Abstract

In the modern era of Science & Technology, Satellites have become an integral part of National development. The benefits of satellites are exponentially increasing and its usage has become imperative in every walk of life for a common man. Towards this, the Future Satellite Programme is highly challenging and demands for the realisation of 12-18 Satellites per annum covering a wide spectrum of application areas like Communication, Meteorology, Navigation, Remote Sensing & Interplanetary missions with advanced technology demonstrations.

The Communication satellite programme primarily focuses on bridging the gap of demand Vs capability of huge transponder requirements through High Throughput Satellite(HTS). The Advanced HTS is capable of handling 10-15 KW power to meet the country’s requirements in the communication sector. Further, advanced technologies like Electric propulsion system, I-6k bus developments, LEON 3 processor developments , large power handling systems, 18m unfurlable antenna etc are some of the critical technologies that are being pursued to provide a High quality communication service.

The Ever increasing demands for Remote Sensing Satellite calls for the need of advanced technology demonstration like miniaturisation, onboard computer, onboard autonomy, advanced memory modules and data handling systems , large optics development etc in the Optical & Microwave Imaging domains for national natural resource management. Notwithstanding this, the programme also focuses on building sub-metre resolution satellites to meet the needs of varied user segments. Further the centre is also working on building GEO imaging Satellite that will be a technology breakthrough in the Remote sensing area catering to varied thematic application sectors for country’s development. Navigation is another important domain wherein the continuations of 7 satellite NAVIC constellation are being carried out. The NAVIC Constellation has also provided a platform for the participation of Industries in Satellite building Activities. The centre is marching towards realisation of next generation of navigation satellites with enhanced position accuracy services.

Over and above, the spirit of scientific temper and a move towards exploration of outer space is in full swing with the challenging Lander & Rover technologies, space docking experiments, interplanetary mission studies, XpoSat Mission, Aditya L1 Missions etc on the anvil. Critical scientific instrument developmental activities are being carried out jointly with the active participation of Science & Research Institutes

The decadal achievements of Satellite programme has matured and the entire Satellite programme is undergoing a phenomenal change with a dual focus on Research & Development Activities as well as to scale up the satellite building capacity through active participation of Indian Industries in space sector.The lecture will highlight potential areas of Research both in short term basis and long term basis.

Bio

Dr. Annadurai is currently Director, ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), Bangalore.

Dr Annadurai graduated in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Government College of Technology, Coimbatore, obtained his Post Graduate degree in Applied Electronics from the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore and Doctoral degree from the Anna University.

Joining ISRO in 1982, Dr Annadurai began his career at ISAC as the team leader to design and develop Software Satellite Simulator. During the period 1992 -2005, Dr Annadurai was the lead member of ISRO's satellite mission team and managed eight INSAT Missions as the Mission Director and brought about the efficient ground automation for satellite operations. As Project Director, Dr Annadurai made the most crucial contribution to the realisation of India's first Lunar Mission, Chandrayaan-1, which won many awards including the prestigious Space Pioneer Award, 2009. In 2011, Dr Annadurai became the Programme Director of Indian Remote Sensing Satellites (IRS) and Small Satellite Systems (SSS) and realised five satellite projects. His other major contribution is the realisation of the successful Mars Orbiter Mission in record time.

Notable among the numerous awards and honours received by Dr. Annadurai, are the ISRO Team Excellence award-2007, ISRO Merit Award-2009, ISRO Team excellence award-2010, ISRO Outstanding Achievement Award-2014, National Aeronautical Award-2008 from Aeronautical Society of India, Rajyotsava Award for Science (2008) from Government of Karnataka, Hari Om Ashram Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Research Award (2004), C.P.A. Adithanar Literary Award 2013, Vivekananda Human Excellence Award, 2014 from Ramakrishna Mission, HK Firodia Award 2007, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati National Eminence Award, 2009 for Science and Technology, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space Systems Award, 2009, Certificate of Appreciation from Boeing Asia-America Professional Association, USA and Laurels for Team Achievement - Chandrayaan-1 from International Academy of Astronautics, 2013, Beijing. Five universities have conferred Doctor of Science on him.

Dr Annadurai is a Fellow of International Astronautical Federation, Fellow of The Society for Shock Wave Research and a member of International Lunar Network Enabling Technologies Group. He has been awarded the prestigious Padma Shri, 2016 for his contributions in the field of Science & Engineering by the President of India.

