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Concept note

In order to strengthen the research orientation of NIIT University and develop it into a hub of innovation, a Research Advisory Board (RAB) has been set up which is constituted by well known researchers and academics from across the world. The RAB, which aims to provide direction to research at NU and give it play in emerging technology and educational domains, is being chaired by Dr. P. Anandan, Director, Microsoft Research India. The other members of the Board are eminent researchers and professors from leading Indian and international universities, and include luminaries such as Prof. Dinesh Manocha (University of North Carolina, USA), Prof. Sanjeev Agarwal (IIT, Kanpur), Prof. Jim Kurose (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA), and Prof. Anurag Kumar (IISc, Bangalore) and Dr. Shivkumar Kalyanaraman (IBM Research, Bangalore).
These leading academics will bring to NU their deep knowledge of fields related to computing and engineering sciences and varied experience in building technologies in sunrise areas such as digital geographies, mobility, networking, multilingual systems, computer graphics, robotics, grid and Cloud Computing, as well as High Performance Computing, among others.
The aim of the Board is to help NU live the “research-driven” principle, which remains one of the four core tenets of the University. The Board will advise and actively engage with NU on all research related matters and enable it to foster linkages and partnerships with other reputed international schools of higher learning as well as R&D labs in India and worldwide. Select researchers, employed in these labs will be encouraged to take up visiting/adjunct positions at NU. RAB will facilitate a two-way interaction between the labs and NU, helping Ph. D students at the University to connect with researchers at the R&D labs. At a broader level, the RAB will help NU outline its research agenda and priorities.

RAB Members

Dr. P. Anandan (Chair, Research Advisory Board, NIIT University) Managing Director Microsoft Research India Microsoft Corp.

P. Anandan is the managing director of Microsoft Research India. Microsoft Research India, which began operating in January 2005, conducts basic research in computing and engineering sciences relevant to Microsoft Corp.’s business and the global IT community, with a special focus on technology for emerging markets and underserved communities, digital geographics, mobility and networks, multilingual systems, rigorous software engineering, cryptography and security, applied mathematics, and algorithms research.
Since June 1997, before being named managing director of Microsoft Research India, Anandan was a senior researcher at Microsoft Research headquarters in Redmond, Wash., where he built one of the world’s strongest research teams in computer vision and video processing.
During that time, he also served as an ambassador for the Microsoft Research University Relations program in India. Through repeat visits to India’s leading institutions of higher learning, Anandan helped develop strong relationships between Indian universities and Microsoft Research. He has also represented Microsoft in meetings with the government of India to emphasize the company’s commitment to research and development. Anandan continues Microsoft Research’s ongoing relationships with the government and academic communities in his new role.
Before joining Microsoft, Anandan was an assistant professor of computer science for four years at Yale University, where he founded the computer vision group. Following this, he was a research manager at Sarnoff Corp. His group developed state-of-the-art video stabilization technology and systems for ground and airborne video surveillance. Over two decades, his research work has resulted in numerous patents, academic papers and recognition in the form of several awards in computer vision. During a research career that has spanned two decades, Anandan has done pioneering research in video motion analysis and is recognized for his fundamental contributions in the area of optical flow, motion estimation, video mosaicking and 3-D scene analysis.
Anandan holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, which presented him with a Distinguished Alumni award in 2006. He also attended the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where he received his master of science in computer science, and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where he earned his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering.
Anandan is a native of Chennai, India. His interests outside work include African drumming and the study of philosophy, especially philosophy of the mind.

Prof. Dinesh Manocha, Professor Department of Computer Science University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, USA Prof. Dinesh Manocha,Professor Department of Computer ScienceUniversity of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Dinesh Manocha is currently a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He co-leads a major research group on geometric and simulation algorithms with applications to computer graphics, robotics and virtual environments. He is also involved in a number of inter-disciplinary activities and committees at the Department, College and the University Level. He has published more than 280 papers in the leading conferences and journals in computer graphics, robotics, computational geometry, databases, multimedia, high performance computing and symbolic computation, and received 12 best paper awards. He has also served as program committee member or program chair of more than 75 leading conferences in this area. Moreover, he has served as a member of the editorial board or guest editor of eleven leading journals. He has won many prestigious awards including NSF Career Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, Sloan Fellowship, Honda Research Award and UNC Hettleman Prize. He is an ACM Fellow.
Manocha has supervised 45 M.S. and Ph.D. students over the last 17 years at UNC Chapel Hill. His research group has developed many well-known software packages for collision detection, triangulation, GPU-based algorithms, solid modeling and solving algebraic systems. These packages have been downloaded by more than 100,000 users worldwide and licensed to more than 40 industrial organizations including Intel, Microsoft, Disney, Ford, Kawasaki, Siemens, Phillips Labs, MSC Software, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon etc. His group is actively collaborating with many industrial organizations including Disney, Boeing, Intel, NVIDIA, Microsoft, SAIC, ARA and Lockheed. Manocha’s research is currently supported by ARO, NSF, DARPA, RDECOM, ONR and many industrial partners, and he has served as a PI or Co-PI on more than 55 grants.

