The Continuum: A Blog by PHI Learning

PHI Learning, a trusted name in academic publishing with 62 years of excellence, offers affordable, NEP 2020-aligned textbooks, expert-authored content, and global reach, driving academic progress in higher education.

Tag: engineering

Explore PHI Learning’s affordable academic textbooks, offering high-quality NEP-2020 books for students and teachers across various disciplines.

  • Learning Through Quality Textbooks and Problem-Solving: Wave Optics By Garg Et Al

    Some of the major deficiencies of Indian higher education include

    1. the scarcity of well-written textbooks authored by reputed professors and published by highly rated publishers,
    2. use of help books by students to pass examination and 
    3. over-emphasis on rote learning with little or no training on problem-solving. 

    To improve the quality of education, it is essential to make good books available at a reasonable cost. The latest research and learning theories suggest that outcome-based learning with interactive text in-text questions and practice problems should provide a way to engage an average student in the learning process and enhance her/his learning experiences. Similarly, mastery in problem-solving is mandatory for nurturing creativity. This, no doubt, is a challenging task.

    These ideas formed the basis of our work when we began to develop the manuscript of our book on Wave Optics, one of the most fascinating courses taught to undergraduate science students of major/honours and general degree programmes. We aimed to empower learners and enable them to see its principles at work and develop problem-solving skills by interspersing problems with graded difficulty levels throughout the text. 

    A conscious effort was made to help learners apply theoretical knowledge to real-life problems and phenomena with the hope that the book’s utility would be considerably enhanced. As we now know, the emergence of lasers, holography and fiber optics in recent years led to applications in communication, optical computing and medicine. Moreover, their applications have found revolutionary applications in space science, geospatial imaging, and cryptography in space, defence, agriculture, medicine, and mineralogy. We were conscious that a sound knowledge of their fundamental principles and developments would immensely enhance the utility of our textbook. The Wave Optics by Suresh Garg, Sanjay Gupta and CK Ghosh, published by PHI Learning Private Limited, New Delhi, fulfils many of these requirements and should be extremely useful to Indian students. Some of its salient features are:

    • Comprehensive coverage of the syllabi of all major universities as well as the new UGC syllabus
    • Rigorous treatment of subject matter while retaining a learner-friendly approach
    • Several in-text pedagogical questions, solved examples and practice problems to support self-learning.

    It is said that a diagram is worth a thousand words. With faith in this dictum, we have tried to explain concepts using diagrams as and where required.

    Happy Reading!

    To know more about the book, please log on to: https://bit.ly/2XG0ByT

     

     

  • Tips and Techniques for Successful ERP Implementation by Sandeep Desai

    ERPs are here to stay and seen as a standard option for enterprises. Enterprises could be Small, Medium or large. Appetite for ERPs – whether homegrown or off-the-shelf products is a necessity. Reasons for looking at ERPs are simple, and some of them are: Enterprises would like to borrow the best practices developed in some of the available products in the market instead of reinventing the wheels, have integrated business processes to derive a single version of the truth on information, businesses are always meant to scale, and hence, intended products are expected to be robust, scalable, and secured.

    ERP implementations are seen to be a strategic move, and important stakeholders of the organizations, namely, Head of Organization, Business Owners, Head of Finance and IT must be involved in monitoring and guiding the project team from time to time.  

    Selecting a product is always a tricky proposition and must be done in a careful manner. Few important takeaways from the well-known implementations are: look at the installed base of the product in the region, support, availability of skill sets within the organization, training and learning curve etc. 

    The next important concern and step are to have an implementation partner. It is often seen implementation partner is selected based on the cost, market reputation etc. I personally feel the most important part of the selection is to see the domain expertise of the implementation partner so that effective communication with the businesses can be established. Does the implementation partner have a relevant knowledge base on the domain so that customers can benefit from the same? Therefore, interviewing partner and their team members from these dimensions becomes a crucial parameter.  

    Implementation of ERPs is a daunting task, and hence, motivating internal as well as external team members is imperative. We often do this by creating internal team-building exercises, bringing external speakers on motivation, and giving them an off-site environment. Hence, allocating a suitable budget for these activities well in advance (ideally during kick-off) may not be a great surprise to stakeholders. 

    Before we go to other trivial steps, namely, data migration and testing, let me take another important aspect of effective communication during the entire implementation life cycle. We must design a communication deck well in advance and distribute and present it to relevant leaders. Communication must include progress, risk and mitigation plans, roadblocks and expectations from management etc. There could be certain facts to be communicated only to top leadership, and project owners must be bold to communicate effectively and with possible suggestions.

