Source: https://www.iiitb.ac.in/newsletter2015/July-2015.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 16:13:50+00:00

Document:
Workshop on "ICT and Innovation"
July is the busiest month every year at IIITB.
In the first half of July, we have the joyous occasion of seeing our students graduate in the Convocation (held in the first / second Sunday of July). This year it was held on July 5, that saw a record number (in double digits) of students graduating with Research degrees (Master of Science by Research / Doctor of Philosophy). We had the noted Space Scientist Dr. Kasturi Rangan as the Chief Guest. You will find more details in this Newsletter.
In the second half of July, we see the arrival of new students. This year, we not only had a record number of students for IMT MT MSR PHD students, but also saw the arrival of the first batch of M.Sc in Digital Society students. More in the newsletter.
To house the ever-growing student population , the new campus just got commissioned in the last week of July. We will provide full details next month when the facility will be fully ready.
IIITB pays homage to the former President of India, Late Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, one of the greatest proponents of learning and education, India has seen in recent times.
Pavan Kumar R. R. (MT2014086) won the second prize in 24Hr Hackathon was held during June 15-17. He won the prize for developing an App "Tour Optimizer". The Hackathon was conducted by Valonia, IBM, Zorooms, Chefensa, Bhive at Bhive Workspace, Indira nagar.
Tools & Technologies: Java, JS, HMTL, CSS, Google Geo coding, Distance Vector API.
Abstract: This application is used to find the optimal path between the given set of destinations, where each destination should be visited only once and the journey should start from the source and should end at the source. The optimality is based on the distance& time.
IIITB iMTech students won the 12-hour hackathon "Code the Future" conducted by Wipro Digital held on July 11 in Bangalore. The application created by Team Zense (Akshay Jindal (IMT2012002), Anubhav Bhardwaj (IMT2012006), Samyak Upadhyay (IMT2013039) and Vikas Yadav (IMT2013060) uses near-field communication technology to enhance the transit experience of bus and rail passengers by creating digital passes that can be topped up anywhere. The data can be collected and analyzed to ensure continuous improvement in customer experience. Over 350 individuals participated in the hackathon, where the task was to create an innovative mobile or web application that can offer a superior user experience when integrated with digital solutions that are being currently used in industry sectors such as e-commerce, healthcare, transportation, logistics and others.
DreamWorks Hackathon was held during July 28-29. The Hackathon was based on OpenVDB, algorithmic programming, networking, WebGL etc. The task was to move a flock of objects like a school of fish to the destination avoiding all the obstacles by keeping or maintaining the fish as a flock structure and porting it to web using WebGL and Websockets. 49 teams participated in the hackathon. Winners were chosen based on the completion of the challenge, algorithmic approach, understanding of mathematics and physics behind the challenge. The winning team Tech Pandas-Pranay Dugar (IMT2013030), Krishna Kumar (IMT2013050), Rajesh D.M (IMT2013032), Meghana M Reddy (IMT2013025) got INR 50,000/- the runners up team Zense v2.0- Abhinav Chawla (IMT2013002), Rishabh Bhadauria (IMT2013034), Shivam Kumar (IMT2013042) got INR 30,000/-. The members of two winning teams have been given an offer to intern at Dreamworks.
46th Senate Meeting was held on July 1.
The extended hostel campus was inaugurated on July 3. Students moved to new hostel on July 9.
The Farewell party for the M.Tech batch of 2015 was on July 4. The graduating students of 2015 cast votes to bestow titles like Miss Drama Queen and Mr Rockstar, to name a few. The junior batch voted for their favorite senior as well. A dinner was arranged, followed by the DJ night event.
59th Meeting of the Governing body was held on July 5.
15th Annual Convocation of IIITB was held on July 5. Dr. K. Kasturirangan, Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, was the Chief Guest. 136 M.Tech, 5 Master of Science by Research and 7 Ph.D students received their degrees. Mr. Uday Hegde (1999048), an alumnus from the batch of 2000, announced a contribution of US$ 100,000/- to scholarship fund.