Abstract

During the last two decades the experience of consumers has been undergoing a fundamental and dramatic transformation - giving a rich variety of informed choices, online shopping, consumption of news and entertainment on the go, and personalized shopping experiences. All of this has been powered by the massive amounts of data that is continuously being collected and the application of machine learning, data science and AI techniques to it.

Adobe is a leader the Digital Marketing and is the leading provider of solutions to enterprises that are serving customers both in the B2B and B2C space. In this talk, we will outline the current state of the industry and the technology that is behind it, how Data Science and Machine Learning are gradually beginning to transform the experiences of the consumer as well as the marketer. We will also speculate on how recent developments in Artificial Intelligence will lead to deep personalization and richer experiences for the consumer as well as more powerful and tailored end-to-end capabilities for the marketer.

Bio

P. Anandan is responsible for developing research strategy for Adobe, especially in the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as applied to Digital Marketing and for leading the Adobe India Research lab.

Prior to Adobe, Anandan was Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director of Microsoft Research Outreach. Previously, he was Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director at Microsoft Research India, which he founded in December 2004 in Bangalore, India. He joined Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington in 1997, where he founded and built the Interactive Visual Media group. Before joining Microsoft Anandan was the Head of Video Information Processing research at Sarnoff Corporation from 1991-1997. He was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Yale University from 1987-1991.

Anandan holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, a master of science in computer science from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Massachusetts as well as of IIT Madras, and has been inducted to the Nebraska Hall of Computing. During a research career spanning over three decades Anandan has also done pioneering research in Computer Vision, specifically in the area of visual motion analysis and optical flow estimation.

Abstract

How should I pick a research problem? What counts as impact? When will my work get noticed? These are some questions that many of us researchers struggle with. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I'll share some thoughts through a few vignettes on my research in networked and mobile systems over the years, both the successes and the missed opportunities. This talk isn't intended to be prescriptive and especially the students in the audience are cautioned not to treat it as such!

Bio

Venkat Padmanabhan is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India, where he founded the Mobility, Networks, and Systems group in 2007. He was previously with Microsoft Research Redmond, USA for nearly 9 years. Venkat's research interests are broadly in networked and mobile systems, and his work over the years has led to highly-cited papers and paper awards, technology transfers within Microsoft, and also industry impact. He received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and the inaugural ACM SIGMOBILE Test-of-Time paper award, both in 2016. Venkat holds a B.Tech. from IIT Delhi and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, all in Computer Science, and has been elected a Fellow of the INAE, the IEEE, and the ACM. He can be reached online at http://research.microsoft.com/~padmanab/

Abstract

Modern enterprises face an unprecedented regulatory regime. The cost of compliance continues to grow with traditional compliance practices relying heavily on domain experts whose judgement determines what compliance means and how to reflect regulations onto the enterprise processes and data to make them compliant. Compliance management needs to be automated to the extent possible, so that compliance can be proved quickly, reliably, and maintained through time- and geography-specific variations - while keeping the business efficient. The talk outlines an end-to-end regulatory compliance architecture and associated automation machinery.

Effective decision-making of modern organisation requires deep understanding of various aspects of organisation such as its goals, structure, business-as-usual operational processes, etc. The large size and complex structure of organisations, socio-technical characteristics, and fast business dynamics make decision-making a challenging endeavour. The state-of-practice relying heavily on human experts is turning out to be ineffective, imprecise, based on short-term implications and lacking in agility. The state-of-the-art is also found inadequate. The talk outlines a novel line of attack to the challenging problem of complex dynamic decision making.

Modern enterprises are complex systems of systems characterised by multiple stakeholders with possibly conflicting objectives, increasingly dynamic environment with a set of diverse change-drivers, and constant pressure to maximize growth opportunities while reducing “run-the-business” and “change-the-business” costs. Purely human-centric approach relying on expertise and past experience has turned out to be inadequate with the siloed nature of enterprises further exacerbating the situation. Several architectures such as sense-n-respond, MAPE (for Model, Analyse, Process and Execute) etc have been proposed but found ineffective due largely to absence of sophisticated technological support. Pervasive adoption of software systems that has led to digitization of enterprises offers an opportunity of which the talk provides a bird’s eye view.

