Message from the Chairs | Comsnets 2015
Thank you for making COMSNETS 2015 a great success. See you at COMSNETS 2016: 5th - 9th Jan 2016, Bangalore !
JANUARY 6 - 10
BANGALORE, INDIA


Vidhana Soudha by Ranganath Krishnamani

Message from the Chairs

General Co-Chairs

It is a privilege and a pleasure to welcome you to this, the seventh avataar of COMSNETS and to Bangalore. One of us (DM) grew up around here and has family and roots in this neighborhood; that it makes this job all the more special.

COMSNETS has grown up to be an important stop in the networking conference calendar and we hope you will find this to be the case in this version too. As every year, we have a virtual cornucopia of events to make this edition a memorable one. We have three excellent keynote speakers in Adrian Perrig, Sascha Meinrath and Venkat Padmanabhan. They are each pushing the boundaries of networking and we look forward to hearing from them and their interaction with us. Of course, we are grateful to them for having spending time with us. The technical program committee with Koushik Kar, Sumit Roy, and Dah Ming Chiu at the helm has taken special care to obtain thorough reviews and they have ensured a high quality technical program comparable to the best in the business. We are indeed very grateful to them for pulling off this feat. The technical program is also enhanced by a set of invited papers from distinguished researchers. We are also grateful to those that accepted and agreed to spare their valuable time with us. Kiran Kuchi, Pan Hui, and Supratik Mukhopdhyay kicked off the process by publicizing the conference which in turn ensured high quality submissions. Vishnu Navda has ensured that the authors deliver and the conference proceedings meets the IEEE requirements. The main technical program is augmented by an excellent poster session that has been shepherded by Vijay Gabale. Thanks to all of them.

The workshops preceding and succeeding the technical program have become an important feature of COMSNETS. They help us identify emerging research areas; we have five of them this year---one each on transport, agriculture, healthcare, security, and social networks. Each of these workshops promises to be vigorous and stimulating. All credit for this to the corresponding chairs Krishna Jagannathan and Gaurav Raina (Intelligent Transport Systems), Prashant Pillai and Huzur Saran (Future Information Security), Supratik Mukhopadhyay and P Krishna Reddy (Agrinets), Niloy Ganguly and Sitabra Sinha (Social Networking), and Sanjiva Prasad and Zainul Charbiwala (NetHealth).

Mobile India has been a feature of COMSNETS for a while now and is probably the most stable and active forum for interaction between academics, policy makers and industry in India. V Sridhar, as is his wont, has put together yet another excellent program with four panel discussions that is sure to give us food for thought for a while.

The industry has recognized the importance of COMSNETS to the networking community and has been traditionally generous with their purse. Platinum sponsorship from Cisco is deeply appreciated. It did boost our morale. Silver sponsorships from Microsoft and Google and bronze from NetApp, Xerox, Qualcomm, Bosch, Airtel, INSAIT, Mahindra Comviva, Sasken, HP Networkin, Airtight for WiFi at the venue, Yourstory for media coverage and Carrot with their Mobile App have helped raise the profile. Our thanks to each of them. The sponsors were ably pursued by Rajeev Shorey and Sudipta Maitra. They have been instrumental in ensuring the financial health of COMSNETS over the years. (What would COMSNETS do without you?) The generosity of our sponsors has also translated into a large number of travel grants for emerging researchers from India and abroad to participate in the conference and also for the PhD students to get together in the PhD Forum. Thanks to Sushanta Das (travel) and Swades De (PhD Forum) for ably managing these two important features of COMSNETS. Industry participation, especially the startups, in the Demos and Exhibits has also seen a steady increase over the years. Thanks to Vijay Gabale, Saharsh Tibrewal and Laxman Shankar, the trend continues this year and this platform promises to provide an excellent view of the things to come.

The website has been ably and efficiently managed by Ananda Krishna. This has helped provide an excellent presence for COMSNETS on the web. His turnaround times on our requests have been lightning fast. Thanks Ananda!

And now for something special. The Mars orbiter from ISRO did catch the imagination of so many that even the New York Times had to give it quite bit of attention. Shri Kiran Kumar, Director of Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad has kindly agreed to provide us with a "birds eye view" of the Mars Mission that he oversees. Our gratitude to him for providing this privilege is immense.

