Innovation in an Indian Context

By Dr. Smruti Ranjan Sarangi

Volume 4, Issue 2 October 2011

Editors Column
Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations a faint flutter of wings; the gentle stirring of life and hope. --Albert Camus Great environments are definitely breeders of great ideas but everybody needs a break from the tight timelines to nurture such ideas. As we enjoy the last few days of the mid-sem break, let us refresh ourselves with the latest updates of the activities of the department and the people associated with it. In this issue we heartily welcome two new faculty Dr. Maya Ramanath and Dr. Smruti Ranjan Sarangi to the department. We also thank Dr. Sarangi for his highly motivating article on innovation in an Indian context. A live example of this is discussed in an interview with an Alumini, also the creator of Flipkart, one of the most popular online shopping ventures in India. Ideas flow from one plain to another, be it through the open house, various seminars or other events organized in the department. The ACM Chapter organized many major events including Yahoo Hack U! and IKES 2011, a research based knowledge exchange symposium organized in collaboration with IBM IRL. The team offers its homage to one of the greatest innovators of the era, Steve Jobs, through his personality profile as well as some of his famous quotes. Switch on your thinking pads for the fun section that offers a new poem and a crossword with a difference. Read on for all this and more!

Inside this issue:

Innovation in an Indian Context Project article I2Tech 2011 Newsflashes Faculty Profile Personality Profile Faculty Profile Flipkart profile ACM activities Fun Section

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3 4
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6 7 8 9,10 10,11 11,12

Aditi Kapoor, Chief Editor

Most undergraduate and gradu- -partments, an iPod, would not have ate students consider the idea of been possible. We can think of an creating a startup at some point iPod as the outcome of a massive of time in their life. They are system consisting of many many mostly inspired by the lives of gears, all operating in perfect harmony and synchrony. The loss of visionaries like Steve Jobs, and any single cog in the wheel can stall Bill Gates. Also, creating a sucthe entire system. cessful startup is a very superlative technical achievement, an For example, when I went to extremely attractive option both Ethiopia, I saw a man sitting by professionally as well as finan- the road side making new TVs. cially. Consequently, many stu- He had a couple of old CRT TV dents, academicians, and work- sets of different makes. He was ing professionals are drawn into cannibalizing different parts from this seemingly lucrative profes- them, and creating a brand new sion. However, the economics of TV set consisting of entirely reinnovation is extremely different furbished parts. This to me is, in India as compared to the Sili- innovation. Doing this surely con Valley. I would tend to ar- does require some amount of gue that the meaning of the term technical knowledge. Secondly, innovation means different you require a supply chain that things in different places. It provides old TVs with at least one needs to be interpreted in the part working, and then you need a market that can correct pay you well s o c i o Since we live in an age of for the invested econ omi c and c o n t e x t . innovation, a practical education t i m e This article must prepare a man for work that money. makes the does not yet exist and cannot yet Now, coming case for a be clearly defined back to the more bal~Peter F. Drucker Indian context, anced aplet us look at proach for the financial dealing with angle first. To make a product, we the issue of pursuing a career need at least three engineers. Two founding startups as compared to engineers need to be devoted to traditional jobs in India. development, and one engineer When we think of innovation, needs to focus on testing. Even if the first thing that strikes us is we assume that a couple of entresomething like an iPod, or iPad. preneurs dont draw any salary, We need to fundamentally revisit we will nonetheless need to pay this notion of invention in devel- the engineers at multinational oping countries in India. We company rates. Assuming an avneed to understand that to create erage figure of ten to fifteen lakh something like an iPod, we need rupees CTC per year, this hundreds of positive factors in amounts to about 40 lakhs per our socio-economic system like year for three engineers. Secthe availability of high quality ondly, we need some basic comtechnical manpower, designers, puting infrastructure, licenses for venture capitalists, marketing software, and money to pay utility managers, and extremely diligent bills, and rent. Assuming five sales personnel. If Apple were lakhs for rent per year, and the deficient in any one of these de- rest for computing facilities, we

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Innovation in an Indian Context (contd.)

