Alumni Research Talks (ART) 5.0 was organised on 15th - 17th January, 2016. Sponsored by Microsoft Research, this edition of ART was lined up with several alumnus working in field of machine learning to data analysis, and helped in connecting BITSian students with different experts in recent fields of computer science.
Ganesh Ananthanarayanan ,a Researcher at Microsoft Research, graduated from BITS Pilani in Computer Science Engineering. He then obtained his PhD from University of California, Berkeley.
His research interest include Video Analytics, Geo-distributed Data Analytics, Wide Area and Datacenter Networking, Big Data Resource Management and Mobile Systems.
Talk Topic: "Geo-Distributed Big Data Analytics"
Shruti Padmanabha ,a Research Assistant at University of Michigan, graduated from BITS Pilani in Computer Science Engineering. She then completed her M.S and PhD. from University of Michigan .
Her research interests lie in the area of energy-efficient heterogeneous multi-core systems. She has actively worked on both designing such systems as well as optimally scheduling applications on them.
Talk Topic: "Energy Efficient Architecture"
Dhruba Borthakur, an engineer in the Database Engineering Team at Facebook, completed his B.S in Computer Science from BITS Pilani. He then completed his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
He has been associated with Hadoop since its inception at Yahoo, and has been one of the lead contributors for the Apache Hadoop Distributed File System. He has more than 25 patents in field of Database Systems.
Talk Topic: "RocksDB: the database powering Facebook"
Senthil K Mani, a senior researcher at IBM, graduated from BITS Pilani in 2003 with a dual degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.
His research interests include mode-driven development, service oriented architecture and distributed software development. He has more than 15 publications and 4 patents.
Talk Topic: "Cognitive Business Era : Watson and Beyond"
Prof. Govindan Rangarajan, professor in Indian Institute of Science(IISc) obtained his M.Sc. (Hons.) in Physics from BITS Pilani in the year 1985 and subsequently did his Ph.D. from University of Maryland, College Park, USA in 1990.
His research interest lies in the general areas of nonlinear dynamics, time series analysis and applied stochastic dynamics; having applications in the areas of neuroscience, geophysics and accelerator physics etc. He has been knighted by the Government of France (Knight of the Order of Palms) in 2006.
Talk Topic: "Brain Machine Interface"
Nakull Gupta, a Research Assistant in Microsoft Research, graduated from BITS Pilani in Computer Science Engineering in 2013.
He has been part of projects like Dependency Analysis for Big Data Platforms , KrishiPustak: A social networking system for low-literate farmers and MEC (Massively Empowered Classrooms). He has also worked on open source projects for GDCM in medical imaging.
Talk Topic: "Information and Communication Technology"
Prof. Vijay Natarajan, a Mindtree Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Automation at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore comoleted his dual degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from BITS Pilani . He obtained his PhD. degree from University of Duke.
His research interests include scientific visualization, computational geometry, and computational topology. In current work, he is developing topological methods for time-varying and multi-field data visualization, and studying applications in biology, material science, and climate science.
Talk Topic: "Scientific Visualization : From Data to Insight