Panel
Discussions

Panel 1 : Title: “Telling gold from pyrite: Promising research direction or hype ?”

Abstract : The goal of the panel is to explore a systematic way (if any) of forecasting whether an emerging technology trend is a promising research direction or if it is merely a hype. We aim to explore this question by doing a case-study of several hypes/realities (e.g. AI/P2P/CCN/Cloud/BigData/SDN etc.). Can upfront prediction of a hype be done at all ? Are there any principles/heuristics that may help in this process ? Further, we shall aim to understand if the research explorations in hypes went wasted, or were useful in other forms (e.g. p2p research primarily driving technology behind scalable cloud substrates).

Date: January 7,2014
Moderator: Sanjoy Paul, Managing Director, Accenture Technology Labs India

Panelists:

1. Romit Roy Choudhury,  Associate Professor, Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign (UIUC), USA
2. Krishna Gummadi , Head of Network Systems Research, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany
3. Rajat Moona, Director General, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)
4. Arogyaswami Paulraj, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, USA
5. K. K. Ramakrishnan, AT&T Fellow and Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, AT&T Labs-Research, USA,

Panel 2 :  “Leveraging synergy between academia/research labs/start ups”

Abstract : The goal of the panel is to brainstorm ways in which academia, research labs, and startups can leverage their respective strengths to create disruptive innovations with big market impact. By doing a case study of impactful innovations made by academia, research labs, and startups, we aim to understand which aspect of their operation model is the primary contributor of success. We aim to explore how these organizations can leverage each others’ mutual strengths to co-create the next BIG thing. Perhaps, these organizations can also re-factor their own innovation model to exploit the synergies between these respective organizations (e.g. entrepreneurship cells in academia, ventures in research labs, supporting sabbaticals across these different types of organizations).

Date: January 8, 2014
Moderator: Pravin Bhagwat, Co-Founder and CTO, AirTight Networks

Panelists:

1. Ashwin Gumaste, Institute Chair Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay
2. Pankaj Jalote, Director, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi
3. Ganesh Kasinathan, Principal Engineer, Wireless Networking Group, Cisco Systems, Bangalore
4. Anurag Kumar, Professor ECE Dept. and Chairman of Electrical Sciences Division, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore
5. Nick McKeown ,  Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield and Sequoia Professor, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, USA
6. Ramesh Sitaraman, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, USA and Akamai Fellow, Akamai Tech

Panel 3 : “Research aimed at broader societal impact”

Abstract : The goal of the panel is to identify few research areas focused on improving the life of a layman, and for which no good solution exists today. In addition to ICT for developing regions targeting the underprivileged layman, we also aim to explore technology that is generally valuable to a layman across all strata of society (e.g. innovative services on Internet edge, smart cities, enabling privacy of web users).

Date: January 9, 2014
Moderator: Bhaskaran Raman, Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay

Panelists: 

1. Rajesh Krishna Balan, Associate Professor of School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Singapore
2. Sean Blagsvedt, Founder and CEO, Babajob.com
3. Ed Cutrell, Head of Technology for Emerging Markets, Microsoft Research India
4. Deva P. Seetharam, Senior Technical Staff Member and Manager, Smarter Energy Systems Group, IBM Research India
5. Bikram Sengupta, Senior Technical Staff Member and Manager, Smarter Education Group, IBM Research India