Prof K. VijayRaghavan is the Director and Senior Professor in the area of Developmental Genetics, National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and M.Tech and B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Prior to joining Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Prof VijayRaghavan was a Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow in California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Prof VijayRaghavan is a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences and Indian National Science Academy and was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT, Kanpur.
Ar. Karan Grover is a world renowned Indian Architect, known for his pioneering efforts in the emerging field of Green Architecture. He had received his Bachelor of Architecture from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and holds an AA Graduate Diploma from the Architectural Association, London. He had been awarded the prestigious PLATINUM Award in November, 2003 under LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) from the US Green Building Council for the CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre in Hyderabad, one of the first architects in the world to get this highest possible award for Sustainable Architecture. Ar. Grover is presently operating his own architectural venture, “Karan Grover And Architects”, which is famous for its “GREEN” Concepts.
The subject of Mr. Grover’s talk is “Inspiration & Identity”. It would be multimedia extravaganza presentation of over 5000 images talking about the various people, places, values, icons, music, food, speeches, and architecture, which inspire Mr. Grover and which are connected to the very fundamental issue of our identity; and culminating in a powerful argument for sustainable development, and how we can contribute towards making the planet a safer place to live.
VENUE: SAC
DATE AND TIME: October 3rd, 14:30- 16:30 IST
Abstract of the talk
By probing the universality of space and time, and of gravity, it would be demonstrated by the sheer force of simple common sense arguments that why was Newton's world not adequate and a new Einstein's world was required?
VENUE: ICSR
DATE AND TIME: 30th September 2008, 20:00hrs-21:30hrs
Biography
Professor Naresh Dadhich was born in a small village in Churu District of Rajasthan. He studied at Pilani, Vallabh Vidyanagar and Pune and did Ph.D. at Pune University in General Relativity under the guidance of Professor V.V. Narlikar. Then he joined the faculty of Mathematics, Pune University in 1971 which he left in 1988 when he was invited to draft the project report for Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). In building up IUCAA he has been involved with Professor Jayant Narlikar right from the conception of the dream of creating a world class institute for the university scientists. Presently the Director of IUCAA since July 2003.
His main area of research is gravitation and relativistic astrophysics and has published over 100 papers in international front rank journals in collaboration with many students and colleagues. He has been nominated Honorary Research Professor by the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa. He has been elected to the Council of the International Relativity Society and has been the President of the Indian Relativity Society. He is a fine and deep thinker with a commitment not only to make complex and subtle issues of science accessible to general audience but also to have a dialogue on issues of greater and wider social relevance.
Date of lecture: 4th October 2008
Dr. C. Mohan IBM India Chief Scientist, based in Bangalore, with responsibilities that relate to serving as the executive technical leader of IBM India within and outside IBM.
Mohan is the inventor of the ARIES family of recovery and concurrency control methods, and the industry-standard Presumed Abort commit protocol. He was named an IBM Fellow, IBM's highest technical position, in 1997 for being recognized worldwide as a leading innovator in transaction management. He received the 1996 ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award in recognition of his innovative contributions to the development and use of database systems. At the 1999 International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, he was honored with the 10 Year Best Paper Award for the widespread commercial and research impact of his ARIES work which has been widely covered in textbooks and university courses. He is an inventor on 34 patents and was named an IBM Master Inventor in 1997. His research results are implemented in numerous IBM and non-IBM prototypes and products like DB2, MQSeries, Informix, Cloudscape, Lotus Domino/Notes, Microsoft SQLServer and System Z Parallel Sysplex.
Mohan received his PhD in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981. In 2003, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras from which he received a B.Tech. in chemical engineering in 1977. He is a frequent speaker in North America, Western Europe and India, and has given talks in 35 countries. More information can be found in his home page at http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/mohan/.
Dr.Yogesh Chandra Saxena, is a senior Professor from the Institute of Plasma Research, Ahmedabad. He is very instrumental in making the first prototype TOKAMAK, a machine that produces toroidal magnetic field to confine plasma, which is seen as a step leading to building up the first nuclear fusion reactor in the world. Infact, India is a very important partner in the ITER (Fusion reactor building) programme, and Dr.Saxena along with his colleagues from the IPR are leading the team.
As an academician, Dr.Saxenas profile is absolutely impressive. He has 190 papers to his credit, most of them carrying a huge impact factor with them. He is a fellow of Gujarat Science Academy, Founder Member,Secretary & President of Plasma Science Society of India, and an active member in, Carbon Society of India. He was the Secretary General of the Asia Plasma & Fusion Association (APFA) from 2006-'08.
Title: TOKAMAK
Venue: ICSR Main Auditorium
Date: 3rd October, 2008
Time: 11.00 AM- 12.10 PM
Dr. Suresh Govindarajan – Suresh Govindarajan is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant String Theorists in India. He has been at the forefront of String Theory research and has a lot of publications in Superstring Theory and related fields. He had completed his bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras and went on to get a PhD in Physics from University of Pennsylvania. He has worked in many Institutions which are leaders in the field of research including CERN, TIFR and IIT Madras. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Dept. Of Physics, IIT Madras. People who have attended his classes will vouch for the fact that he is a wonderful and enthusiastic teacher
Title of the talk: String Theory for the Layman
Abstract:
A gentle and objective introduction to string theory, highlighting some of
the recent developments will be given. A historical perspective starting
from the development of ideas in theoretical physics from the early part
of the twentieth century will be presented. String theory will be seen as
an attempt at reconciling the general theory of relativity and quantum
mechanics.
Venue: ICSR Auditorium
Date: 28th September
Time: 8:00 pm