    Data migration and testing are trivial steps of any implementation. Generally, it is seen that organizations force a team to migrate whatever crap exist in the old system to be migrated to ERP.  There are many suggestions on the data migration, and some are: One can migrate data which is required for statutory assessment (let us take of last 6 – years) and rest put it on Data Warehouse and build Analytics layer, Bank and Insurance companies can look at only live policies of past 30+ years and rest put on analytics layer for an internal team to respond. As far as possible, do not migrate old videos or audio files as it is. One can look at the option of creating a BIG DATA environment. 

    Testing is divided into 2 phases, namely, Integration and Model Office Testing. Integration testing is to ensure all the modules are tightly integrated and producing desired results. Model Office testing is in case enterprise have third-party products; ERP has developed interfaces with the product and organization can not function unless they handshake well. Therefore, model office testing is imperative. 

    Last but not least, technical and functional documentation will be the treasure of all the above efforts. Good documentation will serve the current team and help the process manual for the organization, and annual audits can also take the help of process audits, etc. Technical documentation is a useful tool for maintenance, next upgrades – major or minor etc. On-going maintenance of documentation is a must. I always recommend an audit of documentation to ensure they are updated regularly in line with the embedded or changed processes. 

    Needless to say, many organizations seem to be celebrating ‘Go live’ in a grand way. Acknowledging project team members with proper achievement certificates and awards to motivate them will add employee delight and encouragement. 

    Beyond ERPs

    The fun begins after about six months to one year of implementation where-in the leadership team expect quick reports, would like to see a design and engineering needs to be addressed in the latest implemented ERP. Appetite for computing grows, and ERP seems to be having limitations. 

    This is going to be an interesting and challenging situation for the existing IT team to look at beyond ERP, and some of the reasons are: user requirements are not adequately addressed in current ERP and to fulfil separate licensing and implementation costs to be incurred with long-drawn timelines, implemented ERP is not meant of new intended requirement etc.    Noted business requirements which are beyond existing ERP implementations are Analytics (dashboards, data mining, predictive analytics etc.), Document, Design and Employee Collaborations, Customer Relationship Management, Demand Forecast Planning, High-tech engineering and design solutions to emulate real-life situations (for example, 5D, 6D modelling), Estimation and Risk modelling, automating repetitive tasks etc. 

    To address the above business needs, one must research carefully various technologies available in the market in the field of collaboration, content management, analytics, design and engineering, business process automation, estimation and risk modelling. Some of them are available in the SAAS platform, and a few are on-premise as well.  

    Most of the Systems Integrators (SI), namely, IBM, HP, Microsoft, AUTODESK etc. are well equipped with the above technologies, and more importantly, they are well integrated with well-known ERPs. There are open-source products available with the support and can also be integrated with ERPs. 

    One caution of implementing the above technologies by interfacing with ERP is IT security, and most of the applications are exposed to the outside world. Therefore, addressing security framework is of paramount importance to the organization and must be addressed with proper assessment and recommended to audit the entire environment periodically.

    Needless to emphasize, success in implementing extended technologies have to be planned with a partner who possesses the right skills, and the next key for success is not to take too many initiatives in one go…ideally one key initiative at any point in time!!

    To understand general implementation methodologies as well as specific methodologies prescribed by Oracle and SAP for the implementation of their products, explore our book ERP TO E2RP: A CASE STUDY APPROACH by Desai and Srivastava.

    For more information, please visit ERP TO E2RP : A CASE STUDY APPROACH

    Sandeep Desai — The author of book ERP TO E2RP: A CASE STUDY APPROACH

     

     

     

  • Book Review: A Close Look at Groundbreaking ICT Inventions

    During my school days, a computer was a machine occupying a garage space, used only by engineers. Now, within 50 years, I hold it in my pocket like a mobile smartphone, as do 50 crores other Indians! How did this revolution happen? Many of these inventions in information and communication technology have occurred in the last 55 years.

    Do you know who invented such groundbreaking inventions in Information and Communication Technology (or ICT)? This is the theme of a remarkably informative and educative book Groundbreaking Inventions in Information and Communication Technology recently authored by V. Rajaraman, who taught at the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and published by PHI Learning, Delhi.

     

    In this book, Prof. Rajaraman lists the history of 15 groundbreaking inventions and innovators who have made these hand-held fast, versatile computers possible. I believe that with computer-based education has become a part of the New Education Policy (NEP), it is vital that students and teachers get to learn the story of these 15 inventions and the innovators, not just as a part of the history and development of these innovators, but as an inspiration for the future.

     

    As per Prof. Rajaraman: (1) The idea should be novel; (2) It should fulfill a need; (3) It should improve our productivity; (4) It should change the way in which computing is done, and computers are used; (5) It should lead to innovations; (6) The invention must have a long life and be continuously used and not be transient; (7) It should create new industries that lead to further innovations and may, as a consequence, disrupt some old industries and (8) It should transform the way we live and thereby result in societal changes. It is not necessary that a groundbreaking invention satisfy all these; it is enough if it meets a majority of these.

