Videos of the Scientific lecture and Award Function
Speaker 1:
Dr. Neeraj Kayal
Microsoft Research Lab, Bengaluru
Dr. Neeraj Kayal is currently a Principal Researcher at the Microsoft Research lab in Bengaluru, where he has worked since 2008. Dr. Kayal works in the areas of complexity theory, algorithms, and related areas of theoretical computer science. He was born in Guwahati, India. As an undergraduate student at IIT Kanpur, Dr. Kayal in joint work with his advisor Prof. Manindra Agrawal and Dr. Nitin Saxena, discovered the first deterministic polynomial time algorithm for primality testing. Their work won the authors the Godel Prize (2006) and the Fulkerson Prize (2006).
Neeraj Kayal received his Ph.D. from IIT Kanpur and has held postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and at DIMACS (Rutgers University). In 2012 he was awarded the Young Scientist Award from Indian National Science Academy (INSA). Dr. Kayal’s recent work has been focused on algorithms and lower bounds in algebraic complexity theory.
He was awarded Infosys Prize in Mathematics for 2021 for his outstanding contributions to Computational Complexity.
Speaker 2:
Prof. L. S. Shashidhara
National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru
Prof Shashidhara specializes in Genetics, Molecular Biology and Evolutionary Biology. His group has identified key mechanisms that specify organ development and regulate growth control during embryonic development using Drosophila as a model system. They have also expanded their study to examine the status of these evolutionarily conserved mechanisms in epithelial cancers in human.
Prof Shashidhara is recognized with CSIR SS Bhatnagar and Technology and Prizes and JC Bose National Research Fellowship. He is a Fellow of all three Science Academies of India, and has served in the past as Vice-President of Indian National Science Academy (INSA). In 2018, he was elected as Associate member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He is one of the founding academic members of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune and Ashoka University. Prof Shashidhara was the Secretary General and of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS), and later being the first Indian to be elected as IUBS President. During this time, he commissioned and edited, an anthology on Impact of Science in Independent India and conceived and initiated the TROPICSU project, which is an international project on Climate Change Education.
Prof Shashidhara has served/is serving as chair/co-chair/member of various apex committees of Government of India and S&T organizations, particularly those dealing with education, basic/applied/translational research, innovation, policy, international relations, and outreach. In addition, Prof Shashidhara has organized several alternate career workshops for scientists, particularly women scientists, in science journalism, science policy, administration and management.
Chief Guest:
Prof. Shrikrishna G. Dani
Prof. Dani had a long and fruitful career at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, from August 1969 until June 2012, when he retired as Distinguished Professor. Subsequently he was affiliated with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay for five years, and since July 2017 has been with the UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, Mumbai, and is currently the Chair of the School of Mathematical Sciences of the Centre. He has made extensive research contributions in many areas of Mathematics, and published well over 100 papers in international journals. He has also written many articles on history of mathematics in India, both ancient and recent.
Awards received by him include the Mathematical Sciences Prize of TWAS (the World Academy of Sciences), the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, and the Srinivasa Ramanujan Medal of the Indian National Science Academy. He is a Fellow of TWAS and all the three national academies of science in India. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He was a Member of the National Board of Higher Mathematics from 1996 to 2015, and its Chair during 2006-11. He has also served on various academic and administrative bodies. He has been on the Editorial Boards of several international journals and was the Editor of the Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences (Math. Sci.) during 1987-2000, and of Ganita Bharati, the Bulletin of the Indian Society for History of Mathematics, since 2010, until recently.