The Division of EECS - through its alumni, faculty and students, nurtured several deep technology companies over the last few decades, helping take the pursuit of excellence and delivering it to industry and society at large. The last decade has particularly seen a big spurt in such startups. In the Golden Jubilee year of the Department of CSA, this calls for a celebration. As every founder is striving to take their mission to reality, it is a good time to celebrate this culture and tradition, and do it better.

"Meet the stars" marks the start of an ambitious program to accelerate the adoption of the culture of translation and entrepreneurship within the EECS division with a core focus in the CSA Department. The resulting ecosystem will encourage EECS technologists and alumni connect with investors, mentors and industry partners through a series of programmed activities for a year.

On 5th July, 2019, we have a fascinating program where we have invited technologists that have successfully created companies out of their work; along with academics, futurists and venture capitalists to chart out how deep tech will shape the next decade and how IISc can help shape it.

Registration (RSVP) for the Event: https://tinyurl.com/Meetthestars [Inviting you to be part of the celebration]

2:00-2:05 PM: Welcome Remarks: S. Bhatnagar, Chair, Department of CSA, IISc

2.05-2.10 PM: Welcome Remarks: Y. Narahari, Chair, Division of EECS, IISc

2.10-2.15 PM: Address by Anurag Kumar, Director, IISc

2:15 PM: Computational Positivism - Defining the culture of deep tech in EECS:

Session chair: Prof. Vijay Chandru, Co-founder of Strand Genomics, IISc.

We are now in the 4th paradigm of science whence many scientific and technological advances are driven by observation (data) and computation. Our own Professor Narasimha has characterised the classical scientific tradition in India as excelling in this paradigm and has called it “Computational Positivism”. There is no better way to start off our exercise in reinforcing “deep tech” startups from IISc than to celebrate the genesis of this very tradition.

2:15-2:30 Keynote Address:

Is there a revival of Computational Positivism in today's cyber world ? by Prof. Roddam Narasimha. JNCASR.

2:30- 2:45 Putting it to practice with electric mobility: Chetan Maini

2:45-3:30 PM: Taking a deep tech startup to the big league. Experiences from close to the heart.

Session Chair: Manohar Swaminathan, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research

Strand Experience: Ramesh Hariharan, Co-founder and CEO of Strand Genomics, ex-Prof. IISc.

Kumar Sivarajan, Founder and CTO at Tejas Networks, ex-Prof. IISc. (Presentation)

Dr. Navakanta Bhat, Founder of PathShodh Healthcare, Prof, Cense, IISc

3:30 PM -3:45: Spark Talks

Session Chair: Prof. Vijay Natarajan, CSA IISc

"High-performance Systems Infrastructure for AI/ML", Uday Reddy, Assoc. Prof., CSA, IISc Founder of PolyMage Labs

"SimYog: Agile for Hardware Design" Dipanjan Gope, Assistant Prof., ECE, Founder of SimYog

"KENOME: Making sense of Enterprise Data", Partha Talukdar, Assistant Prof, CSA and CDS, Founder of KENOME

3:45-4:30: IISc’s deep tech startups on Demo. With Tea.

Just in the last 5 years, at least 60 startups have been founded by EECS alumni in deep tech areas, and located mostly in Bangalore. A small sample of them are presenting their exciting work and progress in the market in the demo area. Featured startups include ATI Motors [Autonomous mobility], AllGoVision [Visual Computing for Surveillance], CradleWise [AI-assisted cradles], Elseq [Mining business intelligence from Documents], Euphotic [Automated cooking], Frontdesk [A.I for local businesses], GMAC Intelligence [Off-the-shelf AI models for the Edge], Lazy [Rings with gestures and context], Lightmetrics [Vision-based driver quality metrics], PushEngage [Smart push notifications at scale], Routematic [Tracking tech for employee transportation], Sensara [A.I.-based Television UX]

4:30 PM: Eco-System of Deep Tech

Session Chair: Bharath Mohan, Founder of Sensara Technologies, ex-IISc. (Presentation)

The environment around deep tech startups.

Deep tech ecosystems are built with fast reinforcing cycles where technologists with a clear insight into the future, create unique products that meet the market at the right time, grow with industry partners with a keen eye on the market opportunity. These cycles need interactions from market visionaries who see macro-trends, academics who can measure tractable progress made in research, and entrepreneurs that put everything together. This specially curated session brings supplementary perspectives together.

4:30-4:45 PM The market value of deep tech. A sector-wise analysis of the money : Chetan Anand, Director at PwC

4:45 PM-5:30 PM: Panel: The Deep Tech funding ecosystem. What will we fund? (45 minutes) Moderator: C. S. Murali - SID, IISc.

1. Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Partner, Artiman Ventures Serial Entrepreneur (Fire Eye, Network Security; Airgo, Wireless LAN) (Presentation)

2. Naganand Doraswamy , Managing Partner, Ideaspring Capital, Entrepreneur, President TiE, Angel Investor

3. V R Govindarajan, Founder and CEO Serial Entrepreneur (Aztecsoft, Software Services; Perfios, Fintech), Angel Investor

4. Arumugam A. Partner at Bharat Innovation Fund

5:30 PM - 5:40 PM: Announcement of an Year Long Initiative (Chiranjib Bhattacharyya)

5:40Pm-6:00 PM: Questions ?

6 PM: Unconference: An Open Discussion between enthusiasts (30 minutes)

A brief startup survey: https://tinyurl.com/survey-startups

[Your inputs will be valuable to the committee as it works through the next year or so]

Your company's details: https://tinyurl.com/eecs-startups

[This will help in future communication, and also representing you in IISc's websites and portfolio]

Please write to us at alumni4.2019@gmail.com, or reach out to any of the organising committee members if you already know them.