Panels

Bio: An Alumni of Hindu School, Kolkata and Presidency College, Kolkata – Prof. Swapan Bhattacharya received B.Sc (Physics) in 1976, B.Tech. (Radio Physics & Electronics) in 1979, M. Tech. (Computer Sc. & Engg.) in 1981 and Ph.D. (Computer Sc. & Engg.) in 1991 – all from University of Calcutta, India. He had also received M.B.A. (Operations Research) in 1987 from Institute of Business Management, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Prof. Bhattacharya started his professional career in 1982 in the corporate sector – with M.N. Dastur & Co. (P) Ltd, Kolkata and Dastur Engg. Int’l GmbH, New York. He switched over to academic sector after couple of years – and, during his regular professional association with academic world for about 33 years, he has worked with Indian Institute of Management Kolkata, Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai, National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training & Research Kolkata, University of Calcutta and Jadavpur University. On lien from his substantive position as a faculty member in Department of Computer Sc & Engg, Jadavpur University, he has served as Director of National Institute of Technology, Durgapur during 2005-10 and Director of National Institute of Technology Karnataka Surathkal during 2012-15. He has also served as the Mentor Director of National Institute of Technology in Itanagar Arunachal Pradesh and Director (In Charge) of National Institute of Technology Calicut. At international level, he had worked as Sr. Research Associate of National Research Council, USA during 1999-2001 when he was located in Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA as Coordinator of research program in Software Engineering; as visiting faculty member for Software Engineering in Asian Institute of Technology Bangkok, as visiting research fellow in Michigan State University, USA and in University of New Castle, UK. He had played a critical role in establishing the Department of Computer Sc. & Tech in Atilim University, Turkey. Recipient of Young Scientist Award from UESCO in 1989 and Gold Medal from University of Calcutta in 1976, Prof. Bhattacharya served as the President of Operational Research Society of India during 2011-12. He has supervised 20 students for their PhD. Research works. His domains of research interest include software engineering and domain-specific data-driven design of algorithms.

Bio: Nandini Mukherjee received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Manchester, Manchester, U.K., in 1999. She was the recipient of a Commonwealth Scholarship for her doctoral study in the U.K. She served in industry for nearly three years. She has been a faculty member with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, since 1992, where she is currently a Professor. She has served as the Director of the School of Mobile Computing and Communication, Jadavpur University for almost six years. She is an active researcher in her research areas, which currently include high performance parallel computing, wireless sensor networks and Internet of Things. Prof. Mukherjee is a Senior Member of the IEEE Computer Society and member of ACM. She has been actively involved in the organisation of several international conferences and workshops.

Bio: Sankar K. Pal (https://www.isical.ac.in/~sankar) is a Distinguished Scientist and former Director of Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). Currently, he holds National Science Chair, Govt. of India, and serves as President of the Indian Statistical Institute and as Emeritus Professor. He is also an AICTE-nominated Distinguished Chair Professor, and a Scholar-in-Residence of IIT Jodhpur. He founded the Machine Intelligence Unit and the Center for Soft Computing Research: A National Facility, at ISI, Kolkata. Prof. Pal received the Ph.D. degree in Radio Physics and Electronics from the University of Calcutta in 1979, and also in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, University of London in 1982. He joined Indian Statistical Institute in 1975 as a CSIR Senior Research Fellow where he became Full Professor in 1987, Distinguished Scientist in 1998, Director in 2005, and President of the Institute in 2022. Prof. Pal worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Maryland, College Park in 1986-87; the NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas in 1990-92 & 1994; and in US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC in 2004. Since 1997 he has been a Distinguished Visitor of IEEE Computer Society (USA) for the Asia-Pacific Region, and held several visiting positions in Italy, Poland, Hong Kong and Australian universities. Prof. Pal authored/co-authored twenty-one books, about five hundred research publications and two US patents in the areas of Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, Image Processing, Data Mining, Soft Computing, Neural Nets, Genetic Algorithms, Fuzzy Sets, Rough Sets, Web Intelligence, Social Networks, Cognitive Machine and Bioinformatics. Prof. Pal received numerous awards and laurels including the S.S. Bhatnagar Prize, Padma Shri, G.D. Birla Award, Om Bhasin Award, IEEE Trans. Neural Networks Outstanding Paper Award, NASA Patent Application Award (USA), IETE-R.L. Wadhwa Gold Medal, J.C. Bose National Fellowship, INAE Chair Professorship, IEEE Fellow Class Golden Jubilee Medal, INAE-S.N. Mitra Award and DAE Raja Ramanna Fellowship, Govt. of India. Prof. Pal is a Fellow of IEEE, the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), International Association for Pattern recognition, International Association of Fuzzy Systems, International Rough Set Society, Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), and a Fellow of all four National Academies for Science/Engineering in India. He is also a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He served on the Editorial Board of numerous journals and visited forty-five countries as a keynote/ invited speaker or as academic visitor.