The batch of 2016 celebrated Ethnic Day in IIITB on July 6. As has been the tradition, the second year M.Tech students celebrate the first working day after the Convocation, as their first day as seniors at IIITB. A special lunch was arranged for the occasion.
Workshop on “ICT and Innovation”, as part of the celebration of the 150th Anniversary of International Telecommunications Union (ITU) was held at IIITB on July 9. Prof. V. Sridhar was the convener of the workshop. Director S. Sadagopan was the Guest of Honour. Prof. P.K. Garg, ex-Chairman, Radio Regulation Board, ITU spoke on the occasion about the role of ITU. Prof. P.K. Kumar, Professor & College of Engg. Chair in Computer Engg. Texas A&M University, USA gave a talk on ‘Cyber-Physical Systems”, followed by Dr. Anand Mohan, ex-Director CDAC who delivered the theme address on “ICT as a driver for Innovation”.
IIITB organized and hosted the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Computing and Communication Technologies (CONECCT) in the IIITB campus on July 10-11. Profs. Debabrata Das and V. Sridhar were the General Co-chairs of the conference. The Technical Programme Chairs, Profs. Subir Roy, Jyotsna Bapat, V. N. Muralidhara, and Dinesh Jayagopi, managed the four tracks (Electronics, Communication, Computing, and Signal Processing) of the conference and coordinated the review of more than 900 technical papers. 92 papers were accepted and presented in technical sessions over two days along with 6 posters in poster session. The conference received papers submitted from 8 countries. Keynote speakers of the conference included: Dr. Kumar Sivarajan, CTO, Tejas Networks; Prof. Yegnanarayana, Institute Prof., IIIT-Hyderabad; Dr. Ramamurthy Badrinath, Chief Research Scientist, Ericsson Research; and Prof. Bharadwaj Amrutur, ECE Dept., IISc.
The new batch of students for M.Tech 2015-17 joined on July 10. 129 students have joined for the M.Tech (IT) and 21, for the M.Tech (ESD) Programmes. The orientation programme was held on July 13. The preparatory term began the same day.
IIITB welcomed its inaugural batch of M.Sc. (Digital Society) students on July 20. The first batch consists of 9 students from varied academic and professional backgrounds. The inaugural session saw Profs. Sadagopan, Ramani, Prabhu and Vyasulu sharing their constructions of the digital society and challenges and opportunities they see in terms of contributions through a better design and use of information technology. This was followed by a talk by Mr. Sunil Abraham from Centre for Internet and Society on Internet Policy and Privacy.
IIITB hosted Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) standard technical meetings during July 22-24. TSDSI is an SDO that aims at developing and promoting India-specific requirements, standardizing solutions for meeting these requirements and contributing these to international standardization in the field of telecommunications.
The new batch of iMTech students joined on July 31. 45 students have joined for iMTech (CSE) and 26 students for the iMTEch (ECE) Programmes. The new batch of students to the Master of Science by Research and Ph.D. joined on same day. Both sets of students had their respective orientation programmes on the day.
Balaji Parthasarathy was invited by the International Chamber of Commerce, Paris, to present make a presentation on "The Dynamics of Global Technology and Knowledge Flows" at the Annual TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) meeting at the World Trade Organization in Geneva from June 9-10.
Pragati Agrawal (PH2011003) presented her paper titled "Energy-Minimal Scheduling of Divisible Loads"(co-authored with Prof. Shrisha Rao) at the 4th International Workshop on Energy-Efficient Data Centres (E2DC 2015), co-located with the 2015 ACM Sixth International Conference on Future Energy Systems (ACM e-Energy 2015), on July 14.
A paper titled "A XaaS savvy Automated Approach to Composite Applications" by Poulami Debnath (MT2012096) along with her co-authors, Vibhu Saujanya Sharma, and Vikrant Kaulgud, from Accenture Technology Labs, Bangalore has been accepted for the IEEE CLOUD 2015 conference. (http://www.thecloudcomputing.org/2015/).