Bio

Vinay Kulkarni is a Chief Scientist and Head of Software Systems Research at Tata Research Development Design Centre of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He is a member of the TCS Corporate Technology Council that oversees all R&D and innovation activities at TCS. His research interests include model-driven software engineering, self-adaptive systems, and enterprise modeling. His work in model-driven software engineering has led to a toolset that has been used to deliver several large business-critical systems over the past 20 years. Much of this work has found way into OMG standards, three of which Vinay contributed to in a leadership role. This work also received fair mention in respected international print media. Vinay has several patents to his credit, and has authored 100+ papers in scholastic journals and conferences worldwide. He is frequently invited to deliver talks at major conferences and events. Vinay has served as the conference and program chairperson for the premier ACM and IEEE international conferences in the area of software engineering; and is on technical program committees of many international conferences. Recently, Vinay got inducted as Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering. An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Vinay also serves as Visiting Professor at Middlesex University, London.

Abstract

OK, so you have settled upon a career path in research. That’s good. A research career can be highly satisfying. But how exactly do you go about conducting research ? Is there an app for it ? Perhaps. What we do have though, is this talk in which we draw upon our past experience to present some tips, which hopefully will assist you in your efforts to set up a research plan.

While the talk is aimed primarily at the beginning researcher, it will likely be of general interest to all participants, not only because it draws from the collective experience of many researchers in the division, but also because it deals with issues that we all grapple with on a daily basis.

Bio

P. Vijay Kumar received the B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees from IIT Kharagpur and Kanpur respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1983. From 1983 to 2003 he was on the faculty of USC. Since 2003, he has been on the faculty of the ECE Department of IISc Bengaluru. His research interests include algebraic coding theory and wireless communication. He received the 1995 IEEE Information Theory Society prize-paper award, a best-paper award at the DCOSS 2008 conference on sensor networks and the IEEE Data Storage best-paper award of 2011/2012. A pseudorandom sequence family designed in a 1996 paper co-authored by him now forms the short scrambling code of the 3G WCDMA cellular standard. He received the Prof. Rustum Choksi Award for Excellence in Research in Engineering in 2013 at IISc and was Tata Chem Chair Professor at IISc in 2013-2015. He was a plenary speaker at the 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory and is a Fellow of the IEEE, INAE, IAS and INSA.

Abstract

Most of the visionary/innovative start-ups in technology require deep understanding both in technology and the smartness to map this technology to the future. IISc being the premier research institute in India is perfectly poised to support entrepreneurs/start-ups. With the start-up ecosystem maturing in India, IISc can take the leadership role in this area as start-ups are integral part of Innovation and bringing technology to the masses. The start-up ecosystem is hungry for this interaction and this has to be harnessed.

Bio

Naganand is the Founder and Managing Director of Ideaspring Capital- An stage VC firm focused on supporting start-ups in product innovation. Prior to this he was an entrepreneur with extensive experience in management and technology. He is an entrepreneur and is well networked in the community. He was the President of TiE Bangalore, and was on board of TiE Global trustees. He presently on the board of NASSCOM 10,000 start-up warehouse in Bangalore and member of FICCI start-up committee. He is on various committees of Government of Karnataka to further entrepreneurship. He is published author, published in journals and conferences and holds 8 patents.

Abstract

I will present some of my work on the latest developments in fast matrix computations for computational science problems.

Bio

After receiving his undergrad in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Madras in 2007, he moved to Stanford and obtain his Ph.D in Computational Mathematics in 2013. He then joined the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences as an Assistant Professor/Courant Instructor. In July 2015, he joined the faculty of ICTS-TIFR before moving to IISc as an Assistant Professor in April 2016. His research mainly focuses on constructing highly accurate fast algorithms leveraging Numerical Linear Algebra and Approximation theory.

Abstract

Algorithmic game theory is an active and impactful area of research that in recent years has found many applications in the study of large strategic environments, such as online markets and auctions. A basic message that emerged from this area is in fact negative: determining game-theoretic solution concepts---e.g., Nash equilibria---is computationally hard in general. But, given that such solution concepts are widely used in the design and analysis of strategic environments, these complexity barriers need to be addressed. Motivated by these considerations, in this talk I will present research directions that address hardness results for Nash equilibria, which are one of the most well-studied solution concepts in game theory. In particular, I will show that for a relevant class of two-player games an approximate Nash equilibrium can be efficiently determined. A key technical component of this work is an approximate version of Caratheodory's theorem; given the fundamental importance of Caratheodory's theorem, this approximate version is interesting in its own right.

Bio

Siddharth Barman is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Ramanujan Fellow at the Indian Institute of Science. Siddharth's research interests lie in the design, analysis, and applications of algorithms. His current research focuses on algorithmic game theory and approximation algorithms. Siddharth received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and held a postdoctoral position at the California Institute of Technology.