Finally, a special gratitude to the 'steadies' of COMSNETS. Tulika Pandey has been a fantastic interface with the Government of India. Chandrika Sridhar has provided solid support with registrations and correspondence with the authors. Sudipta Maitra is ensuring the smooth conduct by managing the local arrangements. Giridhar Mandyam on the conference calls has been invaluable. Lastly, Rajeev Shorey deserves a special mention and a special paragraph. But we will spare our efforts and save it for the celebrations after the conference. His constant reminders and regular pokes and nudges helped the COMSNETS ship keep a steady course and, if we may mix metaphors, help us keep our eye on the ball.

Enjoy COMSNETS. We will.


General Co-Chairs:

Prasant Mohapatra

UC Davis, USA

D. Manjunath

IIT Bombay, India


Steering Committee

We are pleased to introduce the Seventh edition of the International Conference on COMmunication Systems and NETworkS (COMSNETS). The conference continues to maintain its tradition of offering a high-quality program with well known keynote and invited speakers, a rigorously reviewed technical program and poster session, timely panels with recognized experts, five workshops that address innovative applications of digital communications, Mobile India 2015 – the Business Track of the conference, a strong slate of demos and exhibits coming from a mix of established companies and start-ups, and the PhD forum where students can discuss their ongoing research and interact with experts and other students working on similar topics. We are proud to host the conference again in Bangalore, and take advantage of the active technical community in this city. 

COMSNETS 2015 has once again assembled an outstanding organizing committee, drawn from top researchers from around the world both in industry and academia. We are grateful to the entire organizing committee for their efforts in putting together this year’s program. We sincerely thank the General Co-Chairs – Prof. Prasant Mohapatra (The University of California – Davis, USA) and Prof. D. Manjunath (Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay, India), the TPC Co-Chairs – Prof. Koushik Kar, (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA), Prof. Sumit Roy (The University of Washington at Seattle, USA) and Prof. Dah-Ming Chiu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong). The General Chairs, TPC Chairs, the Technical Program Committee, Workshop Chairs, Panel Chairs, Poster Chairs, Ph.D Forum Chairs, Demos & Exhibits Chairs, Publicity & Publications Chairs, Local Arrangements, Sponsorship and Registration Chairs have worked hard and put together the outstanding program for this year’s conference. We thank Chandrika Sridhar and Sudipta Maitra for their continued strong support of the conference through the years. Ananda Krishna, the web chair of COMSNETS 2015, has provided exceptional support this year and we sincerely thank him for his tireless efforts.

The conference continues to benefit from many industrial sponsors and several university partners.  We give a special thanks to this year’s Platinum Sponsor, CISCO.  We also are sincerely grateful to our Silver Sponsors – Microsoft and Google.  In addition we appreciate our Bronze Sponsors – NetApp, Xerox, Qualcomm, Bosch, Airtel, INSAIT, Mahindra Comviva, Sasken and HP Networking.   In addition, we give a special thanks to conference partners Airtight Networks, Your Story, Carrot, ITRA, CCICI, IETE and River Publishers. We are delighted to have IISc Bangalore, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras and IIIT Bangalore as university partners. These universities provide much of the content in the conference’s technical program and workshops, along with many student volunteers who make the conference a success. We are also delighted to continue our relationship with IEEE who are the technical co-sponsors of COMSNETS again through the IEEE Communications Society.  We are grateful to ACM for their continued support, through the SIGCOMM and SIGMOBILE interest groups.  Finally, we are grateful to the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) of the Govt. of India for their support of this year’s conference. Ms. Tulika Pandey from DEITY deserves a special mention for all her efforts in obtaining approvals from DEITY, Ministry of Home and External Affairs, Govt. of India.

We welcome you to COMSNETS 2015, and hope that you are able to enjoy a fulfilling experience with this year’s program. In addition, please take the time to visit the many landmarks and historical sites that Bangalore has to offer.


