Panels

  1. Panel 1: ICT For Energy Sustainability: How Computer Science can save the World
  2. Panel 2: Behavior Analytics for Telecom Providers: Opportunities & Challenges
  3. Panel 3: Hot or Not: How to choose research problems, avoid dead topics and lead from the frontier

COMSNETS 2012 will feature 3 panel discussions, covering a set of timely topics spanning issues and trends across the broad range of networking and mobile technologies, sustainability, and mobile services.  The panels will be structured to provide multiple, compelling viewpoints on emerging topics or areas of interest, and will be highly interactive to enable significant audience participation.

Panel 1: ICT For Energy Sustainability: How Computer Science can save the World, Jan 5th, Thursday

Moderator: Prashant Shenoy, UMass Amherst

Prashant Shenoy is currently a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received the B.Tech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and the M.S and Ph.D degrees in Computer Science from the University of Texas, Austin. His research
interests lie in distributed systems and networking, with a recent emphasis on cloud and green computing. He has been the recipient of the National Science Foundation
Career Award, the IBM Faculty Development Award, the Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellowship, and the UT Computer Science Best Dissertation Award, and several best paper awards at leading conferences. He serves on editorial boards of the ACM Transactions on the Web and the Multimedia Systems journal and has served as the past program chair for ACM Multimedia, ACM Sigmetrics, World Wide Web, Performance, Multimedia Computing and Networking, and Hotcloud 2009. He is a distinguished member of the ACM and a senior member of the IEEE.

Panelists:

Anand Subramanian is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Penn State University. He received his B.Tech in Computer Science & Engg from IIT Madras and his Ph.D in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are in computer architecture, operating systems, performance evaluation, and the application of expertise on these topics to the areas of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Datacenters, Network-based Computing, Multimedia, Spatial Databases, Resource-constrained Computing, and Enterprise Systems. He has supervised the theses of 16 Ph.D. students, who have gone on to tenure-track positions in academia, research laboratories and leading hardware/software companies. His research has been continuously funded by NSF, including the Career award, as well as industries including IBM, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Microsoft and Seagate. He has published over 160 papers in top conferences and journals, in a wide variety of topics. He has served a Vice President at Tata Consultancy Services, while on leave from Penn State, managing TCS' carbon management framework for large enterprises.

Deva Seetharam leads IBM India's Smarter Energy research initiatives. Previously, he led France Telecom's electronic paper display research group in Boston. He has also worked on various embedded wireless networking technologies including active RFID and wireless sensor networks. On the entrepreneurial side, he co-founded RadioSherpa, a company that developed innovative HD Radio technologies and applications, and he was instrumental in selling the company to RadioTime Inc. He holds a MS degree from the MIT Media Laboratory and a BE degree from the Bharathiar University.

Marco Ajmone Marsan is a Full Professor at the Electronics Department of the Politecnico di Torino, in Italy, and a part-time Chief Researcher at IMDEA Networks in Madrid, Spain. He is the coordinator of the Network of Excellence TREND (Towards Real Energy-efficient Network Design) of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, with 12 partners and 6 additional collaborating institutions. He is a Fellow of IEEE, and a member of the steering committee of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

P. R. Kumar obtained his B. Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering (Electronics) from I.I.T. Madras in 1973, and the M.S. and D.Sc. degrees in Systems Science and Mathematics from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1975 and 1977, respectively. From 1977-84 he was a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. From 1985-2011 he was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Currently he is at Texas A&M University, where he holds the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Engineering. Kumar has worked on problems in game theory, adaptive control, stochastic systems, simulated annealing, neural networks, machine learning, queueing networks, manufacturing systems, scheduling, wafer fabrication plants and information theory. His current research interests are in wireless networks, sensor networks, and networked embedded control systems. His research is currently focused on wireless networks, sensor networks, cyberphysical systems, and the convergence of control, communication and computation. Kumar is a member of the National Academy of Engineering of the USA, as well as the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule) in Zurich. He received the IEEE Field Award for Control Systems, the Donald P. Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council, and the Fred W. Ellersick Prize of the IEEE Communications Society. He is a Fellow of IEEE. He is a Guest Chair Professor and Leader of the Guest Chair Professor Group on Wireless Communication and Networking at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is also an Honorary Professor at IIT Hyderabad. He was awarded the Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award from the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, and the Alumni Achievement Award from Washington University in St. Louis.

