People
I've
been privileged to work with and learn from some
exemplary people. Isaac Newton had it right (no, not the part
about needing two sized doors for his two pets, but standing on the
shoulders of giants).
* Topics are simplified version of
Dissertation titles
I've worked with a number of highly motivated students, especially through TechBridgeWorld. Selected students include:
(D) = Ph.D. Student
(M) = Masters
(U) = Undergraduate
(D) Sean Green - Machine Learning for Human Development - The case of water technology and policy in developing regions
(D) Ling Xu and (M) Vinithra Varadharajan - DeSIGN: An Intelligent Tutor for American Sign Language
(M) Abhilash Edakadampil - Yuj: A non-profit program to harness academic resources in developing communities
(M) Kiran Bellubi - GIS-based optical fiber routing for Africa - the FiberAfrica model
(M) Jawad Khan - ICTD
(M) Ajay Bhatt - Digital Divide
(U) Kiran Shenoy - Energy
(U) Clinton Loo and (U) Bradley Miller - Tools for enhancing Same Language Subtitling for literacy (working with PlanetRead)
Raj Reddy
Dr. Raj Reddy is
the Mozah Bint Nasser University Professor of Computer Science and
Robotics
in the School
of Computer Science at Carnegie
Mellon
University. He
was an Assistant
Professor of
Computer Science at Stanford from 1966-69 and a faculty member at
Carnegie
Mellon faculty since 1969. He served as the founding Director of the
Robotics
Institute from 1979 to 1991 and the Dean of School of Computer Science
from
1991 to 1999.
Dr.
Reddy's
research interests include the
study of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. His
current
research interests include Million
Book Digital
Library Project; Fiber To The Village Project; and
Learning by Doing.
Raj is a true
visionary, and a mentor to not only me but generations of luminaries in
the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, speech, ICT and
development, and computer science. Raj is able to grasp the
big picture ("high level bit") instantly, in diverse fields, and has
seeded (and supported) a number of my projects.
V. S. Arunachalam
Dr. V. S. Arunachalam
is Chairman of the Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy
(CSTEP), Bangalore, a not-for-profit Think Tank specializing in
interdisciplinary technology and policy. He. is
also Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon in the
Departments of Engineering and Public Policy, Materials Science and Engineering,
and the Robotics Institute (on leave). He has been Scientific
Advisor to the Defense and Prime Ministers of India,
Secretary,
Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO),
and Director, Defense Metallurgical Research Laboratories (DMRL), India.
During his tenure as Scientific Advisor, he served five Prime Ministers, ten Defense Ministers and initiated several major programs in defense technologies, Light Combat Aircraft and other defense hardware, as well as numerous projects on technology and education for national development. He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet and Core Group of the Secretaries of the Government of India.
A few of his numerous honors and awards include Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for engineering sciences. He is Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering, Past President and Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering and other leading national academies.
"Arun"
is another visionary who also has a keen eye for details. I
was
his first Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon (I guess everyone makes some
mistakes!) His scientific prowess is legendary, but it is his humanity
that has inspired generations of scientists and scholars. Arun
is building up a new non-profit Think Tank in India on
Technology Policy (CSTEP),
and this is his second "retirement."
M. Granger Morgan
Dr. M.
Granger Morgan is Lord Chair University Professor in
Engineering; Professor and Department Head, Engineering
and Public Policy; Professor, Electrical
and Computer Engineering and The
H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, at
Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. Morgan is an authority on areas spanning, energy, environment, and risk, with specializations in climate change, electric power systems, and quantitative policy analysis. He has served or serves on the advisory board of the Electricity Power Research Institute (EPRI), EPA, and ES&T, amongst others.
He is a Fellow of AAAS, Society for Risk Analysis, IEEE, and the Natl. Academy of Sciences.
Granger
is a tireless scholar, mentor, and educator, and single-handedly has
changed the face of interdisciplinary education and research in
Engineering and Policy.
Anshu Bharadwaj
Dr.
Anshu Bharadwaj is Director of the Center for Study of Science,
Technology and Policy (CSTEP).