estimate this amount to exceed 10 lakhs. Most of this cost is variable given the fact that we have to take deprecation into account. sand customers each year. Assume that we are creating a small device or software costing 500 Rs. that can be sold by retailers. We need to sell at least 30,000 copies. This is not a small Along with the engineering costs, we feat by any measure. Secondly, venshould not underestimate the need for ture capitalists expect a 1:10 return, sales and marketing. We need to hire the which increases the size of the probservices of a very capable and preferably lem by an order of magnitude. senior sales/marketing executive who has very good relations with retailers, dis- The main problem is that we are paytributors, venture capitalists, funding ing AMERICAN salaries in an INagencies, and potential clients. Typically, DIAN market. The possible solutions this person is somebody very senior and to this problem are as follows. The needs to be paid a very high salary. He or entrepreneurs need to take on the role she should get at least 20 lakh rupees in of engineers, and work with a very todays market. Secondly, we need to low pay for extended amounts of time. invest a sizeable amount of money in Unfortunately, it is very hard for senmarketing campaigns, travel, and presen- ior people to go without pay for a long tations in major international events and time owing to family commitments, trade shows. This should cost 10-20 lakhs and junior people might be deficient in more. Lastly, we need to pay for finan- skills. Nonetheless, if students want to open a startup after they graduate, they cial, legal, and HR services. need to first and foremost concentrate Adding up all of this, we come upto an on acquiring very advanced technical estimate of one crore per year in personskills especially in programming and nel and operating costs. However, we are computer systems. Otherwise, they not done yet. We need to consider the fact will be reliant on other engineers. that the corporate tax rate in India is 30%, we have VAT and service tax, and the Secondly, as mentioned by the legencost of capital is 10-15% per year. This dary late Steve Jobs, a techno-business means that for supporting a small size effort is a marriage of computer scidevelopment team, we are looking at one ence and liberal arts. Students need to and half crores per year. This is about focus on their soft skills like writing 300,000$ per year, which is not an insig- and art of presentation. This will enable them to take up some or most of nificant amount by American standards. the roles of the senior marketing exIf the startup is able to generate this ecutive. amount plus much more, then we can justify the investment. Let us say that we Unfortunately, the Indian education have a startup that provides some kind of system is not geared towards produca web service. We charge 1000 Rs from ing a person who is an amalgam of each customer. We will need fifteen thou- technical as well as non-technical skills. Most of the time, students are good in only one area and lack expertise in the other. Hence, it is very essential for prospective entrepreneurs to develop themselves as extremely versatile individuals. In specific, they should focus on world class system design skills, be extremely effective presenters, and if possible become an extremely eloquent and articulate speaker. Almost all successful entrepreneurs and corporate honchos have these skills to different measures. It is possible that even with all of these attributes the costs and risks of running a startup in India clearly outweigh the expected benefits. This is the case for most of the startups that lack a clearly defined vision and business model. In this case, it might be a good idea to focus on a service oriented model than a product oriented model. The former has low risks and low returns, whereas the latter has high risks and possibly high returns. Once, the service oriented startup does well, and the monetization begins, entrepreneurs can think of increasing the innovation bar, and focusing on newer ideas. To summarize, I believe that creating startup in India presents some uniquely Indian challenges, which are just not limited to the lack of availability of high quality manpower and venture capitalist funding. However, it is possible to circumvent them if prospective entrepreneurs equip themselves with the correct skills, start with smaller objectives and innovate their way up the ladder.