Bio: Partha P. Chakrabarti received the B.Tech. and Ph.D. degree in computer science and engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Since 1988, he has been on the faculty of IIT Kharagpur, where he served as former Director of the institute, and currently a Professor with the CSE Department. His research interest include AI, ML, CAD for VLSI and embedded systems. He has written many research articles, mentored numerous graduate and doctoral students in these areas, and executed several sponsored national and international projects. Prof. Chakrabarti was a recipient of several prestigious honors, including the President of India Gold Medal Award from IIT Kharagpur, the DST Swarnajayanti Fellowship, J. C. Bose Fellowship, and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize from the Government of India. He is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy, Indian National Academy of Engineering, and Indian Academy of Sciences.

Bio: TBA

Bio: Dr Tandra Pal is Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India. She received the B.Sc. degree (hons. in physics) and the B.Tech degree in computer science and technology from University of Calcutta, and the M.E. degree in computer science and engineering and the Ph.D. degree in engineering from Jadavpur University. Since 1994, she has been with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology Durgapur and acted as the head of the department during 2007-2009 and 2019-2021. Her research interest includes soft computing, multi-objective evolutionary computing, fuzzy logic, fuzzy decision making, artificial neural networks, machine learning, and pattern classification. She has 75 publication including Books, Book-chapters, Conference and journal papers. Under her supervision/joint-supervision 8 research scholars have been awarded PhD degree, and 6 scholars are currently working. She is associated with 4 project sponsored by MeitY and DST and TCS. She is senior member of IEEE, and acted as the Chairperson of IEEE CIS Kolkata Chapter for last two years (2021-2022).

Bio: After Completing my Masters in Physics, I got an opportunity to join M Tech Course in Computer Science in Science College. We were the Second Batch.There only I got Prof Arun Choudhury as our teacher and HOD. His profound knowledge and handling of classes inspired us a lot with an admiration as well as a bit fear. However, when I met him in couple of occasion after we complete, we found him a different human being. A person who always cares for his students. I joined an organization, a consulting company based on Kolkata. The notable project in which I was involved is the maintenance of software for Seismic Qualification of major Nuclear Power Plants of our Country. I left the organization and Joined BESU which is now IIEST, Shibpur as the Director of School of IT. Among various Projects the notable one is digitalization of the entire works of Rabindranath Tagore in Bangla and put it in Internet with Bangla Search Engine. I was personally very happy to complete this humongous task. After I left BESU, Shibpur I joined an incubated Company of IIT Kharagpur Focus R & D. One of key Projects we did was A Campus wide Network for Tripura University. After that I was engaged as an Academic Advisor in a group planning to establish a University in Dubai with the mentorship of IIT Kharagpur. Due to Covid the project got stalled and I also planned to retire from all active service.

Bio: Samir Nayak is CIO and cofounder of Celtic system, a US based (Scottsdale, Arizona) software development company. He received the B.Sc. degree (hons. in Physics) and the B.Tech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from University of Calcutta, and the M.E. degree in Computer Science from Jadavpur University. After working for a short duration in SAIL R&D, he worked in ONGC for 12 years. In 1998 he joined a US based company for tool development. In 2003 he cofounded Celtic systems software development company. The company had a very great success story of developing multiple products for transportation industry. Different products were installed and maintained for many US states and multiple Canadian provinces. Recently the Celtic Systems becomes a part of large publicly traded company (i3 verticals). He thinks his best credential is - he is a student of Prof AKC and got the opportunity to work with Prof. AKC very intimately and lucky to get His tireless dedicated mentorship.

Bio: Nilanjan Banerjee received his Bachelor's degree and Doctorate in Computer Science and Engineering from Jadavpur University and the University of Texas at Arlington, respectively. Post graduation he has worked as a research scientist in Motorola Labs and IBM Research. During the course of his research career spanning over 15+ years, Nilanjan has published more than 90 research papers and has 19 filed or granted patents to his credit. He has been a key contributor to several IBM products like IBM’s BlueMix platform for IoT, Telecom Services Platform, Presence Server. Nilanjan started his entrepreneurship journey in 2016 primarily to understand the business of technology more intimately and bring innovation to practice. Since then he has co-founded two technology startups where he had more learning than success. However, his experience has been interesting and rewarding enough to make him continue with the entrepreneurship journey despite the challenges.