Dr. Bharadwaj is interested in technology and fuel options in
India’s
electric power, energy, and transportation sectors. His current
research includes bio-fuels such as ethanol from cellulose, biomass and
coal gasification for producing electricity and synthetic fuels,
utility scale solar thermal power, hydrogen and fuel cells. He
specializes in computational modeling of energy systems also in using
mathematical tools such as Linear/non-linear programming, uncertainty
analysis and stochastic programming for his research. Dr. Bharadwaj
also has extensive administrative experience, having been a part of the
Indian Administrative Services
(IAS) for 15 years before joining CSTEP.
Anshu is one of the most
qualified (and brilliant) persons I know, with a B.Tech. from IIT, Kanpur, and MBA from IIM, Calcutta, and
a double Ph.D. in Engineering
& Public Policy and Mechanical
Engineering from Carnegie Mellon. He
left the exceedingly prestigious and important IAS to serve the public
through science, technology, and policy, and we have been collaborators
for many years.
Eswaran Subrahmanian
Dr.
Eswaran
Subrahmanian is Research Professor at the Inst. for Complex
Engineered Systems (ICES),
and Visiting Researcher at the Natl. Institute for Standards and
Technology (NIST).
His specialization is in creating information
systems that support the social processes that are integral to design.
He has a Ph.D in Urban and Public Affairs (Information Systems), School of Urban and Public Affairs (SUPA, now the Heinz School of Public Policy), Carnegie Mellon University, and an M.S. in Computer Science, University of South Carolina, and a B.E. (Honors) in Chemical Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India.
"Sub"
convinced me about the importance of design,
and I continue to be amazed by his insights. E.g., his paper
on
comparing voting systems in the US vs. India really struck home as to
the importance of standards and design, and that voting equipment is
not the only challenge - electoral rolls can be as or more
important.
David Victor
Dr. David
Victor is Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and
Director
of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at Stanford
University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. PESD
focuses on power sector reform,
the emerging global market for natural gas, energy services for the
world's poor, the practical challenges in managing climate change, and
the role of state-controlled oil and gas companies in the world's
hydrocarbon markets.
Previously, Dr. Victor directed the Science and Technology program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where he remains Adjunct Senior Fellow. His Ph.D. is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Political Science and International Relations), his B.A. from Harvard University (History and Science).
David
led a multi-institute, multi-year study on the Political Economy of
Reform in Developing Country Power Sectors, where I did the India
study.
I found that David is not merely a fantastic writer, but an
efficient (if not "ruthless") editor, helping pare down my chapter by
50%, to about 70 pages. David is also an experienced pilot,
flying his plane
to meetings around the country (he promises that it is not nearly as
glamorous as this sounds).
M. Bernardine Dias
Dr. M.
Bernardine Dias is an Assistant Research Professor in the Robotics Institute at
Carnegie Mellon, and the Founding Director of TechBridgeWorld.
Her robotics expertise is in autonomous team coordination, but her
passion is in the use of technology for underserved communities.
She will be Chair of ICTD2009, to be held at CMU's Doha, Qatar
Campus.
Bernardine
and I have been collaborating in the space of ICT and Development
(ICTD) for over half a decade. A native of Sri Lanka, she
knows
first-hand the horrors of a Tsunami. She works tirelessly on
solutions
for disaster response, healthcare, education, and empowerment, especially through ICT.
I will admit I do not
know how she
finds the time and energy for her advising, outreach, travels, dance,
cooking and more.
Ernest Wilson
Dr. Ernest
James Wilson III is Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication
and Dean of the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University
of Southern California.
Dr. Wilson’s scholarship focuses on the convergence of communication and information technology, public policy and the public interest. He is also a student of the “information champions,” who are leaders of the information revolution around the world. His current work concentrates on the politics of global sustainable innovation in high-technology industries; on China-Africa relations; and the role of culture in U.S. national security policy.
He is the founding Editor-in-chief (emeritus) of ITID (Information Technology and International Development), MIT Press, and the ranking senior member of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Ernie and I have been
collaborating for many years on ICTD, and he got MIT Press to make ITID
their first open access journal.