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do. ~ Steve Jobs

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An interesting project article: Systematic Ranking of Thread Schedules for Testing Multithreaded Programs
Student : Sandeep Kumar Bindal Supervisor : Dr. Sorav Bansal Publication details : S. Bindal, S. Bansal, "Systematic ranking of Thread Schedules for Testing Multithreaded Programs," ACM SRC PLDI Student Research Competition, San Jose, June 2011. (Third Prize Winner in Undergraduate Research Category. ) Introduction Concurrency is used pervasively in the development of large programs. However, testing concurrent programs is notoriously hard due to the inherent non-determinism. Recently, many different techniques have been proposed to identify concurrency-related bugs early. An effective but expensive approach is modelchecking, where all possible schedules of a program are executed to ascertain the absence of a bug. Unfortunately, the space of all schedules is huge, and exhaustively enumerating it is usually infeasible. Therefore, an alternative is to try and maximize the probability of uncovering a bug rather than trying to ascertain its absence. Background Work Many different approaches have been proposed in this direction. Musuvathi and Qadeer recently proposed using context-bound to rank schedules, and show that it is an effective method to uncover most common bugs. A context-bound is the number of preemptive context-switches required to execute a schedule. The schedules are enumerated in increasing order of their contextbound. They had shown that all known bugs in real-world applications can be found with context-bound values of 2 or less. The space of schedules is reduced significantly at low contextboundvalues, but it is still too large to exhaustively enumerate. Tools like CHESS based on this algorithm reduces this search space by considering only explicit synchronization operations as possible pre-emption points. This approach is based on the assumption that all shared-memory accesses will be protected by a lock but many systems deliberately avoid explicit synchronization, often for performance reasons. Another recent tool, CTrigger, focuses on atomicity-violation bugs and preferentially searches the space of schedules that are likely to trigger these bugs. CTrigger first profiles executions of the program to determine the shared variables and their unprotectedaccesses. It then attempts to generate schedules that are thread schedules to be tested on four dimensions, namely, contextbound, memory locations (variables), threads, and loop iterations. We discuss all these ranking criteria as follows:

Ranking on Context Bound Ranking on Number of Memory Locations Ranking on Number of Threads Ranking on Loop Iteration Bound

Conclusions We have implemented this algorithm in a concurrency testing tool for Java, called RankChecker. Our tool does not require source-level annotations and instruments the binary class code of a Java program and associated libraries to insert appropriate schedule points. The instrumented test program is linked with the RankChecker library which spawns a scheduler thread to dictate the thread interleavings using semaphores. Table 1. shows the results of our experiments. The programs from MergeSort to AirLineTickets are taken from ConTest Benchmarks. We are able to find out all the known bugs in the ConTest Benchmarks. We have also tested our tool on cache4j, a fast threadsafe implementation of a cache for Java Objects, upto (c = 2, v = vtot, t = 2, l = 1) but we are not able to find out any bug. Other key contributions of our work include : Providing a systematic ranking of test schedules while testing concurrentprograms. Presenting new classifications of bugs based on the number of variables involved, the number of threads required to uncover it, and the number of loop iterations. Presenting a concurrency-testing tool for Java based on our ranking scheme. Our tool tests for many different types of concurrency bugs at once.
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likely to violate assumptions of atomicity. CTrigger is primarily interested in atomicity-violation bugs and often overlooks other concurrency bugs.

Methodology 3.1 Ranking We propose a ranking scheme of test schedules, which is applicable to all programs irrespective of the synchroni- zation disciplines being followed, and targets all types of bugs. We rank the

ACM Best Student Chapter Award goes to IITD again!

Did you spot the banner on the top of the first page of this edition?

We are proud to say that the ACM IITD Chapter has done it again! We won the ACM Student Chapter Excellence Award during 2010-11 for Outstanding School Service among ACM student chapters from all over the world based on the review by an Essay Competition. The ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards Program recognizes

chapters that display considerable initiative during the academic year. All student chapters compete for this award in five key areas. Winning chapters in each of these five areas receive $500 and an award banner to proudly display on their chapter's Web page. These chapters are featured on the ACM Web site and in ACM MemberNet

Outstanding Chapter Activities: The UCLouvain ACM Student Chapter

Other Award Winning Chapters

Outstanding Community Service: University of Michigan/Dearborn ACM Student Chapter Outstanding Recruitment Program: New Jersey Institute of Technology ACM Student