Abstract

Two dimensional layers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) exhibit strong optical activity in spite of their ultra-thin physical thickness. This has generated tremendous interest in two dimensional optoelectronic devices. The exciton binding energy is extremely high (0.3-0.6 eV) in these monolayers due to the out of plane carrier confinement, large carrier effective mass and small dielectric constant. Screening due to surrounding dielectric medium reshapes the electron-hole interaction potential and plays a pivotal role in deciding the binding energies of these strongly bound exciton complexes. However, owing to strong quasi-particle bandgap renormalization in such systems, a direct quantification of estimated shifts in binding energy in different dielectric media remains elusive using optical studies. I shall show that by changing the dielectric environment, one can obtain a large photoluminescence (PL) peak shift at low temperature for higher energy excitons (2s, 3s, 4s, 5s) in monolayer MoSe2, while the 1s exciton peak position remains unaltered - a direct evidence of varying compensation between screening induced exciton binding energy modulation and quasi-particle bandgap renormalization. The estimated modulation of binding energy for the 1s exciton is found to be 58.6% (70.5% for 2s, 78.9% for 3s, 85% for 4s) by coating an Al2O3 layer on top, while the corresponding reduction in quasi-particle bandgap is estimated to be around 0.25 eV. An example of the implications of such band structure change will be discussed in a real device application.

Bio

Dr. Majumdar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering at Indian Institute of Science. He works broadly on semiconductor devices with a focus on the physics of novel material systems and their applications in optoelectronics and nano-electronics.

Abstract

Blood pressure (BP) is one of the vital signs that indicate current physical functioning of the body. BP is the measurement of the pressure or force of blood against the walls of arteries. Sphygmomanometer is typically used to measure systolic and diastolic blood pressure by increasing and gradually releasing the pressure in an inflatable rubber cuff applied to the arm. In this presentation, I shall talk about measuring BP using an estimated photoplethysmogram from a video of fingertip taken by the camera of a smartphone, referred to as smart photoplethysmogram. I shall summarize the challenges and present initial results which suggest that the smart photoplethysmogram has the potential for cuff-less BP monitoring.

Bio

Prasanta Kumar Ghosh is an assistant professor in the department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at IISc. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, USA in 2011. Prior to that he obtained his M.Sc.(Engineering) in Electrical Communication Engineering from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and B.E.(ETCE) in Electronics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata in 2006 and 2003 respectively. His research interests include non-linear signal processing methods with applications to speech and audio, audio visual signal processing and bio-medical signal processing.

Abstract

According to World Health Organization (WHO), cancer remains a global health problem and around 14.1 million new cancer cases were diagnosed in 2012 out of which 8.2 million people died. Breast cancer continues to be second largest cause of cancer-related female deaths in the world accounting for 12% amongst all cancer. Despite significant technological advances, screening and intraoperative procedures have remained largely unchanged for decades. The mechanical and electrical phenotyping has been demonstrated as a promising technique to study the progression of the breast cancer. Thus, a device capable of measuring alteration in mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of the breast tissue quickly, accurately, and simultaneously will potentially open new avenues for breast cancer diagnosis. The design and fabrication of a Portable Multi-Parameter Cancer Diagnostic Device using 3D printing and micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) technology is presented. The novelty of this work is the simultaneous measurement of multiple tissue parameters, which can provide a deterministic and quantitative information of the tissue characteristics, including mechanical, electrical, and thermal characteristics of the normal tissue from the onset through disease progression of the tissue.

Bio

Dr. Hardik J. Pandya is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, Division of Electrical Sciences. He works on the integration of biology/medicine with microtechnology, nanotechnology and additive manufacturing to develop innovative tools to solve unmet clinical problems. His current research focuses on flexible sensors, microsensors, microfluidic devices, and microelectromechanical systems, all lately with an emphasis on cancer diagnosis, therapeutics, e-nose, and biomedical device technologies. Before joining IISc, he worked as a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Maryland Robotics Center, University of Maryland, College Park and in the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital–Harvard Medical School affiliated with Harvard-MIT Health Science and Technology. His work has been highlighted as “Breaking Research News” by The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and has been featured on IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering July 2016 issue cover image as well as IEEE TBME July 2016 feature article for the website and monthly highlights. The work on portable cancer diagnosis tool was also featured on Science Translational Medicine as an Editorial Choice, Breast Cancer Diagnosis, March 2016 and has been highlighted on CapeRay blog as “Biochips and Diagnostic tools” in April 2016.