Steering Committee Co-Chairs:

Uday Desai

IIT Hyderabad, India

Giridhar Mandyam

Qualcomm, USA

Rajeev Shorey

TCS Innovation Labs

G. Venkatesh

SASKEN, India


TPC Co-Chairs

Welcome to COMSNETS 2015! The final technical program this year consists of 35 regular papers and 10 invited presentations. We received 163 paper submissions from authors in 11 countries.  

For the regular papers, the paper reviewing process was conducted in two phases. There was an initial round of filtering, through which the papers that clearly did not meet the scope or standard of the conference, were rejected by the TPC chairs with one short review. The remaining 99 papers underwent a rigorous review process, with each paper receiving 3 reviews. A total of 96 TPC members from academia and industry all over the world provided peer reviews for these papers, which was followed by on-line discussion moderated by TPC chairs. This was further followed by a TPC meeting (open to all TPC members) held through teleconference, based on which the final accept/reject decisions were made. We are grateful to all TPC members for their tremendous effort in helping us put together a strong technical program!

For the invited papers, we have 10 eminent researchers from the academia and the industry who will present their state-of-the art research at the conference.

Besides the main program, the conference includes 6 workshops including two `firsts’ – AGRINETS and Intelligent Transportation System – as well as a poster session and a PhD forum. 


Technical Program Co-Chairs:

Dah Ming Chiu

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Koushik Kar

RPI, USA

Sumit Roy

UWash, USA & IIIT Delhi


Poster Chair

The COMSNETS 2015 Poster Session is a forum to showcase new and exciting ideas in the fields of networking and communications. The session is designed for the researchers and students to showcase their current and cutting edge work. This years session includes posters from computer networks, data measurement, communication theory, and software systems, and participation from within and outside India. We received 25 poster abstract submissions for this year's poster session of which 14 were accepted for posters. The posters were evaluated by a PC consisting of 14 members from institutes and research labs from within and outside India. Each poster abstract received at least two and in some cases three reviews. The process also had an intermediate round where first versions of posters received feedback from the review committee. We would like to thank all PC members for their timely, insightful and detailed reviews. Additionally, the poster session has two best poster awards, selected by a jury during the presentation session. We welcome you to COMSNETS 2015 posters session, and we hope that you will find the posters interesting and engaging.


Poster Chair:

Vijay Gabale

IBM Research, India


Panel Co-Chairs

Click here to view PDF Version

COMSNETS 2015 features 3 interesting panel sessions designed to deliberate the need for innovations in ICT technologies which have potential impact to Indian market as well as Globally. Eminent members from Academia, Industry and Government are invited to share their perspectives and suggestions for future research, business, policies, etc.

Website: http://www.comsnets.org/panel_discussions.html

Panel 1: SDN - Has it delivered as Hyped?

Date: 7th January 2015 | Time: 5:45 PM to 7:00 PM | Venue: Sigma Hall

Since 2012, SDN has quickly climbed up the hype charts of the industry which has recorded significant investment and benefits. The technology and the emerging applications for Big Data, IoT and Cloud Computing pose interesting challenges for SDN deployment. A SDN market is estimated to be at USD 35 Billion for the next 5 years citing plenty of opportunities for the entire ICT eco-system. In this challenging business environment, a reality check is required. The directions for bridging the hype to reality and the role of all stakeholders (Service Providers, Vendors, Startups, Academia, Open Source communities, Govt.) needs to be established.

Panelists: Ishwardutt Parulkar (Cisco), Subhas Mondal (Wipro), Daya Kamath (IBM), Jayaram Beladakere (Ericsson), Kalyankumar Asangi (Huawei)

Panel 2: Digital India – What Role for Standards, Regulations and IP?

Date: 8th January 2015 | Time: 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM | Venue: Sigma Hall

The Honorable Prime Minister of India has setup a programme to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy called “Digital India” together with the "Make in India" and "FDI - First Develop (in) India". Some US$ 100billion have been pledged by foreign governments and Indian government itself has identified "smart cities", "virtual classrooms", "e-health" and e-Government" as part of its 2014-2015 Union budget of approx. US$1.5billion. In this challenging technology and market environment, we need to ponder on the need in India to be aware of the role of standardization, regulation and IPs and how it will directly impact these initiatives.

