Conferences and Events

International Conference on "Cloud Computing, Smart Grid, and Green IT"-22 to 23 December 2009

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, in association with IBM-India, proudly presents the International conference on "Cloud Computing, Smart Grid, and Green IT", first of its kind in India. The aim of this conference is to provide a platform for leading researchers and industry practitioners deliberate on the latest trends, best technologies and socio-economic approaches towards deployment of cloud computing solutions in India. This international conference will also cover a broad range of topics on Smart Grid and other Green IT solutions with presenters from the best research, academic and government institutions in India and abroad. Conference Partners include Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Computer Society of India (CSI), Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) and Amrita TIFAC-CORE in Cyber Security Speakers represent a spectrum of perspectives, as well as diversity in industry and functional backgrounds and include experts from IBM, Intel, Sun Microsystems, Google research, NetApp, Cisco, Infosys, Zoho, Leadforcel, Brocade Networks, Rapidigm as well as professors from leading universities in the US.

Members of Association of University Administrators from UK visit Amrita, Nov 17, 2009

The Association of University Administrators (AUA) of UK is a professional body that seeks to promote interests of university faculty and students. An AUA team was in Amrita recently as part of their first-ever study tour to India.
“…an amazing visit …” the members of the team wrote on their blog site, describing their visit to Amrita. Over a 10-day period, the team had visited six other universities and institutions, including IIM Bangalore, IIT Bombay, University of Mumbai and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.

Amrita signs MoU with Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil-Oct 11, 2009

Amrita University was invited by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil to attend a five-day seminar titled India-in-Focus in August. UFRJ, considered as one of the top universities in South America, invited Amrita along with other leading universities from India -- IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, University of Mumbai and University of Calcutta -- to attend the seminar. Lectures were hosted on Indian philosophy, culture, tradition, language, economy, science and technology. A round-table was organized to foster partnerships between UFRJ and Indian universities. Amrita was represented by Dr Shanti Nair, Dean of Research and Dean of the Center for Nanosciences at Amrita University. "Every Indian university was invited to give a half-hour presentation on how they could collaborate on various projects with UFRJ or with the other institutions of Brazil," Dr. Nair explained. "After our presentation, UFRJ expressed an interest in the work we are doing in the area of nano-technology and energy, specifically solar cells."

Nobel Laureate Addresses Convocation Gathering- Oct 7, 2009

Dr. Leland (Lee) Harrison Hartwell is President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his contribution to the understanding of the cell cycle through years of studying yeast. He spoke to the 2009 graduating class assembled on the lawns of Amrita's Coimbatore campus, from the US, through a satellite link. Reproduced below, with his permission, is the complete text of his speech to the graduating students.

MoU signed between SUNY Buffalo's School of Social Work and Amrita-September 10, 2009

Amrita University enjoys a highly successful partnership with the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA -- the two universities together offer a dual MBA-MS degree at Amrita's Bangalore campus. This partnership will now possibly benefit more students, with the signing of an MoU during the recent visit of Dean Nancy Smythe of Buffalo's School of School Work to Amrita.

Indo-US Conference and Workshop on Cyber Security, Cyber Crime and Cyber Forensics, Agust 19-21 2009

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham and University at Buffalo-SUNY successfuly organized a joint workshop on "Cyber Security, Cyber Crime and Cyber Forensics". This program had tutorials, and workshop sessions aimed at bringing eminent researchers from both academia and industry under one roof to discuss and deliberate on the best technologies and socio economic approaches to effectively thwart increasing threats of global cyber-crime and initiate cyber security defenses. A stimulating program had also been organized featuring invited talks and tutorials from experts from the U.S. and India with panel discussions.
The conference and workshop was held at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre (AIMS), Kochi.

Dr. Shankar Sastry, Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley launches A-View-August 11 2009

Dr. Shankar Shastry, Dean of the College of Engineering, University of California at Berkeley launched A-VIEW system. A-View (Amrita Virtual Interactive e-learning World) is Amrita's indigenously built e-learning platform that makes for an immersive e-learning experience that is almost as good as a real classroom experience.