Panel 2: Behavior Analytics for Telecom Providers: Opportunities & Challenges, Jan 6th, Friday

Moderator:Archan Misra, Singapore Management University

Archan Misra is currently an Associate Professor of Information Systems at Singapore Management University (SMU) and a Deputy Director of the joint CMU-SMU Living Analytics Research Center (LARC). His current research interests are in pervasive computing & mobile systems. Over the past 11 years (as part of his previous employment with IBM Research and Telcordia Technologies), he has worked and published extensively in the areas of wireless networks, pervasive computing and sensor stream data management. He is presently an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and the Elsevier Journal of Pervasive and Mobile Computing and chaired the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Computer Communications (TCCC) from 2005-2007. Archan received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park, and his B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur.

Panelists:

Dr. Amitava Maulik is responsible for Connectiva’s research and development  for   products and major technology innovations and has over 20 years experience  in the areas of data mining, data warehousing, high performance distributed computing, and enterprise software architecture. Over the last 8 years, Amitava has published his research in numerous technology journals and has presented at several international conferences and seminars. Prior to Connectiva, Amitava held executive positions at e-Force, I-Kinetics and Schlumberger. Amitava holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from IIT Kharagpur and a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, NY. 

Krishnendu Majumdar is principal architect, inMobi. Krish has been working on internet technologies for almost 12 years. He worked on core architecture design at etrade , Yahoo and now at inmobi .  He was involved in Research and analytics for the RIghtMedia Ad exchange , which  is the largest Ad exchange for the  display advertising in the web world. Making Ads relevant is one of his passions and he is involved in making Mobile advertising more meaningful and useful for users @inmobi . He has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Jadavpur University  and an MBA from XLRI, India.

Dr. Giridhar D. Mandyam is Vice President of Technology, Qualcomm Internet Services, San Diego, California. Born in Dallas, Texas, Dr. Mandyam received the BSEE degree (Magna Cum Laude) from Southern Methodist University in 1989, the MSEE degree from the University of Southern California in 1993, and the PhD EE degree from the University of New Mexico in 1996. At SMU he was a University Scholar and Hyer Society Scholar.  While at USC he was a Teaching Assistant in the Signal and Image Processing Institute, and at UNM he studied under a NASA Fellowship.  From 1989 to 1994, Dr. Mandyam held positions with Rockwell International and Qualcomm Inc. He worked at Texas Instruments from 1996 –  1998, and at Nokia from 1998 – 2006.  While at Nokia, he held a number of research and management positions, including Head of the Nokia Research Center cite in San Diego, and Chief Technologist for North America.  Dr. Mandyam is inventor or co-inventor of more than twenty issued patents.   He has also published over 70 conference and journal papers, and 4 book chapters. He is a co-author of the text Third-Generation CDMA Systems for Enhanced Data Services (Academic Press, 2002).  He has been a member of the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.  Dr. Mandyam is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Dr. Ishwar Parulkar is the Chief System Architect for the Provider Access Business Unit of Cisco Systems.Dr. Parulkar has worked on all aspects of system development from architecture, hardware design, software interfaces, EDA tools, product qualification, manufacturing to in-field service. He has a strong track record of innovation and execution on several successful products that have billions of dollars in recognized revenue in companies such as Apple and Sun Microsystems. After graduate studies and working in the Silicon Valley for over 12 years, Dr. Parulkar relocated to Bangalore in 2010 to lead development of networking products relevant to India, China and other emerging countries. He has published over 25 technical papers and has 19 issued and filed patents. Dr. Parulkar holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, an M.S. from Vanderbilt University and a B.E. from University of Mumbai.

Mr. T. R. Dua has over 35 years of experience in various aspects of the telecom sector, including Product Development, Business Development, Licensing, Regulatory, Infrastructure Sharing, Mobile Number Portability and Spectrum Related Issues Related Issues. He has been the Director of leading telecom companies such as Bharti Cellular Ltd. & Shyam Telecom Ltd., and was previously Deputy Director General of the Cellular Operators Association of India (CoAI).  He is very well versed with the current national issues and international practice, and has been very closely associated with ITU/APT/WWRF/3GPP for spectrum-related matters, such as like spectrum management/spectrum pricing/Trading, etc. He is presently Vice Chairman of the Global ICT Standardization Forum, India and the Co-Chair of ITU APT. Mr. Dua is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India) and a Fellow of the Institution of Electronics & Telecom Engineers.

