Abstract:
Have you thought about designing a computer that repels mosquitoes? If you sit down to think about it – you perhaps know every underlying principle – but have not thought of putting them together. During the course of talk we will also check out if endoscopy could be any different from taking a pill – but then we need to figure out what will this pill be like? This talk will address on what “design” means and what are the underlying principles of design. The talk veers around towards how to inculcate design thinking. Through some discussions – with audience participation – we would attempt to define what “systemic thinking” is and why it is required for producing designs that do something useful.


Bio Graduated with a BE degree in Electrical Engineering from Govt. College of Engineering at Raipur (Chhattisgarh) in 1962, obtained Masters in Electrical Engineering from University of Calcutta in 1964 and Ph. D. degree also in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1969. (During that time a Ph. D. level work in Computer engineering was done in EE Depts. – there were no computer science departments at that time.)

Worked as a lecturer in IIT Kanpur from 1965 to 1969, and as an Asst. Prof. from 1969 to 1975 at IIT Delhi and finally as a Prof. from 1969 to 1996 in IIT Delhi. (I was the youngest professor in IIT Delhi when I became professor at 34 plus age). Have been a visiting Prof. in Univ. of Ottawa, McGill University Montreal. Was a Konrad Zuse fellow at Dortmund and a visiting Prof. at University of Paderborn (Germany). Also, worked in Japan with Kochi University of Technology.

Much of my professional work has been around Design Automation area and this included modeling, simulation. I also worked on distributed AI systems and algorithms.

Have been on the editorial panel of International journal of Computers and Mathematics, Parallel processing letters, Journal of Scientific computing and International journal of pattern recognition and artificial intelligence.

Have a book in Operating systems area published by Prentice Hall (India). Have been on board of directors of CMC and ECIL. Have led Indian computer technology delegations abroad.

Currently a free-lance consultant operating a company called “Vidha Software Solutions”. VSS has been engaged by Intel Philips, Sharp, SoftJin, IBM, ABB, Accenture, LSI and Agere systems amongst others.