     

    Recent History

    Interestingly, many of these inventions to have occurred in the last 55 years — starting from the computer language FORTRAN in 1957 to Deep Learning in 2011. A brief history and description of these, and the innovators associated with them are given in his book. We will take up the first seven innovations here and the rest in the next article.

     

    Programming Languages

    The first is FORTRAN or Formula Translation, developed by John Backus and his team in 1957. This translated the binary language (0 and 1) of digital computers into everyday language that can be understood and used by all, using the IBM computers and later by other computers as well. (I remember how Prof. Rajaraman taught FORTRAN to all of us — students and faculty — at IIT Kanpur, and several lakhs of others elsewhere through his lectures and books). FORTRAN made computers usable by non-professionals too- to start programming and solve problems. Others designed similar programming languages for specific uses, but FORTRAN is still the language used by scientists.

     

    The second is the introduction of what is called integrated circuits or ICs. Until they were invented, signals were amplified using vacuum tubes that were large and became hot during use. When John Bardeen and colleagues invented transistors’ way back in 1947, they reduced the size and power consumption of amplifiers.

     

    This caused a revolution in information technology because using these, Jack Kilby (and a few months later, Robert Noyce) could actually make a fully integrated complex electronic circuit on a single silicon chip.

     

    The third innovation discussed is databases and how to manage them in an organised fashion. For example, our own Aadhaar Card contains in it a variety of data (age, sex, age, address, fingerprints, and such), put together in a compact fashion. Such a database system is what is referred to as a relational database management system, or RDBMS. Earlier, these files were stored in magnetic tapes, then in floppy discs and now in CDs and pen drives.

     

    LAN and Ethernet

    The fourth is what is known as local area networks (or LANs), introduced first by Norman Abramson’s group in Hawaii, where they used a wireless broadcast system called ALOHA net to interconnect computers across the islands to share a broadcast medium. Then Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs modified this protocol and put together what they called Ethernet, which has allowed multiple computers to share and exchange messages and files through cable connections. We now use LANs in the office to transfer hard-copies into e-files and to connect various departments in a University.

     

    The fifth innovation is the development of personal computers, which has allowed us to work and study from our homes. The first person to design a personal computer was Steve Wozniak in the mid-1970s and brilliantly marketed by Steve Jobs. By 1981, PCs began selling like hotcakes, and by the late 1980s, Apple, IBM and its clones captured the market, with Microsoft supplying the operating system.

    To open your phone or a computer, you need a passcode, which is secure and known only to you. And when a bank or a sender sends you a ‘confidential’ message, they too send a secure passcode (e.g., OTP). This aspect is what is known as an encryption system (allows secrecy between the sender and receiver). This public-key cryptography is the sixth innovation.

     

    Your computer now has built-in programs that not only allow you to take photographs, movies and send them using applications like WhatsApp, Facetime, and such. This has come about thanks to the seventh innovation called computer graphics, which Prof. Rajaraman discusses in his book in detail. In addition, he discusses in detail the compression of multimedia data that has allowed exchanging audios and videos over the Internet.

     

    Source:https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/a-keen-look-at-groundbreaking-inventions-in-ict/article32588770.ece

    The book is available in print book format as well as e-book format.

     

    In case you want to reach us, visit the webpage of the book at

    https://www.phindia.com/Books/BookDetail/9789389347524/groundbreaking-inventions-in-information-and-communication

    OR

    Write to us at phi@phindia.com

     

  • PHI Learning’s Book Launch Event GROUNDBREAKING INVENTIONS IN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

    PHI Learning is going to release a book Groundbreaking Inventions in Information and Communication Technology by V. Rajaraman on 24th September 2020. This virtual book launch event is being organized by the Computer Society of India, Chennai Chapter, ACM Chennai Professional Chapter, and IEEE Computer Society, Madras Chapter in association with PHI Learning Private Limited. 

    The book will be released by Dr. Srinivasan Ramani, a Ph.D. from IIT, Bombay, who has worked as a researcher at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. He played a key role in creating India’s academic network, ERNET, which brought the Internet to India.

    Following the book release, the author of this book, Dr. Rajaraman (Emeritus Professor, SERC, IISc, Bangalore) will make a presentation on Groundbreaking Inventions in ICT. An author of several well established and highly successful computer books, Prof. Rajaraman has published a large number of research papers in reputed national and international journals. A Padma Bhushan awardee in 1998, he is also a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 1976, the Homi Bhabha Prize by UGC, Om Prakash Bhasin Award, the ISTE Award for excellence in teaching computer engineering, Rustam Choksi Award, the Zaheer Medal by the Indian National Science Academy.