Kentaro Toyama
Dr. Kentaro Toyama
is assistant
managing director of Microsoft
Research India (MSR India), which opened in Before being named assistant managing director of
MSR India, Kentaro spent
seven years in MSR Redmond, Washington, U.S.A., and in
Kentaro
has been a global leader (and collaborator) in the emerging space of
ICTD.
I haven't been able to get him to come to CMU for his
promised visit, but his colleague, MSR India Director P.
Anandan,
has come by. One area they are working on is expanding Ph.D.s in
Computer
Science. For a nation graduating over 100,000 engineers per
year,
and well known in IT, India only produces on the order of 50 Ph.D.s/year in
Computer Science.
N. Balakrishnan
Dr. N. Balakrishnan
is Associate Director of the Indian
Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He is a
Professor of the Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and the Supercomputer
Education and Research Center.
He is a leader in the fields of Computing and IT in India,
having
established one of India's first (and still leading) supercomputers.
He is one of the leaders in the Million Book Project, which,
to date, has crossed its goal. Also known as the Universal Digital Library,
it is unique in its focus on developing nations, especially India and
China, creating new technologies to transcribe and add meta-data to
dozens of local languages.
He is a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, Allahbad, and Institution of Electronic and Telecommunications Engineers.
I
had the chance to first work with "Balki" a decade ago on a major
networking
project for India. Generous with his time (and ideas), I
still
find him more likely to be in the lab at 3 AM than 3 PM. I'm
glad
he is a regular visiting faculty member at CMU, so we can chat even
when not actively working together.
Roni Rosenfeld
Dr. Roni
Rosenfeld is a Professor in Language
Technologies Institute, Machine
Learning Department, and Computer
Science Department at Carnegie Mellon. His wide
research spans computation molecular virology and vaccine design, computational
biolinguistics, and his coined area of Speech and Language
Technologies for Development (SLT4D).
A current project, HealthLine,
investigates the use of spoken language interfaces for community health
workers across
I
work with Roni on ICTD topics, and he has convinced me that speech
interfaces and technologies might be niche compared to text/visual,
which allows much greater non-linearity. However, with
billions
of illiterate in the world, this is a huge "niche" and important area
for research. I will mention that much of the excellent work
in
this space is done by his CSD Ph.D. student Jahanzeb Sherwani.
Ashok Vasudevan
Ashok
Vasudevan is a co-founder and Principal in ASG-Omni, a niche consulting
and incubation firm specializing in technology development and
commercialization, with a focus on the US and India.
He was
previously with PepsiCo, where he led their India entry into India.
He is the Chairman of TastyBite, which is a leading
producer of ready-to-eat, all-natural foods.
He was instrumental in the establishment of Tejas Networks,
India's leading optical networking company.
A seasoned lecturer and speaker, he is also a Professor of International Entrepreneurship at Great Lakes Inst. of Management.
Ashok knows
much about what many academics only talk about: the Real World.
He worked with us on the India networking project for several
years as a Labor of Love (it didn't commercialize, due to political
considerations). One of the many things he taught me, about
thinking big, and seeking good people
and rewarding them, was "If you throw peanuts, you get monkeys."
Richard Heeks
Dr. Richard
Heeks is Professor of Development Informatics at the Institute for
Development Policy and Management, at the University of Manchester,
UK. He is a leading expert in ICT for development (ICTD),
with
specific experience and interests in: Information systems; ICTs for
development; e-Government; IT sector industries; Mobiles and
development; ICTs in remote regions; Small enterprise development;
Social outsourcing; Offshoring.
He is Program Co-Chair of ICTD2009, which will be held at Carnegie Mellon's Doha, Qatar, campus in April 2009.
I have read with interest (and, for years, assigned to my students) publications by Richard critiquing e-governance projects and ICTD as currently promulgated by governments. I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with Richard on ICTD2009, and look forward to bigger and bolder things from (and hopefully with) him in the coming years.
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