IEEE CCEM 2017 Invited Speakers

Chairman ISRO, Secretary DOS

Mr Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar, Distinguished Scientist (Apex) and Director, Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, assumed the office of the Secretary, Department of Space, Chairman, Space Commission and Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on January 14, 2015. Mr Kiran Kumar is a highly accomplished space scientist and engineer with a distinguished career spanning over four decades in ISRO in the satellite payload and applications domains. He has made immense contributions to the design and development of Electro-Optical Imaging Sensors for Airborne, Low Earth Orbit and Geostationary Orbit satellites starting from Bhaskara TV payload to the Mars Orbiter Mission payloads. Mr Kiran Kumar was instrumental in evolving the successful strategy for steering the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft towards planet Mars as well as its Mars Orbit Insertion. He has also made significant contributions for evolving the observation strategy encompassing land, ocean, atmospheric and planetary studies.

Mr Kiran Kumar is a recipient of many national and international laurels/awards including the Padma Shri Award conferred by the President of India in 2014, International Academy of Astronautics’ Laurels for Team Achievement Award for Cartosat in 2008 and for Chandrayaan-1 in 2013, Indian Society of Remote Sensing (ISRS) Award for the year 1994, VASVIK award (Electronic sciences and technology) for the year 1998, Astronautical Society of India Award (Space Sciences and Applications) for the year 2001, ISRO individual Service Award 2006, Bhaskara Award of ISRS in 2007 and ISRO Performance Excellence Award 2008.

He is a Fellow of professional institutions like Indian National Academy of Engineering, Indian Society of Remote Sensing, Institution of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineer, and Indian Meteorological Society. Besides, he is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics. Mr Kiran Kumar has represented ISRO in international forums like World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and Indo-US Joint Working Group on Civil Space Cooperation.

CTO, IBM India/South Asia

Vice President and Distinguished Engineer, Global Technology Services Labs, IBM

Dr. Gopal Pingali is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Vice President for Global Technology Services Labs at IBM. In this worldwide leadership role in Global Technology Services Labs he is responsible for driving hybrid cloud solutions for clients and the development of automation, analytics, and cognitive delivery to realize IT as a Service. His team of distinguished engineers, architects, developers, and designers spans the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. This IT Solutions Development group has been transforming several thousand enterprises around the globe with hybrid cloud and intelligent automation capabilities. Gopal is currently playing this role from Bangalore, India while continuing to have a base in New York.

Gopal obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan; and has published over 65 papers in peer reviewed international conferences and journals, has 50 patents filed or issued. He worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey till 2001 where he pioneered real time video based tracking systems that have now become a standard in sports broadcasts as well as in a variety of customer activity analysis and surveillance systems.

Gopal has been an invited keynote speaker or panelist at forty venues including IEEE Cloud Computing Conferences and workshops, IEEE and ACM Multimedia conferences, IETE National Conferences in India, US Government workshops, and at top Universities such as MIT, Georgia Tech, University of California, Brown University, Indian Institute of Science, and National University of Singapore. Gopal has been chair of various international conferences including being the founding Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing in Emerging Markets and running this annual conference since 2012.

Director & Founder at Pragyan Datalabs

Dr. Mohan holds a Masters and PhD in computer science from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore where he worked as a faculty-scientist for about a decade before moving into the industry. He was a young visiting scientist in the Lab for Computer Science, MIT in 1988 and a visiting scientist in NEC Research Institute, Princeton in the summer of 1994. After leaving IISc, he worked for a number of companies including HP. He pursued his entrepreneurial interests in Bangalore in advanced enterprise software systems for about 7 years before joining Infosys. After a five year stint at Infosys, Dr Mohan founded Pragyan Datalabs focused on BigData algorithms and Analytics in Bengaluru

Dr. Mohans's areas of interests include, BigData Algorithms, OpenDataAnalyticsStack, Software Engineering and Architecture, Agile Methodologies, Distributed Systems, Cloud Computing, Technical and Entrepreneurial Leadership, Social Enterpreneurship

CEO,OpenStream, New Jersey, USA

Dr. Kavi Mahesh, Director IIIT Dharwar

CTO, Jigsaw Academy