     
    Mr. Asoke K Ghosh, CMD, PHI Learning will address the Book Launch event on 24th September 2020 at 6 pm IST. Mr. Asoke K. Ghosh is one of the pioneers of the concept of publishing low-cost editions of highly expensive books in India that are published abroad and making them affordable to Indian students. An alumnus of the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, he is a trendsetter in the world of publishing and regarded as the Father of Indian Publishing Industry.
     
     
    The event will be in virtual mode using Google Meet. All registered participants will receive a free copy of Chapter 1 of the book in pdf format at the time of receiving the Google Meet credentials to join the event. All attendees of the event on 24th September 2020 will get a special discount of 35% on the purchase of the book from www.phindia.com.  
     
    To participate, please register using the Google Form at https://bit.ly/2QA8Fdp 
     
    About the Book
     
    Nowadays, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) touches every aspect of our life. When we get up in the morning, we check our smartphones for any missed calls, SMS, and WhatsApp messages that include audio clips, video clips, and sometimes computer-generated cartoons and animations. Many of us read the latest news and email on our smartphones, tablets, or laptop computers that are connected by Wi-Fi to the Internet. Researchers search the World Wide Web for relevant research papers using a search engine, usually Google. To hear an old favourite song, we turn to YouTube. Books are bought by logging on to Flipkart or Amazon and placing orders. Air tickets are booked by logging on to an airline’s or travel agent’s websites. Train tickets are booked on the IRCTC site. Banking is done from home using Internet banking. When we want to go out and need a taxi, we use Ola or Uber App installed in our smartphones to find out in a map where taxis are, and the time it will take to get one. The taxi driver uses his phone to find our location (found by GPS) from the map on his smartphone screen. The fare is automatically deducted from our pre-paid accounts with Ola or Uber. Else, we may use a digital payment App such as Paytm or BHIM. If the Internet cannot be accessed for some reason, it is extremely inconvenient as a lot of our work gets delayed. Undoubtedly almost everyone has become dependent on ICT in their daily life. ICT has spawned many new industries that employ millions of people. All this has happened in a relatively short period of about seventy years.
    In a short span of seventy years, Information and Communication Technology has changed the way we live. Often, we wonder how we lived without the Internet and smartphones!
     
    PHI’s recently released book GROUNDBREAKING INVENTIONS IN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY by Rajaraman is written in a simple style without too many jargon terms to allow anyone with a pre-university education to understand and appreciate how ICT has developed. 
    • What do we mean by a “Groundbreaking Invention”? Some of the meanings of the word “groundbreaking” taken from dictionaries are:
    • “innovative, pioneering” (Oxford Dictionary)
    • “A very new and big change from other things of its type” (Cambridge Dictionary)
    • “Introducing new ideas or methods” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
    • “Something innovative, pioneering or that has never been done before” (Your Dictionary)
     
    Of these four meanings, the one given by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is closest to the criteria that are used to select the fifteen groundbreaking inventions presented in this book. What then are the criteria to classify an advancement in ICT as a groundbreaking invention? The following criteria are used:
    1. The idea should be novel.
    2. It should fulfil a need.
    3. It should improve our productivity.
    4. It should change the way in which computing is done, and computers are used.
    5. It should lead to innovations.
    6. The invention must have a long life and be continuously used and not be transient.
    7. It should create new industries that lead to further innovations and may, as a consequence, disrupt some old industries.
    8. It should transform the way we live and thereby result in societal changes.
     
    Every groundbreaking invention does not need to satisfy all the above criteria. If it meets a majority of these, the author of this book has classified it as groundbreaking.
     
    The book identifies and explains fifteen groundbreaking inventions in ICT from 1957 to-date. The first chapter explains what is meant by the term groundbreaking invention and the criteria that have used to identify groundbreaking inventions. The second, third, and fourth chapters describe the inventions, how they were invented and the biographies of prominent inventors. The biographies are given in Boxes. They may be skipped while reading about the inventions and read afterward to get an idea about the inventors and their careers. In the fourth chapter, concluding remarks are added that discuss whether there are some common features in the inventions and about the nature of the inventors and why they succeeded.
     
    In this book, Dr. Rajaraman has described the following for each of these inventions: 
    • History of the invention 
    • A brief biography of persons who were associated with the invention
    • Why the author considers the invention as groundbreaking
    The inventions are grouped as follows: 
    • Between 1957 and 1974 (the first four inventions)
    • Between 1975 and 1984 (the middle five inventions) 
    • Between 1985 and 2011 (the last six inventions)
    Each group of inventions is described in a chapter. 
    This book seeks to answer the following questions lucidly to a non-specialist general reader:
    • How did this revolution happen?
    • What groundbreaking inventions led to this revolution?
    • Why are they groundbreaking inventions?
    • Who were the innovators and inventors of these technologies?
    • What led them to these inventions?
    Fifteen groundbreaking inventions: Fortran, Integrated Circuits, Relational Database Management Systems, Local Area Networks, Personal Computers, Public Key Encryption, Computer Graphics, Internet, GPS, World Wide Web, Search Engines, Digitisation and Compression of Multimedia, Mobile Computing, Cloud Computing, and Deep Learning (AI) are described cogently by Professor V. Rajaraman, a doyen of Computer Science education and research in India.
     