A-View is now deployed not only at Amrita but also at several IITs and NITs and other leading educational institutions in the nation."We expect that this may become a building block for programs that we can conceptualize between Amrita and Berkeley," he stated. Discussions are on to begin joint initiatives in the areas of wireless sensor networks and cybersecurity. Amrita already offers dual degree programs in collaboration with State University of New York at Buffalo. A-View is expected to enable such similar programs with other leading universities around the world.
An IEEE student chapter was also inaugurated at ASE Coimbatore by Dr. Shankar Sastry, Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Venkat Rangan, Vice-Chancellor of Amrita University, remarked, "University of California at Berkeley is one of the top universities in the world. Amrita University is one of the fastest emerging universities in India. Together we have a lot of common interests."

Dr. Jai Menon, IBM Fellow and Vice President, Technical Strategy, Vice-President, Global University Programs ,visited Amrita (Coimbatore) on 11th June 2009

IBM Fellow and Vice President of University Relations Dr. Jai Menon visited the university head quarters at Coimbatore on 11th June 2009. Dr. Jai Menon is responsible for shaping IBM's technical strategy and identifying emerging technologies critical to the future of IBM as Vice-Chair of the IBM Academy of Technology - an elite body of worldwide leaders whose mission is to provide technical direction and leadership for IBM. An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM’s CEO. It is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM (and perhaps 'in the industry') can achieve. In addition, Jai serves as the global Vice-President of IBM's University Collaboration programs, serves on several university industry advisory boards, and works with academia to establish innovative research and build 21st century skills in support of the innovation economy. He was accompanied by his colleage Mr. Sudar Oli, Program Manager, IBM India university relations.

WINSOC Review Meeting at Amrita,June 10-11 2009

Members of the international WINSOC research team arrived in India for a visit to the deployment site at Munnar of the landslide detection system developed by Amrita University faculty and research associates. Visiting delegates are from premier European organizations and universities such as Selex Communications, DUNE srl (Italy), University of Rome 'La Sapienza' (Italy), Technical University of Catalonia (Spain), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland) and Czech Centre for Science Society (Czech Republic). Amrita and these institutions are partners in 11-member consortium working on this 2.5 million Euro research project co-funded by the INFSO DG of the European Commission. Media Reports>>

Amrita team meets Nobel Laureate-June 11, 2009

The Amrita team including the Vice chancellor, Dr. P. Venkat Rangan, Sneha Moawad, Senior Administartor, Dr. Sree Rajan and Master Vishnu Tejus Rajan met with Nobel Laurete Dr. Lee Hartwell. Amrita also looks forward to additional collaborative opportunities with the Hutch and with Dr. Hartwell. At the Amrita School of Medicine, there is a proposal for starting a collaborative Fellowship Training Program in Clinical Hemotology and Oncology. This combined training program is not currently offered by any other academic institution in India. Amrita will possibly look for guidance to premier international institutions such as the Hutch to successfully implement this first-in-India program.

Amrita signs MoU with SUNY Buffalo-Feb 10, 2009

The visit of the high-level delegation from the State University of New York, Buffalo culminated in the signing of a MoU for greater collaboration in teaching and research between the two universities. Over a period of one week, the delegation visited four of the five Amrita campuses, called on the Chancellor of Amrita University at Amritapuri, and met with Dr. R. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, who was in our Coimbatore campus presiding over a national symposium. On the final day of their visit, the delegation participated in the graduation ceremony for MITES students

The team began their visit on Monday, Feb 2, with a tour of our healthcare campus at Kochi. On the following day, they met our Chancellor Amma. Dr. Richard Lee, a medical doctor and a distinguished academician from SUNY, told Amma that his university would like to send medical students to study at Amrita. The team also visited the Schools of Ayurveda, Biotechnology and Engineering at Amritapuri. On the following day, the team was in Coimbatore to participate in the national symposium -- Water for All. They joined in with Dr. Chidambaram and senior Amrita faculty for a panel discussion on building world-class universities.

