech post
He is hoping that some day, an event similar to MIT’s $100k Entrepreneurship Competition can be created in Pune in particular, or India in general. If there is someone here who can pull this off, Raskar would be able to support the initiative in various ways – including being involved himself, and trying to get people or groups from MIT to also be involved in some way.
Get in touch with Dr. Ramesh Raskar at: raskar@mit.edu (or get in touch with us, and we can introduce you).
TechVista 2011 is a one-day event by Microsoft Research India to Showcase the work done by Microsoft Research worldwide. This year, it is being held in Pune on 21st January. The event consists of two parts: a morning session that consists of keynote lectures (speakers include Rick Rashid; Mathai Joseph), and an afternoon session with demos (technologies from Microsoft Research Labs worldwide), poster sessions (by PhD students across India), and technical lectures (by Microsoft Researchers).
Dr. Richard F. Rashid, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Research, and the head of Microsoft Research worldwide. (Note: Rick Rashid was also the principal developer of the Mach OS Kernel, which influenced many operating systems, including Mac OS X.)
Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India.
Dr. P. Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India.
The morning session will also feature two distinguished lectures:
“Kinect: the start of something NUI” by Prof. Andrew Blake FRS, Managing Director, Microsoft Research Cambridge and a key member of the team that developed the Machine Learning technology for Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect.
A talk by Dr. Mathai Joseph, Advisor, TCS, and member ACM India Council titled “The Time is Now!”. He is also the former Executive Director, Tata Research Design and Development Center.
Afternoon Session Details
This session will feature a large number of cutting edge demos from the different Microsoft Research labs worldwide, technical lectures by leading researchers and a poster display by Indian Ph.D. students. These will take place simultaneously; participants can attend talks or the demo and PhD poster sessions based on their specific interests.
The technical lectures include the following:
Dr. Wolfram Schulte, Principal Researcher and founding manager of the Research in Software Engineering group, Microsoft Research Redmond. Talk: Formal Methods: A Disruptive Technology!
Joseph Joy, Principal Software Architect, Microsoft Research India. Talk: Rich Interactive Narratives: Taking Storytelling to the Next Level
Dr. Bill Thies, Researcher, Technology for Emerging Markets, Microsoft Research India. Talk: Bringing Programmability to Experimental Biology
The demos encompass a large spectrum of fields in computer science and represent some of the cutting edge research being conducted at Microsoft Research. This session will also feature some of the newest developments across other divisions of Microsoft. Click here for demo details
The Ph.D. poster display will showcase some of the best work by Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Ph.D. students from India, selected through a competitive process. Click here for a list of posters
Software Process Improvement Network – SPIN Pune presents a talk by Dr. Pankaj Jalote on Research & Research Careers in Computer Science.
Abstract
Most CS and engineering graduates will end up working for the many software companies in India. This is undoubtedly a very good career for most of the graduates. However, is it the right career for those who are at the top of the class or those who seek technical and technology challenges? This talk is for such graduates, who find a “regular” software job not sufficiently satisfying. It discusses what research is, some aspects of a researcher, and the possibilities of a career in research in India – which besides being more challenging, is now getting more rewarding as well.
Event Details
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium Persistent Systems Ltd. ‘Bhageerath’, 402, Senapati Bapat Road Date: 11th November 2010 Day: Thursday
Time: Registration and Tea – 6:45 PM Session – 7:00 PM- 8.30 PM Program is open to all but prior registration is required. Click Here to Register
About the Speaker – Pankaj Jalote
Pankaj Jalote has recently joined as Director of the newly created Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi. Prior to this, he was the Microsoft Chair Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Delhi. Before this he was with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur since 1989, where he was also the Head of the Department from 1998 to 2002. Earlier he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, where he also held joint appointment in the Institute of Advanced Computer Studies. From 1996 to 1998, he was Vice President (quality) at Infosys Technologies Ltd., a large Bangalore-based company providing software solutions worldwide, where he spearheaded Infosys' successful move to high maturity levels of the CMM. From 2003 to 2004 he was a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, USA.
He is the author of CMM in Practice , (Addison Wesley, 1999), a book that has been translated in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean; Software Project Management in Practice (Addison Wesley, Feb 2002); the highly popular textbook An Integrated Approach to Software Engineering, (Springer 1991, 2nd Edition 1996, 3rd Edition 2005), whose Indian edition was recognized as the bestselling book in computer science by its local publisher; and the graduate-level book Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems , (Prentice Hall, 1994). He is on the Board of Advisors of many software companies in India and USA, is a Technical Advisory Board member for Microsoft Research, India, has served on the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and International Journal of Emperical Software Engineering.
His research interest is in software engineering (software quality, software process improvement, software architecture analysis), and fault tolerant systems and reliability.
The University of Pune has now created a website where college and university level researchers may submit research proposals online to get them funded by UoP, which has earmarked Rs. 8 crore for this purpose.
Since 2006, the UoP introduced the scheme to encourage college and varsity-level research projects by teachers and students. The university provides Rs 50,000 to Rs 3.5 lakh for each project, depending upon the proposal.
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