     
    About the Author
     
    V. RAJARAMAN – A Pioneer in the Field of Computer Science Education in India
    Born: 8th September 1933, Madras Presidency, British India 
    Occupation: Computer engineer & Academic Author 
    Known for: Computer science academics and literature 
    Awards 
    • Padma Bhushan 
    • Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 
    • Om Prakash Bhasin Award 
    • Homi Bhabha Prize 
    • IISc Rustom Choksi Award 
    • INAE Lifetime Contribution Award 
    • IISc Distinguished Alumnus Award 
    • CSI Lifetime Achievement Award
    An interview with Dr. Rajaraman is available at http://voxiitk.com/interview-with-dr-rajaraman/ 
    The Series of Books by Rajaraman, published by PHI Learning, is available for purchase from www.phindia.com.
     
    The books are available in print book format as well as e-book format.
     
    In case you want to reach us, visit the webpage of the book at
    OR
     
    Write to us at phi@phindia.com

     

     

     

  • GROUNDBREAKING INVENTIONS IN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

    Nowadays, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) touches every aspect of our life. When we get up in the morning, we check our smartphones for any missed calls, SMS, and WhatsApp messages that include audio clips, video clips, and sometimes computer-generated cartoons and animations. Many of us read the latest news and email on our smartphones, tablets, or laptop computers that are connected by Wi-Fi to the Internet. Researchers search the World Wide Web for relevant research papers using a search engine, usually Google. To hear an old favourite song, we turn to YouTube. Books are bought by logging on to Flipkart or Amazon and placing orders. Air tickets are booked by logging on to an airline’s or travel agent’s websites. Train tickets are booked on the IRCTC site. Banking is done from home using Internet banking. When we want to go out and need a taxi, we use Ola or Uber App installed in our smartphones to find out in a map where taxis are, and the time it will take to get one. The taxi driver uses his phone to find our location (found by GPS) from the map on his smartphone screen. The fare is automatically deducted from our pre-paid accounts with Ola or Uber. Else, we may use a digital payment App such as Paytm or BHIM. If the Internet cannot be accessed for some reason, it is extremely inconvenient as a lot of our work gets delayed. Undoubtedly almost everyone has become dependent on ICT in their daily life. ICT has spawned a number of new industries that employ millions of people. All this has happened in a relatively short period of about seventy years.

    In a short span of seventy years, Information and Communication Technology has changed the way we live. Often, we wonder how we lived without the Internet and smartphones!

    PHI’s recently released book GROUNDBREAKING INVENTIONS IN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY by Rajaraman is written in a simple style without too many jargon terms to allow anyone with a pre-university education to understand and appreciate how ICT has developed. 

    What do we mean by a “Groundbreaking Invention”? Some of the meanings of the word “groundbreaking” taken from dictionaries are:

    • “innovative, pioneering” (Oxford Dictionary)
    • “A very new and big change from other things of its type” (Cambridge Dictionary)
    • “Introducing new ideas or methods” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
    • “Something innovative, pioneering or that has never been done before” (Your Dictionary)

    Of these four meanings, the one given by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is closest to the criteria that are used to select the fifteen groundbreaking inventions presented in this book. What then are the criteria to classify an advancement in ICT as a groundbreaking invention? The following criteria are used:

    1. The idea should be novel.
    2. It should fulfill a need.
    3. It should improve our productivity.
    4. It should change the way in which computing is done, and computers are used.
    5. It should lead to innovations.
    6. The invention must have a long life and be continuously used and not be transient.
    7. It should create new industries that lead to further innovations and may, as a consequence, disrupt some old industries.
    8. It should transform the way we live and thereby result in societal changes.

    Every groundbreaking invention doesn’t need to satisfy all the above criteria. If it meets a majority of these, the author of this book has classified it as groundbreaking.

    The book identifies and explains fifteen groundbreaking inventions in ICT from 1957 to-date. The first chapter explains what is meant by the term groundbreaking invention and the criteria that have used to identify groundbreaking inventions. The second, third, and fourth chapters describe the inventions, how they were invented, and the biographies of prominent inventors. The biographies are given in Boxes. They may be skipped while reading about the inventions and read afterward to get an idea about the inventors and their careers. In the fourth chapter, concluding remarks are added that discuss whether there are some common features in the inventions and about the nature of the inventors and why they succeeded.