Gopika Gopan K. presented her paper titled “Hybrid Features based Classification of Alcoholic and Non-alcoholic EEG” co-authored with Profs. Neelam Sinha and Dinesh Babu J, at the IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Computing and Communication Technologies (CONECCT), held at IIITB during July 10-11.
Sowmya N. presented her paper titled "Development of 3D shadow mask using 3D Printer", co-authored with Neha Oraon, and Profs. Subhajit Sen and Madhav Rao, at IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Computing and Communication Technologies (CONECCT), held at IIITB during July 10-11.
Gowthami Prasanna B. presented paper titled "Low Voltage Cascode Biasing with Gain-Boosting", co-authored with Prof. Subhajit Sen, at IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Computing and Communication Technologies (CONECCT), held at IIITB during July 10-11.
Sunil Kumar V. presented his paper titled “Modified Oriented Gaussian Derivative Filter Based Texture Detection Algorithm and Parameter Estimation” co-authored with Profs. Neelam Sinha and G. Srinivasaraghavan, at IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Computing and Communication Technologies (CONECCT), held at IIITB during July 10-11.
Prakruti Chandrashekar presented her paper titled "Efficient Format Preserving Encrypted Databases", co-authored with Shashank Dara and Prof. V. N. Muralidhara, at the IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Computing and Communication Technologies (CONECCT), held at IIITB during July 10-11.
Asha Subramanian presented her paper, "Semantic Integration of Structured Data Powered by Linked Open Data", co-authored with Prof. Srinath Srinivasa and Pavan Kumar R. R., at the 5th International Conference on Web Intelligence, Mining, and Semantics (WIMS'15) in Cyprus, during July 13-14.
The paper titled "MONTO - A Machin-readable Ontology for Teaching Word Problems in Mathematics" by Aparna Lalingkar, and Profs. Chandrashekar Ramnathan and Srinivasan Ramani has been published in the Journal of Educational Technology & Society on July 20, Vol 18, Issue 3, page 197-213.
The papers titled “Automation of Cross-sectional Analysis of Neuroimages using Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging” and "Extended Neighbourhood based Linear Reconstruction of Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging" by Rajikha Raja, Prof. Neelam Sinha and Dr.Jitender Saini has been accepted for publication in IEEE TENCON 2015 to be held at Sands Cotai Central Macau, China during November 1-4.
The paper titled “Infomediating the Digital Divide: A Case Study of the Sujala Watershed Development Project in Karnataka” by Kavitha Narayanan and Prof. Amit Prakash has been chosen for presentation at the 10th Annual International Conference on Public Policy and Management organised by Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore to be held between August 3-5.
Profs. V. Sridhar and T. K. Srikant wrote an article titled “Telco-OTT, a symbiotic relation?” which appeared on Voice & Data, 66-67.
Balaji Parthasarathy was away during June 22-July 20 on an Academic Writing Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy. During this period he worked with Professor Yuko Aoyama of Clark University on the manuscript of a book tentatively titled "The Hybrid Domain: Collaborative Governance for Social Innovation in India".
The Project titled "Open and/or Apolitical? A critical re-examination of Open Information Systems" is funded by International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and administered by Singapore Internet Research Centre (SiRC) under the research programme called Strengthening Information Societies Research Capacity Alliance III (SIRCA III). The project, for which Profs. Janaki Srinivasan and Bidisha Chaudhari are Principal Investigators, draws on critical information studies and social practice theory to build a framework to understand the implications of Open Information Systems from the points of view of those who access these systems.