Chapter
Outstanding Chapter Website: Northeastern University ACM Student Chapter

I2Tech 2011 Innovation at its best at IIT Delhi

Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi exhibited its latest technological innovations and projects at its open event, I2tech-2011 on Saturday 23rd April 2011. Continuing the tradition of last six years, this year too i2tech promises to be real treat to the eyes of the connoisseurs by presenting finest of the projects to technology enthusiasts, students and colleagues from other technical institutes, school children, industries and general public. This aims to provide platform to outer world, especially young minds at school level and their professors, to know and learn about the ongoing research projects in IIT Delhi. There were about 350 projects worked upon by B. Tech, M. Tech and Ph. D students in consultation with their professors. These were showing the current problems in various fields and on going research work to solve them. Projects were from departments of Nano Technology, Biological Science, Civil, Mechanical and Computer science department and various more. Some of the key projects for display were Voice Application for Municipal Complaint Management, Design and implementation of a News reader based on social networks, Maximal matching in a dynamic graph, Smart CANE etc. Technologies, Rube Goldberg Experiments, Film Screenings, Quiz programmes to school students also marked the occasion. Special lectures were also delivered by Prof T.K. Datta on Earthquake & Tsunami The Twins and by Prof Ambuj Sagar on Society's Grand Challenges: The Role of Technology and Technologists. First prize was awarded to a project titled Remote reconfigurable acoustic surveillance platform using low power DSP hardware with built in self test conducted in CARE department and the next 2 were given to students Mechanical department. The events highlights were display and demonstration of more than 400 student and research projects & products to 3500 visitors from schools, colleges, industries and general public. In this years even all 13 departments, 11 centers and 3 schools participated enthusiastically. Special demonstration of sixth sense It was overall a knowledge enriching experience for both students from outside and within IIT Delhi, to learn and exchange new ideas.

Compiled by : Swati Verma

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. ~Albert Einstein
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Department News Flash

I. Visitors Dr. Nisheeth Vishnoi, Microsoft Research, Bangalore , 25th April 2011 Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bharti Enterprises Ltd , 25th April 2011 Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corporation, , 26th May 2011 Prof. Kaleem Siddiqi, McGill University, Montreal, CA, 3rd August 2011 Prof. Sanjay Madria, Missouri University of Science & Technology , 5th August 2011 Prof. Chandrajit Bajaj, The University of Texas at Austin, 5th August 2011 Dr. Sheldon Levy, Ryerson University , 5th August 2011 Ashwin Karkala, Oracle, 6th August 2011 Nandan Nilekani, Infosys, 10th August 2011 Dr. Ed Cutrell, Microsoft Research India , 10th August 2011 Prof. Dinesh Manocha , University of North Carolina, 12th August 2011 Dr. Sourav Chakraborty, Chennai Mathematical Institute, 30th August 2011 Prof. Ashish Goel, Stanford University, 12th September 2011 Dr. Sorav Bansal, IIT Delhi, 5th October 2011 Soshant Bali, IIIT Delhi, 14 2011
th

wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Intl. Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS '11), pp 1-8, June 2011.

A SysML Profile for Development and Early Validation of TLM 2.0 Models Vaibhav Jain, Anshul Kumar, Preeti Panda In Robert France et al., editors, Proc. 7th Int. Conf. Modelling Foundations and Applications (ECMFA'2011), pages 299-311. Springer, Berlin, LNCS 6698, 2011 A UML based framework for efficient Validation of TLM 2 Models Vaibhav Jain, Anshul Kumar, Preeti Panda Forum on Specification and Design Languages (*FDL'11*) Oldenburg, Germany, September, 2011 M. Agrawal, M. Hanmandlu and K.K. Biswas, Generalized Intuitionistic Fuzzy Soft Set and its Application in Practical Medical Diagnosis Problem, presented at Fuzz IEEE 2011conference, June 27 30, 2011, Taipei, pp. 2972 2978. Richa Sharma and K.K. Biswas, Using Courteous Logic based representation for Requirements Specification, 4th International Workshop on Managing Requirements Knowledge (MaRK11), Aug. 30,2011, Torino M. Agrawal, K.K.Biswas and M. Hanmandlu, Relations in Generalized Intuitionistic Fuzzy Soft Set, IEEE CIMSA, Computational Intelligence for Measurement Systems and Analysis, Sept 18-21, 2011, Ottawa. Paper entitled "Reducing Dependency on Middleware for Pull Based Services in LBS Systems" by Saroj Kaushik, Shivendra Kumar and Priti Goplani was presented by Prof Saroj Kausshik, in an International Conference on Wireless Communications and Applications (ICWCA 2011) held during 13 August 2011, Haikou, China. P. Goyal, V. J. Ribeiro, H. Saran, A. Kumar, Strap-Down Pedestrian DeadReckoning System, IPIN, Guimaraes, 2011. A. K. Somani and A. Gumaste, "Light

Trails: Distributed Optical Grooming for Emerging Data Center, Cloud Computing, and Enterprize Applications," in Proc. of OFC, 2011, Invited Paper, March, 7-10, 2011.