    In this book, Dr. Rajaraman has described the following for each of these inventions: 

    • History of the invention 
    • A brief biography of persons who were associated with the invention
    • Why the author considers the invention as groundbreaking

    The inventions are grouped as follows:

    • Between 1957 and 1974 (the first four inventions)
    • Between 1975 and 1984 (the middle five inventions)
    • Between 1985 and 2011 (the last six inventions)
    • Each group of inventions is described in a chapter. 

    This book seeks to answer the following questions lucidly to a non-specialist general reader:

    • How did this revolution happen?
    • What groundbreaking inventions led to this revolution?
    • Why are they groundbreaking inventions?
    • Who were the innovators and inventors of these technologies?
    • What led them to these inventions?

    Fifteen groundbreaking inventions: Fortran, Integrated Circuits, Relational Database Management Systems, Local Area Networks, Personal Computers, Public Key Encryption, Computer Graphics, Internet, GPS, World Wide Web, Search Engines, Digitisation and Compression of Multimedia, Mobile Computing, Cloud Computing, and Deep Learning (AI) are described cogently by Professor V. Rajaraman, a doyen of Computer Science education and research in India.

    TARGET AUDIENCE

    • Students, academicians, professionals in the field of ICT
    • Anyone who wants to know about ICT

    V. RAJARAMAN – A Pioneer in the Field of Computer Science Education in India

    Born: 8 September 1933, Madras Presidency, British India 

    Occupation: Computer engineer & Academic Author 

    Known for: Computer science academics and literature 

    Awards 

    • Padma Bhushan
    • Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 
    • Om Prakash Bhasin Award
    • Homi Bhabha Prize 
    • IIScRustomChoksi Award 
    • INAE Lifetime Contribution Award 
    • IISc Distinguished Alumnus Award 
    • CSI Lifetime Achievement Award

    Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman is an Indian engineer, academic and writer, known for his pioneering efforts in the field of Computer Science education in India. He is credited with the establishment of the first academic programme in computer science in India, which he helped initiate at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1965. An elected fellow of all the Indian science academies, he is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the highest Indian award in the Science and Technology category for young scientists and several other honors including Om Prakash Bhasin Award and Homi Bhabha Prize. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1998, for his contributions to science.

    He passed the Higher secondary examination as a student of the first batch of the Madras Education Association (now known as DTEA) Higher Secondary School, New Delhi, in 1949. V. Rajaraman was awarded a scholarship by the Delhi University after passing the All India Entrance Scholarship Examination and graduated with honors in Physics from St. Stephen’s College of the University of Delhi in 1952 and continued his higher studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) to obtain a Diploma in Electrical Communication Engineering in 1955. He stayed on at IISc and designed and constructed non-linear units for an analog computer and applied it for solving a number of engineering problems for which he was awarded an associateship by IISc in 1957. He was awarded an overseas scholarship by the Government of India and joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge from where he obtained his master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1959. Thereafter, he enrolled himself at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for his doctoral studies and did research on adaptive control systems and obtained a Ph.D. in 1961. He started his career as an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1962, he returned to India to work as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK). He went as a visiting assistant professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley during the period 1965–66. It was during this time, he shifted his focus to the then-nascent discipline of computer science.

    Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, IISc Bangalore 

    In early 1965, with the encouragement by Prof.H.K.Kesavan, the Head of Electrical Engineering Department at IITK, Rajaraman along with his colleagues, initiated a new MTech programme with Computer Science as an option; the first time the subject was being offered as an academic discipline in India. Later, he helped introduce a doctoral program, too, and the group led by him pioneered the use of decision tables in the development, debugging, and optimization of complex computer programs. He initiated the first B.Tech. programme at IITK in 1978 with an initial batch of 20 students. He became a senior professor at IITK in 1974 and stayed there till 1982. He moved to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and developed low-cost parallel computers and a supercomputing facility of which he served as the Chairman from 1982 to 1994. During his tenure at IITK and IISc, he guided 30 students in their doctoral studies. He published over 70 scientific papers in national and international peer-reviewed journals and several textbooks, including the first on computer programming published in India by PHI Learning Private Limited titled Principles of Computer Programming, Computer Programming in FORTRAN 90and 95, Computer Oriented Numerical Methods(Third Edition), Analog Computation and Simulation, Analysis and Design of Information Systems(Third Edition), Computer Basics and C Programming, Computer Programming in C, Computer Programming in FORTRAN 77 (With an Introduction to FORTRAN 90), 4th ed., Essentials of E-Commerce Technology, Introduction to Information Technology(Third Edition), Fundamentals of Computers(sixth edition), Parallel Computers—Architecture and Programming(Second Edition), Computer Organization and Architecture, Digital Logic and Computer Organization, an introduction to Digital Computer Design(Fifth Edition) among others. His Ph.D. thesis was on the Theory of parameter-perturbation adaptive and optimizing control systems, and S.M. thesis was on the Effects of Parameter Variations in Linear Amplifiers. He wrote a monograph, History of Computing in India: 1955-2010, on the invitation of the IEEE Computer Society in 2014. It details the history of Information Technology in India. Besides developing parallel computers, Dr.Rajaraman contributed in the development of real-time control system for Bhilai Steel Plant, designed the training modules for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and designed computer science curriculum for All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the national council for technical education in India. He was a member of the Electronics Commission during 1979–82. During his tenure in the Electronics Commission, he chaired a committee that recommended the introduction of a new academic programme called Master of Computer Applications (MCA) for BSc and BCom students foreseeing the impending human resource shortage for the IT industry. This was a unique program in India. He was a council member of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) from 1986 to 1988. He served as a consultant to Bharat Electronics (BEL), TCS, Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), and Kerala Venture Capital. He chaired a committee set up by the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister in 1987 that recommended establishing Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) to design and develop supercomputers in India using parallel computing technology. He was a member of CDAC’s governing council in its formative years. He was a Tata Chem professor at IISc from 1991 to 1994 and the IBM Professor of Information Technology at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCAR) from 1994 to 2001. He was a member of the board of directors of CMC Ltd., Canbank Computer Services Ltd., Encore Software Ltd., and IIIT, Kerala. He was a member of the Technical Advisory Panel of the Government of Karnataka from 1985 to 2014. During his tenure, he advised the government on computerization of land registration (Bhoomi Project), Kaveri project of the stamps and registration department for computerising registration of urban properties, computerizing the court systems, and many important e-governance projects. His hobbies include listening to classical Karnatik and Western music and reading fiction and non-fiction books.