A project titled "Intermediaries, Cash Economies, and Technological Change in Myanmar and India" has been awarded a research grant by the University of California-Irvine Institute for Money Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI). for which Prof. Janaki Srinivasan and Dr. Elisa Oreglia (Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies, London) are the Principal Investigators, has been awarded a research grant by the University of California-Irvine Institute for Money Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI). The fieldwork for the project will take place in 2015-16 and will explore the roles played by financial intermediaries in agricultural markets in Myanmar and India. It will examine what value intermediaries bring to monetary and financial transactions on the one hand, and what value these transactions bring to the lives of intermediaries on the other. The project hopes to explain why promises of disintermediation languish and financial intermediaries persist in the digital age.
Prof. Subhajit Sen delivered an invited lecture on "Crystal Oscillator Design" at the "RF CMOS" workshop organized by MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, ECE Department as part of TEQUIP2 programme on July 1.
Prof. Ashish Choudhury visited University of Bristol, UK from June 15 to July 15 to work with Prof. Nigel Smart on secure multi-party computation at the department of computer science. The visit was completely supported by EPSRC research grant no EP/M016803/1 (details available at http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/M016803/1). Prof. Nigel Smart is the PI of the project, which is sanctioned by EPSRC for 2 years, with the aim of encouraging collaboration between the researchers in UK and India in the area of cyber security. Prof. Ashish Choudhury is one of the visiting researchers in this project.
Prof. Sridhar V. gave an invited talk on “Telecom policy in India: An analytical approach” at the Indian Institute of Management Indore on July 16.
Prof. Srinath Srinivasa and Dr. Aastha Madaan visited the Digital Economy Hub at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, to participate in activities of their TRUMP project collaboration during July 27-30; and City University London, UK, for activities concerning to their TRUMP and REACH project collaborations on July 31. Prof. Srinath participated in a discussion at the City Council of Aberdeen on a vision for Smart Cities, upon invitation, on July 27.
Krishna Saladi (PH2014005) has successfully fabricated Organic FET Transistors using the facilities at the Indian Nanotechnology Users Program (INUP) facilities at IIT-Bombay. These devices are important for the development of flexible and disposable/biodegradable electronic systems that are conventionally fabricated using inorganic materials like silicon that are both rigid and non-biodegradable.
July 22: "Privacy and Security in Online Social Media (PSOSM)", a talk by an ACM India Eminent Speaker, Dr. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Assistant Professor, Hemant Bharat Ram Faculty Research Fellow at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi.
July 6: Delegation from Mexico on the IT sector led by their main chamber of Commerce –COMCE.The aim of their visit is to explore a Collaboration Agreement with IIIT Bangalore to have a joint cooperation, Academic exchange Programs with top Mexican Universities (ITESM, ITESO, etc), Specialized Training Programs and others.
July 7: Mr. Santhosh Rao, Prijector.com visited IIITB to discuss about Prijector, a portable, easy-to-use wireless device.
July 13: Prof. R. Venkata Rao, Vice-chancellor and Prof. Nandimath, Registrar of National Law School of India University.
July 16: Dr. Leena Chandran-Wadia, Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation Mumbai.
July 20: Mr. Sunil Abraham, CEO, Centre for Internet and Society.
July 22: Ms. Natasha Oza, The Ants Craft Trust.
July 24: Mr. M. Ali Shariff, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting.
July 28: Ms. Anu Sreedharan, Founder & CEO, NextDrop Inc.
July 29: Mr. T. Pradeep, Founder Secretary-Samuha and Chief Executive-iSquareD.
July 30: Mr. Sean Blagsvedt, Founder and CEO of Babajob.com shared his experiences on his socio-tech start-up with the students of the M.Sc. (DS) and MTech programes.
July 30: Ms. Pamela Kumar and colleagues from Cloud Computing Innovation Council of India (CCICI) to discuss the role IIITB can assume in CCICI.
July 31: Dr. Ed Cutrell, Senior Researcher and Head of the Technology for Emerging Markets group, Microsoft Research India.
August 15: Independence Day celebration.
August 18: Announcement of call for applications for admission to research degree programmes for January 2016.
August 19: 47th Senate Meeting, rescheduled from August 12.

References: V. 
 V. 
 V. 
 V. 
 V. 
 V. 
 V.