Panelists: Kiritkumar Lathia (Fellow, IET), Sascha Meinrath (X-Lab), Tulika Pandey (DeiTY, Govt. of India), Dipankar Raychaudhari (Rutgers University), Manish Gupta (Xerox), Aloknath De (Samsung)

Panel 3: IoT - Challenges and Opportunities in Indian Market

Date: 9th January 2015 | Time: 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM | Venue: Sigma Hall

Govt. of India has recently announced significant investments to create an IoT industry in India of USD 15 Trillion by 2020. It is estimated that Indian market will share 5-6% of the global IoT industry. Indian IoT market requests attention towards some of the unique Indian challenges and opportunities related to sensors infrastructure, applications and services, directions for emerging IoT enabling technologies (5G, Big Data Analytics, Cloud, SDN) and electronics industry.

Panelists: Venkatesh Kumaran (IESA), Somshubhro Pal Choudhury (Analog Devices), Jay Warrior (IISc), Anuj Ashokan (Tata Teleservices), Haribabu Pasupaleti (CDAC), Krishnan Raman (Flutura), Syam Madanapalli (iRam Technologies), Balamuralidhar P (TCS)

We warmly welcome you to COMSNETS 2015 Panels session. We would like to thank all the panel members for accepting our invitation to the panel sessions. We also thank the entire COMSNETS 2015 organizing committee for their suggestion throughout the design phase of the panels and especially the Web Chair for providing the excellent website support.


Panel Co-Chairs:

Ishwardutt Parulkar

CISCO, India

Niranth Amogh

Huawei R&D, India


Demos and Exhibits Co-Chairs

COMSNETS 2015 features a "Demos and Exhibits" session designed to allow startups, industries and researchers to showcase their latest industrial applications and research prototypes in all communications and networking related topics. This includes innovative technologies, platforms, analysis tools and applications in diverse domains such as wireless networks, energy utilities, educational platforms and distributed systems. The demo sessions are spread over two days to ensure maximum visibility and favor a close interaction between presenters and participants. The key features of the demo session includes an exclusive demo Snaptalk session in the main conference agenda followed by a two hour demo session co-located with the posters. Each accepted demo also has an accompanying technical paper which is made available in conference proceedings. This year we especially made efforts to highlight the growing start-up culture in Indian ecosystem and invited start-ups to present their innovative technologies. Additionally, the demo session has two best demo awards, selected by a jury during the exhibit session. We welcome you to COMSNETS 2015 "Demos and Exhbits" session, and we hope that you will find the demos intriguing and captivating.


Demos and Exhibits Co-Chairs:

Laxman Shankar

Bigonet Technologies, India

Saharsh Tibrewal

Amazon, India

Vijay Gabale

IBM Research, India


Sponsorship Co-Chairs

Once again raising sponsorship for Comsnets 15 has been a herculean task. Most multinationals remained squeezed for funds and the bigger Indian companies just shied away as in the previous years. In spite of this a vigorous campaign yielded a decent support from 11 entities. I am truly grateful to all of them irrespective of their level of support.

Cisco was the biggest contributor who came as a Platinum Sponsor. I am truly grateful to the Cisco team for their effort. Their constant high level support for the past 5 years is commendable. I would also like to record my appreciation to Microsoft Research India and Google Research India for once again coming forward with their financial support.

My heartfelt thanks also goes to the other sponsors namely, NetApp, Xerox Research, Qualcomm, Bosch Research, Airtel, INSAIT, Mahindra Comviva, Sasken and HP Networking who have all chipped in with their financial support. A special thanks to Airtight Networks for supporting us by providing the conference with free WiFi service.

Thank you all for your confidence in this conference without which it could never be as successful as it is today.


Demos and Exhibits Co-Chairs:

Sponsorship Co-Chairs

Sudipta Maitra

New Delhi, India

Rajeev Shorey

TCS Innovation Labs


Local Arrangements Chair

The Chancery Pavilion continued to be the venue for Comsnets for the 8th year in a row for same three reasons, namely, for its location, good conference facilities and its relatively affordable cost. As always The Chancery Pavilion offered our delegates a special tariff as they did in the previous years. I would like to thanks to Mr Vivek Thakur, Asst GM of The Chancery Pavilion Hotel and Mr B Madhushudhan, Banquet Manager Chancery Pavilion Hotel, for all their help and support. This year again The Chancery Pavilion Hotel promised a total gastronomic delight by providing a very special menu for all the lunches, welcome reception. The Vivanta by Taj, has been chosen as the venue for the Comsnets Gala Banquet. Everyone is aware of the Taj Hotels tradition of hospitality and so our expectations are high. They have promised us a a dinner fare suited for Kings in their grand Vijayanagar Banquet Hall.