    Awards and Honors 

    Rajaraman received Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the highest Indian science and technology award for young scientists, in 1976, for his contributions in optimizing the use of decision tables and his pioneering work in computer science. This was followed by the Homi Bhabha Prize in 1984 and the Indian Society of Technical Education Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1988. He was awarded the Om Prakash Bhasin Award of the Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation and RustomChoksi Award of the Indian Institute of Science in 1993. The Government of India included him in the Republic Day Honours list in 1998 for the civilian award of the Padma Bhushan. The Indian National Academy of Engineering honoured him with the Lifetime Contribution Award in Engineering in 2005, and he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Science in 2014. He has also delivered several award orations including the S.H. Zaheer Medal (1998) of the Indian National Science Academy. He is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Computer Society of India, Dataquest, and Systems Society of India. The Indian Academy of Sciences elected Rajaraman as its fellow in 1974 and the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India followed suit in 1982 and 1990 respectively. He is also an elected fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and has held the fellowships of the Computer Society of India (1974) and the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers. The Bengal Engineering and Science University and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur have conferred the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) on Rajaraman.

    An interview with Dr. Rajaraman is available at http://voxiitk.com/interview-with-dr-rajaraman/

    The Series of Books by Rajaraman, published by Learning, is available for purchase from www.phindia.com.

    The books are available in print book format as well as e-book format.

  • V. RAJARAMAN – A Pioneer in the Field of Computer Science Education in India

    V. RAJARAMAN – A Pioneer in the Field of Computer Science Education in India
    Born: 8 September 1933, Madras Presidency, British India 
    Occupation: Computer engineer & Academic Author 
    Known for: Computer science academics and literature 
     
    Awards
    1. Padma Bhushan 
    2. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 
    3. Om Prakash Bhasin Award 
    4. Homi Bhabha Prize 
    5. IISc Rustom Choksi Award 
    6. INAE Lifetime Contribution Award 
    7. IISc Distinguished Alumnus Award 
    8. CSI Lifetime Achievement Award
    Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman is an Indian engineer, academic and writer, known for his pioneering efforts in the field of Computer Science education in India. He is credited with the establishment of the first academic program in computer science in India, which he helped initiate at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1965. An elected fellow of all the Indian science academies, he is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the highest Indian award in the Science and Technology category for young scientists and several other honors including Om Prakash Bhasin Award and Homi Bhabha Prize. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1998, for his contributions to science.
     
    He passed the Higher secondary examination as a student of the first batch of the Madras Education Association (now known as DTEA) Higher Secondary School, New Delhi, in 1949. V.Rajaraman was awarded a scholarship by the Delhi University after passing the All India Entrance Scholarship Examination and graduated with honors in Physics from St. Stephen’s College of the University of Delhi in 1952 and continued his higher studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) to obtain a Diploma in Electrical Communication Engineering in 1955. He stayed on at IISc and designed and constructed non-linear units for an analog computer and applied it for solving a number of engineering problems for which he was awarded an associateship by IISc in 1957. He was awarded an overseas scholarship by the Government of India and joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge from where he obtained his master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1959. Thereafter, he enrolled himself at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for his doctoral studies and did research on adaptive control systems and obtained a Ph.D. in 1961. He started his career as an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1962, he returned to India to work as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK). He went as a visiting assistant professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley during the period 1965–66. It was during this time, he shifted his focus to the then-nascent discipline of computer science.
     
    Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, IISc Bangalore 
     
    In early 1965, with the encouragement by Prof. H. K. Kesavan, the Head of Electrical Engineering Department at IITK, Rajaraman along with his colleagues, initiated a new MTech program with Computer Science as an option; the first time the subject was being offered as an academic discipline in India. Later, he helped introduce a doctoral program, too, and the group led by him pioneered the use of decision tables in the development, debugging, and optimization of complex computer programs. He initiated the first B.Tech. program at IITK in 1978 with an initial batch of 20 students. He became a senior professor at IITK in 1974 and stayed there till 1982. He moved to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and developed low-cost parallel computers and a supercomputing facility of which he served as the Chairman from 1982 to 1994. During his tenure at IITK and IISc, he guided 30 students in their doctoral studies. He published over 70 scientific papers in national and international peer-reviewed journals and several textbooks, including the first on computer programming published in India by PHI Learning Private Limited titled Principles of Computer Programming, Computer Programming in FORTRAN 90 and 95, Computer Oriented Numerical Methods (Third Edition), Analog Computation and Simulation, Analysis and Design of Information Systems (Third Edition), Computer Basics and C Programming, Computer Programming in C, Computer Programming in FORTRAN 77 (With an Introduction to FORTRAN 90), 4th ed., Essentials of E-Commerce Technology, Introduction to Information Technology (Third Edition), Fundamentals of Computers (Sixth Edition), Parallel Computers—Architecture and Programming (Second Edition), Computer Organization and Architecture, Digital Logic and Computer Organization, An Introduction to Digital Computer Design (Fifth Edition) among others. His Ph.D. thesis was on the Theory of parameter-perturbation adaptive and optimizing control systems and S.M. thesis was on Effects of Parameter Variations in Linear Amplifiers. He wrote a monograph, History of Computing in India: 1955-2010, on the invitation of the IEEE Computer Society in 2014. It details the history of Information Technology in India. Rajaraman, besides developing parallel computers, contributed in the development of real-time control system for Bhilai Steel Plant, designed the training modules for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and designed computer science curriculum for All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the national council for technical education in India. He was a member of the Electronics Commission during 1979–82. During his tenure in the Electronics Commission, he chaired a committee that recommended the introduction of a new academic program called Master of Computer Applications (MCA) for BSc and BCom students foreseeing the impending human resource shortage for the IT industry. This was a unique program in India. He was a council member of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) from 1986 to 1988. He served as a consultant to Bharat Electronics (BEL), TCS, Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and Kerala Venture Capital. He chaired a committee set up by the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister in 1987 that recommended establishing Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) to design and develop supercomputers in India using parallel computing technology. He was a member of CDAC’s governing council in its formative years. He was a Tata Chem professor at IISc from 1991 to 1994 and the IBM Professor of Information Technology at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCAR) from 1994 to 2001. He was a member of the board of directors of CMC Ltd., Canbank Computer Services Ltd., Encore Software Ltd., and IIIT, Kerala. He was a member of the Technical Advisory Panel of the Government of Karnataka from 1985 to 2014. During his tenure, he advised the government on computerization of land registration (Bhoomi Project), Kaveri project of the stamps and registration department for computerising registration of urban properties, computerizing the court systems and many important e-governance projects. His hobbies include listening to classical Karnatik and Western music and reading fiction and non-fiction books.
     
    Awards and Honors 
     
    Rajaraman received Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the highest Indian science and technology award for young scientists, in 1976, for his contributions in optimizing the use of decision tables and his pioneering work in computer science. This was followed by the Homi Bhabha Prize in 1984 and the Indian Society of Technical Education Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1988. He was awarded the Om Prakash Bhasin Award of the Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation and Rustom Choksi Award of the Indian Institute of Science in 1993. The Government of India included him in the Republic Day Honours list in 1998 for the civilian award of the Padma Bhushan. The Indian National Academy of Engineering honored him with the Lifetime Contribution Award in Engineering in 2005 and he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Science in 2014. He has also delivered several award orations including the S.H. Zaheer Medal (1998) of the Indian National Science Academy and is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Computer Society of India, Dataquest, and Systems Society of India. The Indian Academy of Sciences elected Rajaraman as its fellow in 1974 and the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India followed suit in 1982 and 1990 respectively. He is also an elected fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and has held the fellowships of the Computer Society of India (1974) and the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers. The Bengal Engineering and Science University and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur have conferred the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) on Rajaraman.
     
    An interview with Dr. Rajaraman is available at http://voxiitk.com/interview-with-dr-rajaraman/ 
     
    The Series of Books by Rajaraman, published by PHI Learning, is available for purchase from www.phindia.com.
     
    The books are available in print book format as well as e-book format.