This a great platform to interact with Intel experts, some of the sessions were very relevant for our future research areas, thanks for providing this opportunity – Prof. Rajat Moona, IIT Kanpur

The 6th Asia Academic Forum 2010 was held successfully from November 10th to November 12th, at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Eight professors from reputed engineering institutions across India had the opportunity to represent India in the Asia Academic Forum. They were: Prof. Aswathanarayaniah Srinivas, from PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, Prof. Dasgupta Pallab from the Indian Institute of Technology, Khargapur, Prof. Debabrata Das from the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, Prof. Harihar Maheshappa Visvesvarya from Technological University, Bangalore, Prof. H. S. Jamadagni from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Prof. H. P. Khincha, from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Prof. Kumar Sanjeev Aggarwal, from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Prof. Moona Rajat, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Prof. HS Jamadagni and Prof. Sanjeev Aggarwal participated in two key panel discussions. Prof. HS Jamadagni was one of the panelists for Scaling Parallel Programming in Universities, a panel discussion moderated by JoZell Johnson, Global Manager, Intel Higher Education Program. He provided important insights on the challenges faced in integrating parallel programming modules in undergraduate engineering education in the university system. Prof. Jamadagni also shared some best known methods and strategies for effective integration of parallel programming exercises. His key message to the audience was that of building a strong collaboration with the Industry (in this case, Intel) in order to have relevant inputs to the curriculum and also to have a strong faculty to champion the modernisation of the curriculum.

Prof. Sanjeev Aggarwal was one of the panelists for Academia and Industry Partnership – Roadblocks and Ways to Overcome. The panel discussion was moderated by Tanay Karnik, Principal Engineer in Intel Labs and Corporate External Research Office Program Director.

Prof. Sanjeev shed light on important factors for sustainable Industry-Academia partnerships and one of his concerns was that the Industry should be more transparent in stating research problems and promoting more innovative research rather than research focused on product development.

He sensitised the audience on the need for Industry – Academia partnerships to be more long term in nature in order to benefit both academia and Industry and stressed on the need for academia from PhD programs and technologists from Industry to spend some time with academic researchers as visiting faculty or on sabbatical programs.

Prof. Debabrata Das presented his research work entitled, Next Generation Scalable Wireless Infrastructure and Services for Successful Broadband Penetration in Emerging Market. Prof. Rajat Moona showcased research work on Code Optimizer- A Workbench for Code Optimizations. Prof. Rajat Moona also presented on application of parallel programming in a research work entitled, Secure ATM: Secure phishing-proof ATM. Prof. Sanjeev Aggarwal, presented the research work on Transcript: Enterprise-level Encrypting File-System with Distributed Access while Prof. Aswathanarayaniah Srinivas presented a poster related to Curriculum integration in his institute, Embedded Systems Curriculum Adaptation: Introduction Of Atom Based Architecture At The Undergraduate And Graduate Theory Courses.

The Asia Academic Forum 2010, “Accelerating the Future through Research and Technology Innovation” provided an insight into creative and innovative practices and was an enriching experience for the participants.

I am going back with lot of new ideas, research problems to work on and share with my students – Prof. A Srinivas, PESIT, Bangalore