I would like to record a special thanks to Mr Kuldeep Singh of Foureleven India and Mr Ravi Chandra and Murali of Audio Plus for all their help in providing the backdrops, banners, brochure, audio visual equipment etc.

This year Cisco and Microsoft Research India will provide a guided tour of their lab. I strongly urge all delegates to make use of this opportunity to visit these great labs.

Last but not the least I would like to record my heartfelt thanks and gratefulness to Dr Rajeev Shorey for his constant help, support, guidance and above all his confidence in me. I remain much obliged to him.


Local Arrangements Chair:

Sudipta Maitra

New Delhi, India


Ph.D Forum Co-Chairs

COMSNETS 2015 PhD forum has been aimed at providing a friendly discussion atmosphere to the PhD students who are at the formative stage of their research aspirations and a research career. The PhD forum encouraged submissions from the doctoral research students (beginning/continuing) as well as the Masters and BTech students who are yet to make up their mind toward a research career. It is not expected that the students will have concrete research results to present. The feedbacks at the various stages, namely, proposal evaluation by the experts from the industry and academia, discussions during the brief PhD forum presentation session, and free-wheeling technical interactions throughout the conference days with the fellow researchers and subject experts, are expected to help the students in objectively understanding and appreciating the value of their research.

This year, we had a total of 22 submissions, out of which 19 submissions were from the students studying in India, 2 were from USA, and 1 was from UK. One submission was from an undergraduate student, and the rests were from doctoral research students. Each proposal consisted of an extended summary of the student’s research plan, a set of presentation slides, and the student’s bio-data. The proposals were independently evaluated by 3 or 4 experts from industry and academia. Based on the overall recommendations, 13 proposals have been selected for oral presentation at the PhD forum – in two parallel tracks. Due to limitation of time for each presentation, the students are highly encouraged to make use of the conference time to interact with the researchers and get feedback on their research.

The student presenters shall be given a certificate of participation in the PhD forum at the end of the forum sessions. In addition, there will be an award for the best student presentation. 

The submissions were evaluated by the following evaluation committee:

  • Tricha Anjali (IIIT Bangalore, India)
  • Tarun Banka (Acelio Inc., USA)
  • Mainak Chatterjee (Univ. Central Florida, USA)
  • Sushanta Das, Co-chair (NIIT University, India)
  • Swades De, Co-chair (IIT Delhi, India)
  • R. Venkatesha Prasad (TU Delft, The Netherlands)
  • Venkatesh Sarangan (TCS Innovations Labs, Chennai, India)
  • Chetna Singhal (IIT Delhi, India)

The two session chairs for the PhD forum presentation are:

  • Vivek Bohara (IIIT Delhi, India)
  • Chetna Singhal (IIT Delhi, India)

We would like to thank the PhD forum evaluation committee members for their objective and timely reviews. We are also thankful to the two session chairs for agreeing to handle the PhD forum presentation sessions at the conference.


Ph.D Forum Co-Chairs:

Swadesh De

IIT Delhi, India

Sushanta Das

NIIT University, India


Mobile India Workshop Co-Chairs

Click here to view PDF Version

Theme: wireless broadband: challenges and opportunities

India is in the cusp of another revolution – Telecom 2.0. Having reached a mobile subscriber base of more than 950 million, the next step for India is to leverage the power of wireless broadband. 3G networks in the country are evolving towards a state of maturity and 4G networks are almost here. Regulation has moved forward with notable achievements in the areas of spectrum liberalization, unified licensing, spectrum trading and sharing, liberalized mergers & acquisition norms. However, making Telecom 2.0 a reality requires active participation and commitment from various stakeholders in the value chain: network equipment makers, handset vendors, content providers, mobile operators, Internet Service Providers, regulators and policy makers, system integrators, and software developers.