 

Panel 3: Hot or Not: How to choose research problems, avoid dead topics and lead from the frontier, Jan 7th, Saturday

Moderator: Ram Ramjee, Microsoft Research India

Ram Ramjee received his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Madras, and his M.S./Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, India. Previously, he spent ten years at Bell Labs as a technical manager and a distinguished member of technical staff. His research interests include network protocols and architecture, wireless networking and mobile computing. He has published over 50 papers and is a co-inventor on over 20 patents.  He is the recipient of several best paper awards and the 2010 Thomas Alva Edison patent award. He has taught two graduate-level courses in wireless networks as an adjunct faculty at Columbia University. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and a Fellow of the IEEE.

Panelists:

Ashu Sabharwal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. He served as the Director of Center for Multimedia Communication from 2007-2010. His two main research interests are wireless networking and engineering foundations for health. He is the founder of the WARP project (http://warp.rice.edu). He is currently heading the new Scalable Health Initiative at Rice (http://sh.rice.edu). 

Lakshminarayanan Subramanian is an Assistant Professor in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. His research interests are in the areas of networks, distributed systems and computing for development. He co-leads the Networks and Wide-Area Systems(NeWS) group (which investigates software solutions for distributed systems, wireline and wireless networking, operating system, security and privacy, technologies and applications for the developing world) and the CATER Lab at NYU (which focuses on developing and deploying low-cost, innovative technology solutions to some of the problems in developing regions in terms of communication, healthcare and microfinance). He has co-established a new Center for Technology and Economic Development (CTED) at NYU Abu Dhabi which brings together students from several disciplines (CS, economics, healthcare, education, policy). He is the recipient of several awards including the NSF CAREER Award (2009), IBM Faculty Award (2009, 2010) and C.V. Ramamoorthy Award. He has been at the forefront of several technological innovations for development that have been used in several countries around the world. Many of his research works are now being commercialized by startups established by his students. He is the co-founder of two startups Entrupy Inc (paper fingerprinting) and Toodhu Mobile (mobile services in emerging regions).

Rajeev Rastogi is the Vice President of Yahoo! Labs Bangalore where he directs basic and applied research in the areas of web search, advertizing, and cloud computing. Previously Rajeev was at Bell Labs where he was a Bell Labs Fellow and the founding Director of the Bell Labs Research Center in Bangalore. Rajeev is active in the fields of databases, data mining, and networking, and has served on the program committees of several conferences in these areas. He currently serves on the editorial board of the CACM, and has been an Associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering in the past. He has published over 125 papers, and filed over 50 patents. Rajeev received his B. Tech degree from IIT Bombay, and a PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas, Austin. 

Don Towsley holds a B.A. in Physics (1971) and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (1975) from University of Texas. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts in the Department of Computer Science.  He has held visiting positions at numerous universities and research labs. His research interests include networks and performance evaluation. He currently serves on the editorial board of IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications and previously served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and on numerous other editorial boards.  He has served as Program Co-chair of several conferences including INFOCOM 2009.  He is a member of ACM and ORSA. He has received the 2007 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the 2007 ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement Award, the 2008 ACM SIGCOMM Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2011 IEEE INFOCOM Achievement Award, and numerous paper awards including a 2008 SIGCOMM Test-of-Time Paper Award and the 1998 IEEE Communications Society William Bennett Best Paper Award. Last, he has been elected Fellow of both the ACM and IEEE. 

George Varghese worked at DEC for several years designing DECNET protocols and products (bridge architecture, Gigaswitch) before obtaining his Ph.D in 1992 from MIT. He worked from 1993-1999 at Washington University. He joined UCSD in 1999, where he currently is a professor of computer science. He won the ONR Young Investigator Award in 1996, and was elected to be a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 2002. Together with colleagues, he has 16 patents awarded in the general field of Network Algorithmics. Several of the algorithms he has helped develop have found their way into commercial systems including Linux (timing wheels), the Cisco GSR (DRR), and Microsoft Windows (IP lookups). He also helped design the lookup engine for Procket's 40 Gbps forwarding engine. He has written a book on building fast router and endnode implementations called "Network Algorithmics", which was published in December 2004 by Morgan-Kaufman. In May 2004, he co-founded NetSift Inc., where he was the President and CTO. NetSift was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2005. For the 2010-2011 academic year, he was the Distinguished Visitor in the Computer Science department at Stanford University. He is spending the 2011-2012 year on leave at Yahoo Research in Santa Clara. 


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