Source: https://www.iiitb.ac.in/newsletter2016/July2016.htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 16:49:13+00:00

Document:
July 2016 is very special, with IIITB hosting Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University (2001 Nobel Economics Prize winner) on July 5, 2016. He not only gave an outstanding talk, but also endeared himself to many faculty members and students, through his disarming simplicity. Every July, IIITB holds the annual Convocation; this time, we had the 16th Convocation with Dr. Anil Saharsrabudhe, AICTE Chairman as Chief Guest and Mr. Naveen Tewari, Founder & CEO of InMobi, as Guest of Honour.
July also saw the sad demise of Rudolf E. Kálmán, whose innovative Kalman filter is ubiquituous in systems engineering, and all areas of engineering; NASA popularizing its use initially. Kalman filters are used in regression problems in various domains, including machine learning.
You will see more details and other exciting developments on campus, in the body of this month’s newsletter.
Prof. Amit Prakash was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor by the 20th Faculty Selection and Promotion Committee on July 8. Congratulations!
Testing Lifetime Achievement Award 2016 of India Testing Awards has been awarded to Prof. S. Sadagopan for his thought leadership and contribution to the IT industry. The India Testing Awards ceremony co-hosted with World Conference Next Gen Testing 2016 was on July 21, in Bangalore. The India Testing Awards recognize “those organizations and practitioners that have stepped away from legacy tools and processes to create Testing programs that define the future of IT Software Development, services and support”.
Profs. R. Chandrashekar, Jyotsna Bapat, and Shrisha Rao were promoted to the rank of full Professor by the 21st Faculty Selection and Promotion Committee on July 23. Congratulations!
Prof. Shiva Kumar Malapaka has been selected for a 3-year Visiting Associateship at IUCAA(Inter University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics), Pune, in July. This visiting positiion, which starts from August 1, 2016, gives him an opportunity to visit IUCAA for a specific amount of time annually, and interact with the scientists there as well as use all research facilities available there. The expenses towards the visit will be covered by IUCAA exclusively.
16th Convocation of IIITB was held on July 3. The event was inaugurated by the Chief Guest, Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Guest of Honour, Mr. Naveen Tewari, Founder & CEO, InMobi. Mr. S. Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder, Infosys and Chairman of IIIT-B’s governing body presided over the function. At the convocation, 167 students (2 Ph.D., 11 Master of Science by Research and 154 M.Tech.) received their degree.
Students from 2015 batch of M.Tech and M.Sc. Digital Society programs celebrated Ethnic Day on July 7, by wearing traditional attire.
E-Health Research Center (EHRC) & Innovation Centre meeting with Mr. Kris Gopalkrishnan, Chairman of Governing Body, was held on July 8.
A meeting between the Innovation Center, IIITB and N S Raghavan Center for Enterpreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), IIM Bangalore was held at IIITB on July 18. Profs. Kumar K., Bhagavatula, and Rajiv Sawney from NSRCEL, and Profs. Sadagopan, and Ramesh Sundararaman, and Mr. D. V. Jagadish from IIITB attended the meeting.
Faculty Selection & Promotion Committee meetings were held on July 8 and July 23.
The batch of M.Tech 2016-18 joined on July 8. Orientation programme was held on same day. 150 students have joined for M.Tech. (IT), and 30 for M.Tech. (ESD). The preparatory classes were held during July 11- August 1.
A 2-day workshop on User Research was conducted during July 11-12 by Dr. Sarita Seshagiri (former Senior Lead Design Researcher at the Samsung R&D Institute) for the students of M.Sc. (Digital Society) program. It was also attended by faculty members and researchers of the IT & Society domain. The workshop started with an introductory session on user research and its relevance in the corporate world; the common misconceptions, mistakes and challenges associated with it; and case studies of user research undertaken recently. Following this, the students formed groups and worked on topics aimed at understanding user needs through field immersion studies. They defined their research questions and conducted user interviews on the first day. The second day of the workshop included sessions on transcribing of user quotes; conducting cluster analysis and creating affinity trees based on the interviews; and developing opportunity areas and solutions that answer the problem statement defined by the groups.
Dr. Usha Vyasulu Reddy, a Hyderabad-based independent Educationist and an International Consultant on ICT for Development, conducted a series of 4 sessions during July 18-21, as a part of the preparatory term of the incoming batch of M.Sc. (Digital Society). The theme of these sessions was “Communications Technologies and Social Change: A Background, What Works and What Does Not, and Why”. Using a combination of lectures, case studies, and practical exercises, Dr. Reddy examined the relationship between theory and practice in Communication for Development with a special focus on current ICTs. Different stages of planning an ICTD intervention were also explored.
Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy (CITAPP) organized a day-long Symposium on 'Internet Policy and Governance' on July 22. The event was co-sponsored by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Profs. Amit Prakash and V. Sridhar co-chaired the symposium. The keynote speakers at the symposium include Dr. Srinivasan Ramani, Global Connector inductee in the Internet Hall of Fame 2014, and former Director of C-DAC (NCST), ERNET and HP Labs; Samiran Gupta, Head-India, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN); Pavan Duggal, Advocate-Supreme Court, President-Cyberlaws.net, Guest Faculty-National Judicial Academy, Bhopal and Dr. V. S. Seshadri, Vice Chairman, Research and Information System for Developing Countries, Former Ambassador to Myanmar.
52nd Senate Meeting was held on July 27.
SPICMACAY Bangalore chapter and IIITB organised a Sitar performance by Shri Gaurav Mazumdar accompanied by Dr. Ravikiran Nakod (Tabla) on July 29 at IIITB.
The paper titled, "Analyzing cognitive states using fMRI data" by Pankaj Pandey, Byomkesh Jha and Prof. Neelam Sinha, was presented in the 20th Conference on Medical Image Understanding and Analysis, (MIUA), held at Loughbrough University, UK, during July 6 - 8.
The article titled "Enabling human capacities in ICT and development programmes" written by Prof. Amit Prakash has been published in Deccan Herald in its op-ed pages July 9.
The paper titled "Automatic assessment of communication skill in interface-based employment interviews using audio-visual cues", authored by Sowmya Rasipuram (PH2014008) and Dr. Dinesh Babu J., has been published in the Second International workshop on Affective Social Multimedia Computing, IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME) 2016, Seattle, USA.
Prof. Madhav Rao presented his paper titled "Analysis of switching energy and delay for magnetic logic devices" co-authored by Neha Oraon (PH2013008) in IEEE Computer Society of Annual Symposium of VLSI (ISVLSI'16), held in Pittsburgh, USA, during July11-13.
Nirmal Kumar Sivaraman (MS2013010) and Prof. Srinath Srinivasa delivered an invited talk titled, “Modeling Online Groups” and an introduction to Web Science, at hasgeek.in monthly meetings, Bengaluru on July 15.
Kumar Dheenadayala (PH2013004) presented his paper titled “Pruning a Random Forest by Learning a Learning Algorithm” co-authored by Prof. G Srinivasaraghavan and Prof. V. N. Muralidhara at 12th International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining MLDM 2016 held during July 16-21, Newark, USA.
Prof. V. Sridhar (2016). Two-Sided Markets and their Impact on Economy: Cases from India. In (Ed.) Pursuing Competition and Regulatory Reforms for Achieving SDGs. ISBN: 978-81-8257-244-7, Jaipur, India: CUTS International.
Policy Reports (www.trai.gov.in)-Response to TRAI Pre-Consultation Paper on “Net Neutrality”, July 2016-Prof. V. Sridhar and Prof. R. Prasad, MDI Gurugram).
Prof. Madhav Rao visited Human Engineering Research Lab of University of Pittsburgh, Robotics and RF lab of CMU, Wyss institute of Harvard, MIT Media lab, and Boston University to explore research collaborations, and possible student exchange programs with IIITB.
Prof. Meenakshi attended GIAN course on "Modeling and Analysis of Cyber Physical Systems" held at IIT-Bhubhaneswar during July 7- 8 and she delivered an invited lecture titled "Architecture modeling of embedded software using AADL" in the course.
Prof. Shrisha Rao gave an invited talk on "Services Science and Services Computing" at The Bangalore Science Forum, Bangalore, on July 13.
Prof. S. Sadagopan, Director was invited to attend the Four Members IT Advisory Committee meeting chaired by the Chief Minister and Chief Secretary of Govt of Jharkhand at Taj West End on July 19.
Prof. Sujit Kumar Chakrabarti gave an invited talk on "Application of Formal Techniques in Software Testing" at YCCE, Nagpur on July 22.
Prof. Sujit Kumar Chakrabarti gave an invited talk on "Introduction to Automated Software Engineering Techniques" at VIT on July 27.
Prof. Sadagopan chaired the panel discussion on “Digital Media – The new gurus in Education and Entertainment” at Twelfth India Innovation Summit 2016 Held on July 28.
July 5:“Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress” by Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001).
July 25:“Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) research: Mobile Payments” by Ms. Jacki O'Neill, Microsoft Research India, Bengaluru.
July 25:"Gaming for Policy Making - Indian Energy Game" by Mr. Vardhan Varma, Fields of View, Bengaluru.
July 27:"Understanding the Genesis of IT in India with Itihaasa Digital Museum" by Dr. N. Dayasindhu, Program and Research Management, Itihaasa Digital Museum.
July 28: "The role of technology in facilitating social interventions" by Mr. Sham Kashyap, Head of Research, Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement (GRAAM).
July 19 - MAIT SME Chapter team led by Mr. Rahul Gupta.
July 22 - Christabel Royan - Nordic Centre in India.

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