Mobile India 2015 will explore opportunities and challenges that wireless broadband offers in the following four sessions with all stakeholders in the ecosystem:

Morning Keynote Address: Why Your Smartphone May Know More About You Than You Might Guess

Dr. Venkat Padmanabhan, Principal Researcher and Research Manager, Microsoft Research India

Afternoon Keynote Address

Sascha Meinrath, Director, X-Lab and Founder, Open Technology Institute, USA

Session 1:  State of the Net: Challenges and opportunities for Telcos

Sponsored by: Airtel

Though Indian telcos are uniquely positioned to address the second largest mobile market in the world, they are constrained by (i) limited spectrum, (ii) intense competition and consequent price wars,  and (iii) unpredictable demand for network capacity and services.

How are they coping?

Panelists

S.J.S. Selvinson, VP and CTO, Bharti Airtel, Karnataka  

Yathish Nagavalli, CTO, Huawei Technologies India

Jayant Moghe, Practice Head – Mobile Broadband, Ericsson India Limited
Rajesh Chharia, President, Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI)

Dipak Vagadiya, National Manager, SDN and Data Center Networking at Hewlett-Packard India

Swami Krishnan (Moderator), VP and Chief Marketing Officer, Sasken Communication Technologies   

Article on the above session can be accessed at:

http://yourstory.com/2014/12/telcos-state-net/

Session 2: Domesticity: Handsets, applications, equipment, and software

Sponsored by: Sasken

For the first time, domestic handset vendors have replaced multinationals in top slots. With projects such as Google One on its way, it is only to be expected that 2015 will be the “year of Smartphones”, thus paving way for rich services to be “massively” available. The “app economy” has caught on with numerous start-ups blossoming in various parts of the country each hoping to leverage the ubiquitous connectivity and the exponential adoption of Smartphones and Tablets. 

What is the future in this sphere?

Panelists

Jayanth Mysore, Product Manager, Google       

Shirish Purohit, Head - Sales and Marketing Support, Tejas Networks             

George Mathews, Founder Director, Icarus Design Services and Icarus Nova 

Arvind Pani, CEO, Reverie Technologies          

Dr. T.K. Srikanth (Moderator), Professor, IIIT-Bangalore

Session 3: U-Governance: Ubiquitous Government services through mobiles

Sponsored by: HP Networking

The Central and various State Governments have committed to leveraging wireless broadband for providing e-Governance services. Suitable architecture and service delivery models are being established.

Will the Telecom 2.0 make “Digital India”? Or will it Digital India drive the wireless broadband revolution?

Panelists

Dr. D.S. Ravindran, Secretary � and ex-officio Commissioner, Treasuries, Finance Department, Govt. of Karnataka

Dr. Pramod Varma, Chief Architect, Aadhaar   

Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO, Namma Bengaluru Foundation

Abhijit Gupta, Founder & CEO, Xtremum Solutions

Dr. Amit Prakash (Moderator), Professor, IIIT-Bangalore

Article on the above session can be accessed at:

http://yourstory.com/2014/12/u-governance-ubiquitous-government-services-mobiles-india/

Session 4: Regulation and Policy: Power of OTTs vs. telcos

Sponsored by: Mahindra Comviva

While India is yet to wake up on “Net Neutrality” issues, the global as well as local Over The Top (OTT) players are disrupting the traditional telco models and services. Power of OTTs are being felt in the once Telco dominated marketplace.

What kind of Telco-OTT interface will emerge?

Panelists

Rajkumar Upadhyay, ex-Adviser, TRAI and Director, DoT

Sundeep Kathuria, Executive Vice President, Policy and Regulation, Vodafone India

Amod Dadhich, Head-Business Development, Mahindra Comviva         

Dr. G. Venkatesh, Chief Strategy Officer, Sasken Communication Technologies

Dr. D. Manjunath (Moderator), Professor, IIT-Bombay

Article on the above session can be accessed at:

http://yourstory.com/2014/12/net-neutrality/


Mobile India Workshop Co-Chairs:

V. Sridhar

IIIT Bangalore, India

D. Manjunath

IIT Bombay, India


ITS Workshop Co-Chairs

Welcome to the first workshop on Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). This interdisciplinary workshop aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines, and will focus particularly on urban transportation systems.