Bio: Sarbari Chowdhury, Vice President at ServicePlace Inc. is a social worker and a social entrepreneur. She completed her Bachelor’s in engineering (Electronics and Communication) from Birla Institute of Technology and her Masters (Computer Science) from Arizona State University, USA. She has worked at TATA Steel in India and at spent a majority of her corporate career in USA at the fortune 100 company Intel Corp. developing software and processes for designing Integrated Circuits, before retiring from Corporate to work in the non-profit sector. Sarbari volunteers heavily, both in the USA and in India – working with victims of Domestic Violence, and underserved students. A debutant filmmaker, Sarbari Chowdhury is avidly interested in the cultural heritages of the world. Sarbari has acted in several films, is a director of theater and a published author, of a book of short stories named “Earthen Angels”. Her plays have been stages at various cities in the USA including Phoenix, Arizona, Houston, Texas, Los Angeles and San Jose, California. She has also worked as Chairperson of the North American Bengali Conference’s Film segment for almost 10 years. Sarbari was born and brought up in Jamshedpur and is an alumnus of Sacred Heart school. She currently lives in Chandler Arizona, with her husband Debashis and has two children Shilpika and Abhik. She divides her time between Kolkata, India and Chandler, USA.

Bio: TBA

Bio: Dr. Partha Pratim Das works as Visiting Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Ashoka University. He is on leave from IIT Kharagpur where he is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He has over 22 years’ experience in teaching and research, and about 13 years’ experience in Software Industry. Dr. Das was involved with the first faculty start-up of IIT Kharagpur in the mid '90s. Later he led and supported a number of start-ups in first decade of the millennium. During 2013-20, he led Engineering Entrepreneurship education, research, facilitation, and deployment at IIT Kharagpur as Head of Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship and as Professor-in-Charge of IIT Kharagpur Research Park at Kolkata. He has also guided the development of National Digital Library of India Project of MoE, GoI as Joint Principal Investigator. Dr. Das has multiple areas of interest including Software Productivity and Quality, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Analysis of Indian Classical Dance, Technology-Enhanced Learning, and Inclusive Education.

Bio: Susanta Misra is from Purulia, West Bengal where he spent the first 15 years of his life. For the next 14 years, he first studied Physics at Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandir, Belurmath and then Computer Science at Rajabazar Science College before going to IIT Kharagpur to complete his M.Tech and PhD in Computer Science. He also studied MBA at UT Austin, USA while working in the USA. His corporate life started in 1992 at Motorola where he worked for 17 years in various Software Engineering and Management roles. He headed the Motorola Hyderabad Software Center till 2008 before starting his entrepreneurial journey. In November 2008, he founded NiceFit Career Consulting to work on Employability challenges and finding the right jobs for individuals based on their strengths and interest. He loves teaching, mentoring and interacting with students, especially in the areas of career selection, innovation and entrepreneurship. He has also authored two books. Recently, he has started a library in his village to encourage reading habits in children from poor families.

Bio: Did my Schooling from Calcutta Boys’ School and passed Senior Cambridge in 1973. Did my graduation with Physics (Hons) from Presidency College and thereafter did my B.Tech (E&C) in The Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics. Post my Engineering, I did my M.Tech ( Comp Sc ) from the Department of Computer Science , Calcutta University. Started my professional career in 1982. Joined NELCO, Industrial Engineering division and worked on automation software development of furnaces and Railway Electrification controls. Moved to ASEA AB in their industrial research group in the development of Man-Machine Communication and Fault tolerant Operating System design. This was when the PC came into the market and Commercial software started booming. I joined TCS and started my career in Commercial software. In TCS , I started my managerial growth and became the Resident Representative of Jamshedpur responsible for all business from that “business belt”. Thereafter I joined NIIT Technologies as their Divisional Manager and started growing their Software Business in Eastern India. After multiple successes I became head of business in India, Middle-East and Australasia as their Senior Vice President. In 2002, I joined DataCore (India) Pvt Ltd as their CEO to build their business and profitability in the areas of Software and BPO. It was there that I realised that I could start my own business and sustain it, since I was basically managing all fronts. In 2006 I started my company BEAS Consultancy and Services Pvt. Ltd. and have been growing its business, service lines and products since then.