1st batch of 54 students graduates from the MITES program-Feb 10 2009

"Through this holding of hands and sharing of experiences, new horizons will open up in the highest realms of science and technology to those thirsting for knowledge in India and other parts of the world -- especially students, teachers and researchers." With these words, Amma had inaugurated the Indo-US initiative at Amrita about three years ago. This past week, when the first batch of students graduated from our Bangalore Campus with degrees from both Amrita and State University of New York (SUNY), an important milestone was achieved in the realization of this vision.

Amrita School of Engineering student has been nominated for the 'Campus Ambassador of the Year' award by Sun Microsystems Inc.

Avinash Joshi, Sun Campus Ambassodor from Amritapuri Campus, nominated for the 'Campus Ambassador Of The Year ' award by Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun has the Campus Ambassador (CA) program in which they nominate a student as a CA from prestigious universities around the world. ( http://developers.sun.com/students/campus.jsp ). The role of the CA is to bring awareness about OpenSource and the latest technology innovation from Sun to the students. Sun has invited him (including four other CAs who are also the nominees form other parts of the world) on a fully sponsored trip to the prestigious JavaOne Conference at San Fransisco (http://java.sun.com/javaone ). This will be in the beginning of June.

Roundtable Discussion on Global Community & Diversity

On July 2, 2007 a roundtable discussion on Global Community & Diversity was held among Amrita University and the University of IOWA. The Panel members were: Donna Katen-Bahensky, CEO of U of I Hospitals & Clinics for Healthcare, Meredith Hay, VP Research U of I, for Education; Dick Myers for Public Service; Walter Reed, Director of Human Rights for the State of IA for Human Rights, the Moderator is State Representative Swati Dandekar, and the Guest Of Honor was Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge. Each Panel Member had the platform for a 10 minute speech focusing on his or her vision for building global bridges and for honoring our diversity in his or her respective field of expertise.

The U.S.-India Summit on Education, Research & Technology

On May 31, 2006, an audience of 150 invited officials from industry, academe, government and non-governmental organizations in India and the United States met to explore strategic issues in high-tech research and education as they apply to the world’s two largest democracies. The U.S.-India Summit on Education, Research & Technology is organized by the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), and it took place on the UCSD campus in La Jolla, California. The Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum plays an essential role in promoting and facilitating the collaborative research activities arising from the UC-India agreement.

Harvard University Dean Interacted with Indian Universities on Indo-US Edusat Network

Dr. Venkatesh Narayanamurti, Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Dean of Physical Sciences at Harvard University, USA, talked to all of the representatives and academic leaders from the universities and colleges that are participants on our Indo-US Edusat Network on March 28, 2006, here at picturesque hill-side AMRITA Headquarters in Coimbatore. . Hel also co-chaired a panel with the vice chancellors of VTU (Bangalore), and Anna University on delivering courses interactively, live, via the Edusat network by eminent Professors from USA.
Important issues on the academic courses, synchronization of the schedule and syllabus of the course subjects and evaluation of these courses by the partner institutions etc were discussed.

Dr. Maria Klawe, Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Princeton University Launched M.S by Research at Amrita

Dr. Maria Klawe , Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA visited Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham on 10th January, 2006, as part of the INDO-US Initiative in Higher Education and Research. Dr Maria Klawe launched a new Research program at Amrita called M.S by Research. Incidentally, Princeton University was also home to probably the world’s most celebrated scientist, Dr. Albert Einstein. Dr. Maria Klawe has been the Word-wide President of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), which is the largest professional organization of hundreds of thousands of computer science and IT professionals in the world. She also has been the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology in Palo Alto, and a Trustee of the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics in Los Angeles and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California. In the past Maria has held leadership positions in the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the Computing Research Association, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Canadian Mathematical Society. Maria was elected as a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1995. The newly launched program will be bring the best of research from Princeton University to hundreds of engineering colleges in India through AMRITA’s Indo-US University Initiative. Snapshots>>

Launch of joint MS Programme in IT Enabled Services with University at Buffalo, New York. 02January2006

Dr.Satish Tripathi, Provost & Executive Vice President,University at Buffalo, New York & Dr.Stephen Dunnett, Vice Provost, University at Buffalo, New York, launched joint MS Programme in IT Enabled Services with University at Buffalo, New York.