ITS Workshop Co-Chairs:

Krishna Jagannathan

IIT Madras, India

Gaurav Raina

IIT Madras, India


NetHealth Workshop Co-Chairs

Welcome to the 5th Workshop on Networked Healthcare Technology (NetHealth'15). 

Health care providers have articulated the need for innovative uses of technology for providing better health care, more effectively and at lower cost.  The current models for health care clearly cannot scale to deal with the challenges of growing populations, different kinds of diseases and the professional drive of health care providers to achieve better outcomes. Moreover, there are societal pressures to do so in an affordable manner, while also respecting the privacy and dignity of patients. 

The NetHealth Workshop is aimed at fostering a dialogue between different experts from the medical profession and technologists to achieve more effective health care and sustainable and improved models of health care.  The fifth such workshop hopes to take this dialogue further towards building active collaborations between the ``two cultures’’. In the words of Atul Gawande: “the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably.”

It is clear that medical applications pose challenging real-world problems to technologists, solving which which can have a significant impact.  Likewise, medical and health care professionals recognize how new technologies, particularly of computing and communication, can provide far more effective outcomes.   Moreover, the two communities have realized that the engagement cannot merely be a multidisciplinary collaborative team, but rather a trans-disciplinary one, where the members imbibe and engage with the issues and concerns of the other domains.  

It is  indeed a pleasure that we have a programme where we have four distinguished speakers whose interests and expertise range across computing and network technology, medicine and public health, cutting-edge surgical techniques,  policy, public health, targeted community programmes for women and children,  research and public funding for research in health care.   All four of them are pioneers  -- from fostering the dialogue between medicine and computing/communication, they have been involved in significant collaborations with partners from other domains to produce prototypes and products in health care technology.  

In addition we have 5 contributed papers which cover the information system requirements in diverse areas such as patient monitoring using sensors, curating and managing data, ensuring its privacy in distributed settings, and in skills training of neurosurgeons over a distributed platform.

The four sessions are organized around a keynote/invited talk, followed by one or two contributed papers.  We also have at the end an opportunity for an  open dialogue between medical researchers, technologists, academicians and people from industry.  We invite all interested researchers to participate in this and future NetHealth Workshops.  The challenges are immense, and there is a vast array of interesting and pressing problems.  Building solutions needs an active and vibrant community. To quote Gawande again:  “Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.”

Please come and join us! 


NetHealth Workshop Co-Chairs:

Sanjiva Prasad

IIT Delhi, India

Zainul Charbiwala

IBM India Research Labs


Social Networking Workshop Co-Chairs

We are happy to welcome you to this year's workshop on Social Networking, organized along with COMSNETS 2015. We have assembled an exceptionally strong set of research presentations that, in conjunction with stirring keynote and invited speakers, have the ingredients for making an intellectually stimulating meeting.

The study of social networks is helping in better understanding of how people communicate & interact on a daily basis. Online social networks are serving as a vital means for information diffusion and resource sharing - aiding discovery of connected communities, improving communication between globally dispersed individuals, and even measuring the impact of specific events on public opinion. A significant fraction of mind-share in the form of applications, diverse access interfaces, and a large economic ecosystem has developed around this field. This workshop strives to bring together academic, R&D, and industry researchers from various engineering and science disciplines to address the fundamental and technological challenges associated with the rapidly evolving domain of social networking. The goal of this workshop is to facilitate cross-disciplinary discussion of relevance to social networking, involving novel ideas and applications, and experimental results. It will provide an opportunity to compare and contrast the ethological approach to social behavior in humans (and other social animals) with web-based evidence of social interactions, information diffusion, behavior of individuals and affinities between web-based social networks. To remind you, we have had 25 submissions of which 10 were selected after undergoing a rigorous review process. If you have any feedback about the workshop, please feel free to convey this to us either in person at the workshop or electronically.


Social Networking Workshop Co-Chairs:

Niloy Ganguly

IIT Kharagpur, India

Sitabhra Sinha

IMSc Chennai, India