Prof. Sanjeev K Aggarwal Professor  & Dean of Resource Planning and Generation Department of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur Kanpur, INDIA

Prof. Sanjeev Aggarwal is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and currently Dean of Resource Planning and Generation at IIT Kanpur, India. He obtained his Ph.D. from IIT Kanpur in 1987.
Prof. Aggarwal’s research interests are in Grid and Cloud Computing, High Performance Computing, Compilers for High Performance Architectures including Multicore Processors, Compiler Design, Code Optimization, and Application of Language Processing Technology in Tools for Software Engineering.
Prof. Aggarwal has numerous awards and honors to his credit including outstanding performance award for three consecutive years 1987, 1988, 1989 while at TRDDC Pune, India.

Dr. Shivkumar Kalyanaraman Senior Manager, Next Gen Systems & Smarter Planet Solutions Department IBM India Research Labs, Bangalore, India

Shivkumar Kalyanaraman is a Senior Manager of the Next Gen Systems & Smarter Planet Solutions Department at IBM India Research Labs Bangalore. He was previously a Manager of the Next Generation Telecom Research group and a Research Staff Member since 2008. Previous was Professor at the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. He received a B.Tech degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in July 1993 followed by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the Ohio State University in 1994 and 1997 respectively. He also holds an Executive M.B.A. (EMBA) degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2005). His current research in IBM is at the intersection of emerging wireless technologies and IBM middleware and systems technologies with applications to large-scale smarter planet problems (grids, traffic, finance etc). He was selected by MIT’s Technology Review Magazine in 1999 as one of the top 100 young innovators for the new millennium. He served as the TPC Co-chair of IEEE INFOCOM 2008, and will serve as the General co-chair of ACM SIGCOMM 2010 in New Delhi. He is on the editorial board of IEEE/ACM Transactions of Networking. He is a Fellow of IEEE and Senior Member of ACM.

Prof. Anurag Kumar, Professor Dept. of Electrical Communication. Engg. (ECE) Chairman, Division of Electrical Sciences Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, INDIA

Anurag Kumar obtained his B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur in 1977, and was awarded the President of India’s Gold Medal. He then obtained the PhD degree from Cornell University (1981), where he worked under the guidance of Prof. T.L. Fine. He was a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, N.J., for over 6 years. During this period he worked on the performance analysis of computer systems, communication networks, and manufacturing systems. Since 1988 he has been with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, in the Dept. of Electrical Communication Engineering (ECE), where he is now a Professor, and is also currently the Chairman of the Electrical Sciences Division. From 2000 to 2004 he was the Associate Chairman of the ECE Department, and from 2004 to 2007 he was the Chairman of the ECE Department. From 1989 to 2003 he was also the Coordinator at IISc of the nationwide Education and Research Network (ERNET) Project, which established the first country-wide packet communication network in India.
He was co-chair of the International Teletraffic Congress (ITC) sponsored seminar on Teletraffic Analysis Methods, Bangalore, 1993; program chair of the Conference on Signal Processing, Communications, and Networking (SPCOM), Bangalore, 1997; program chair of the IEEE Bangalore Section sponsored International Conference on Communications, Control and Signal Processing (CCSP2000), Bangalore, 2000; General co-Chair for the IEEE Workshop on Information Theory, Bangalore, October 2002; General chair of MCDES-2008 the IISc Centenary Conference of the Electrical Sciences Division of IISc.
He has served as an Area Editor for IEEE Transactions on Networking, and for IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials.
He has been elected a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science (IASc), and a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE).

Prof. Jim Kurose Department of Computer Science University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA, USA

Jim Kurose received a B.A. degree in physics from Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Columbia University. He is a Distinguished University Professor (and past chairman) in the Department of Computer Science and Executive Associate Dean of the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts. Professor Kurose has been a Visiting Scientist at IBM Research, INRIA, Institute EURECOM , the University of Paris, LIP6, and Thomson Research Labs.
His research interests include network protocols and architecture, network measurement, sensor networks, multimedia communication, and modeling and performance evaluation. Dr. Kurose has served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Communications and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. He has been active in the program committees for IEEE Infocom, ACM SIGCOMM, and ACM SIGMETRICS conferences for a number of years, and has served as Technical Program Co-Chair for these conferences. He has won several conference best paper awards and received the ACM Sigcomm Test of Time Award.
He is the recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award from the National Technological University (8 times), the Outstanding Teacher Award from the College of Natural Science and Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, the Outstanding Teaching Award of the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools, and the IEEE Taylor Booth Education Medal. He was one of the founders of the Commonwealth Information Technology Initiative (CITI). He has twice received an IBM Faculty Development Award, and a Lilly Teaching Fellowship. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association and is a member of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ IT Collaborative. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the ACM.
With Keith Ross, he is the co-author of the textbook, Computer Networking, a top down approach (5th edition) published by Addison-Wesley Longman.