A. Gupta, J. Kumar, D. Mathew, S. Bansal, S. Banerjee, H. Saran, "Design and Implementation of the Workflow of an Academic Cloud," Databases in Networked Information Systems, University of Aizu, Japan, December 2011. S. Bindal, S. Bansal, "Systematic ranking of Thread Schedules for Testing Multithreaded Programs," ACM SRC PLDI Student Research Competition, San Jose, June 2011. Third Prize Winner in Undergraduate 2010, SciTePress, ISBN 978-989-8425-294, pp 165 170.

IV Awards

Sandeep Kumar Bindal won third prize at PLDI SRC 2011 in the Undergraduate Category for his work on Systematic Ranking of the Threads Schedules for Testing MultiThreaded Programs.

The Trafficdroid team of Kanav Goyal, Kushal Dudani, Saurabh Gupta, and Shikhar Gupta won third place in the Ericsson Application Awards for 2011, for their Android application on road traffic monitoring. Dr. Sorav Bansal won IBM SUR Award, 2011 Dr. Amit Kumar awarded INSA Medal for Young Scientist 2011

October

Nisheeth Vishnoi, Microsoft Research, Bangalore, 18th October 2011 Elisa Celis, University of Washington, Seattle, 18th October 2011 III. Publications Amitabha Bagchi, Adit Madan, Achal Premi. A computationally inexpensive and power efficient fully distributed topology for data collection in heterogeneous

V. Events

IIT Delhis 1st Knowledge Exchange Symposium (IKES 2011) organized by ACM Student Chapter in collaboration with IBM IRL , 16th October 2011 Hack U! organized by ACM Student Chapter and Yahoo, 13-15th October 2011

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Faculty Profile : Dr. Maya Ramanath

would get it. So, thats when I decided that this was a great subject for me (though I would go on to working in cardinality estimation for my PhD which had nothing to do with either concurrency control or recovery). chose MPII. There I got to work with someone who is at the top of his profession. And I got a glimpse of what it takes to be a world-class researcher (turns out, its not easy!). Q.6. How would you compare your experiences at MPII to that of IIT Delhi? Any similarities between the two? What would you say are the main differences? Ans.6. I am working with a lot more students at IIT Delhi, building my own group and teaching. None of these things was required at MPII. So, this is a completely new experience for me. There are a few hiccups here and there, but I am getting used to it. I even hope to enjoy it soon .

Q.1. Please tell us a bit about your student days. Ans. 1. My student days were pretty boring, I would say. I was a good student who studied hard and got good marks. That pretty much sums up my student life. Life is so much more interesting now .

Q.4. It seems that you continued for your PhD after your masters. What are the advantages/disadvantages of the same? In your opinion is it better to get experience and come back or continue and complete it in one run? Ans. 4. This is a difficult question to answer. On the one hand, sometimes it does matter what your age is for certain kind of things. For example, in some places, you will not be considered young enough for assistant professor positions if you are over 35. And you will not be eligible to apply for certain kinds of funding, etc. So, it really depends on what you think your goals will be, how long you would like to get experience in a job and then come back. The trend seems to suggest that if you can get a PhD by the time you are in your early 30s, the world is open to you. If I could do it again, I would take up a job for a couple of years after my BTech or Masters. The truth is that going through a PhD program is like being in the real world you will have to deal with all kinds of people, some good and others nasty, and all kind of pressures, mostly bad. And its your degree at stake if you dont know how to navigate in the right manner. So, I would say, its better to go out and get some experience in the world and come back with a little more maturity.

Q.7. What made you want to come back to India? Ans.7. I got a good job! It was the right move to advance my career.

