B. Yegnanarayana
BITS-Pilani Hyderabad campus
India

Title: Evolution of ANN architectures - From learning to deep learning
Tentative Date: 22nd December 2016
Tentaive Time: 2:00 PM to 2:45 PM
Dr. Bayya Yegnanarayana is currently Professor Emeritus at BITS-Pilani Hyderabad Campus. Prior to joining BITS, he was an Institute Professor from 2012 to 2016 and Professor & Microsoft Chair from 2006 to 2012 at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad. He was a professor at IIT Madras (1980 to 2006), a visiting associate professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA (1977 to 1980), and a member of the faculty at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, (1966 to 1978). He received BSc from Andhra University in 1961, and BE, ME and PhD from IISc Bangalore in 1964, 1966, and 1974, respectively. His research interests are in signal processing, speech, image processing and neural networks. He has published over 400 papers in these areas. He is the author of the book "Artificial Neural Networks", published by Prentice-Hall of India in 1999. He has supervised 30 PhD and 42 MS theses. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), a Fellow of the IEEE (USA) and a Fellow of the International Speech Communications Association (ISCA). He was the recipient of the 3rd IETE Prof.S.V.C.Aiya Memorial Award in 1996. He received the Prof.S.N.Mitra Memorial Award for the year 2006 from INAE. He was awarded the 2013 Distinguished Alumnus Award from IISc Bangalore. He was awarded "The Sayed Husain Zaheer Medal (2014)" of INSA in 2014. He was an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing during 2003-2006.

Samir Kumar Brahmachari
Founder Director, CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB)
India

Title: P4 Medicine The Future: Convergence of Genomics, Traditional Medicine and Big Data
Tentative Date: 23rd December 2016
Tentative Time: 11:00 AM to 11:45 AM
Prof. Samir K. Brahmachari (born in 1952) completed his Ph.D. (1978) in Molecular Biophysics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. After a brief Post-doctoral stint in Paris, he joined MBU as Research Associate in 1979, became Lecturer in 1981 and then, Professor in 1997, before taking up the position of Director, Centre for Biochemical Technology (CSIR), Delhi. The Centre was transformed to the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR) in 2002. From November 2007 to December 2013, he served as the Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which is the largest publicly funded organization involved in scientific and industrial research with 37 constitutional laboratories across India. Prof. Samir K Brahmachari, during his early scientific career made fundamental contributions towards the basic understanding of structure-function relationship of peptides, proteins and DNA and the role of DNA structural variability in regulating various biological processes. Subsequently, he contributed towards the broader area of genome organization and function, with special focus on Repetitive DNA. He demonstrated the structural flexibility of DNA and elucidated the functional role of Repetitive DNA much before the discovery of repeats association with genetic basis of several neurological disorders. Integrating computational tools with biological experiments and biophysical studies, Prof. Brahmachari has built models and deciphered mechanisms of various triplet repeat associated disorders. During the 90’s, foreseeing the potential of using the large genetic pool of Indian population for Functional Genomics studies in the post human genome sequencing era, Prof. Brahmachari, established the first Functional Genomics Unit and successfully led the well-recognized Indian Genome Variation Project. This exploration of human genome variation in multi-ethnic, multilingual populations of India led to development of a national resource: the genetic profile of the people of India. This novel project was later extended under his leadership to the Pan-Asia SNP project involving all the East Asian countries. Prof. Brahmachari is the pioneer of genome analysis using computational tools. Besides developing many novel Bioinformatics tools and databases, he has made major contributions in the area of miRNA mediated regulation of host- pathogen interactions and cellular regulation. His passion towards genome analysis to identify unique structural determinants of proteins, which could become potential drug targets in pathogenic organisms, led him to holistically look at the Systems Biology of pathogens, and to translate the genomic knowledge thus generated, into application. The Open Source Drug Discovery platform, with its unprecedented scale of participation by students and professionals, under the innovative directions provided by Prof. Brahmachari, not only accelerates drug discovery, but also holds a promise of tremendous and disruptive impact on the economics of drug development for neglected tropical diseases like TB. Contributing towards translational research, he has developed molecular diagnostics for neurological disorders and markers associated with drug response. His present interest lies in the utilization of genomics and computational technology to gain a systems level understanding of pathogenic organisms and develop low cost drugs and diagnostics to achieve the vision of affordable healthcare for all. Prof. Brahmachari has more than 12 patents, 23 copyrights and over 155 research publications to his credit. He is the recipient of large number of National and International awards, including the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (1990) and is an elected member of all four academies of science and engineering in India. Prof. Brahmachari has been the member of the HUGO Council (2004-2011) and is currently on Advisory Board of the X Prize in Genomics & U.S National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO), Stanford University. He also holds the Honorary Lifetime Professorship to the University of Delhi and the Joseph Austin McCartney & Ruth McCartney Hauck Named Visiting Professorship to the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA. He has received honorary D.Sc. degrees (Honoris causa) from five different Indian universities.In addition to his scientific contributions, Prof. Brahmachari has been an Institution Builder and has led the transformation of CSIR- Centre for Biochemical Technology (CBT) to an internationally recognized institute of Functional Genomics and System Biology research – the CSIR- Institute of Genomics and Integrative biology (IGIB) at New Delhi. Leading the largest publicly funded R&D organization of India – The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as Director General for six long years, he steered the strategic transformation of CSIR to champion inclusive innovation in India. He has also been instrumental in the creation of the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR) to generate human resource for transdisciplinary research by leveraging the infrastructure and scientific strength of CSIR. From November 2013, as the Chairman of West Bengal Education Commission he has undertaken the task of developing a vision document and the roadmap (2020 and 2030) for invigorating the existing education system of the State, championing creative and inclusive educational policies.

Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay
Director, Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata
India

Title: Recent Advances in Computational Biology
Tentative Date: 22 nd December 2016
Tentative Time: 11:00 AM to 11:45 AM
Dr. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay did her B Tech, M Tech and Ph. D. in Computer Science from Calcutta University, IIT Kharagpur and ISI respectively. She is currently a Professor (Higher Administrative Grade) at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. She has worked in various Universities and Institutes world-wide including in USA, Australia, Germany, China, Italy and Mexico. She has delivered invited lectures in many more countries. She has authored/co-authored more than 145 journal papers and 140 articles in international conferences and book chapters, and published six authored and edited books from publishers like Springer, World Scientific and Wiley. She has also edited journals special issues in the area of soft computing, data mining, and bioinformatics. Her research interests include computational biology and bioinformatics, soft and evolutionary computation, pattern recognition and data mining. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, India (NASI) and Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology, and senior member of the IEEE. Sanghamitra is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma Gold Medal and also the Institute Silver Medal from IIT, Kharagpur, India, the Young Scientist Awards of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA), the Young Engineer Award of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), the Swarnajayanti fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the Humboldt Fellowship from Germany. She has been selected as a Senior Associate of ICTP, Italy. She was awarded the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Engineering Science.