Q.2. How did you get interested in Computer Science as a career? Ans. 2. I was very young (about 10 or so) when my father bought a computer -- a commodore PC 40 with a color monitor. That was fascinating for me. I started reading books about computers and learning and programming in BASIC. And of course, playing a lot of computer games (primitive though they were). This continued for many years and finally, it was just a natural choice to choose Computer Science as my preferred subject.

Q.8. Your advice to the students. Ans.8. Always have a plan. It could be a 6-month plan or 1-year plan, but never do anything without first thinking about your goals. For example, if you are in your final year of BTech, think about what your plan is for the final year. Is your goal to get a job if so, what kind of company? Or go abroad for higher studies if so, what kind of university? Either goal requires a different kind of planning. If you go in without a reasonable idea of what your goals are, you are most likely wasting time. More likely, you suddenly find at the end of the final year that you actually want to join Intel, and now wish you had taken up a project in computer architecture. Eventually you will have to make longer-term plans and it is good to get into the habit early.
Compiled by : Aditi Kapoor

Q.3. What created a passion for Database Systems in you? Ans. 3. The initial interest in database systems came when I was studying concurrency control and recovery during my B.E. days. I could really see the beauty of the subject how the theory and practical aspects intertwined. And I had a natural aptitude for understanding the subject I had to read something once or twice and I

Q.5. What would you call the turning point of your career so far? Ans. 5. Going to MPII has been a major event in my career so far. I had the option of either going for a job in an industrial research lab or as a postdoc at MPII. I

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. ~Albert Einstein
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Personality Profile : Steve Jobs, The Man with the Golden I

He was an would have never had multiple type- In 1976, Jobs, Steve Wozniak and inventor and faces or proportionally spaced fonts." Ronald Wayne founded Apple, with an entreprelater funding from a then-semi-retired neur. He was In 1974, Jobs took a job as a technician Intel product-marketing manager and the CEO of a at Atari, Inc., a manufacturer of video engineer A.C. "Mike" Markkula, Jr. In company that games, with the primary intent of sav- 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from r evol ut i on - ing money for a spiritual retreat to In- National Semiconductor to serve as iz ed th e dia. Jobs then traveled to India to visit CEO for what turned out to be several world. He Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ash- turbulent years. In 1983, Jobs lured got fired ram with a Reed College friend (and, John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to from his own later, an early Apple employee), Daniel serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you company but then went on to establish Kottke, in search of spiritual enlighten- want to sell sugar water for the rest of another company which was hugely suc- ment. He came back a Buddhist with your life, or do you want to come with cessful. So successful in fact, that the his head shaved and wearing traditional me and change the world?" company which had fired him acquired Indian clothing. Jobs was among the first to see this other company by him just to the commercial potential of Xerox bring him back on board. So great was his influence, so captivating Your work is going to fill a large part of your PARC's mouse-driven graphical was his charisma, so fluent was his life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to user interface, which led to the presentation, so grand was his re- do what you believe is great work. And the only creation of the Apple Lisa in 1983. One year later, the Macinturn. Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs way to do great work is to love what you do. If tosh was born. The rest, as they was his name. you havent found it yet, keep looking, and say, is history. Steve Jobs had a He was co-founder, chairman, and dont settle. As with all matters of the heart, dynamic personality. His presenchief executive officer of Apple youll know when you find it. tation style was unique. He underInc. Jobs also co-founded Pixar stood that the difference between Animation Studios. He became a a good product and a great prodmember of the board of direcuct lay in presenting it right. tors of the Walt Disney ComSteve passed away on OctoSo we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got pany in 2006, following the ber 5, 2011. May his soul rest acquisition of Pixar by Disney. this amazing thing, even built with some of your in peace. His life can be best He has a total of 317 patents to parts, and what do you think about funding us? summed up by his own his name, with a dozen more Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay words : which had been applied for. Our time is limited, so don't Jobs was adopted by the famsaid, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, waste it living someone else's ily of Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs who moved to Mountain and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You have- life. Don't be trapped by n't got through college yet. dogma - which is living with View, California when he was the results of other people's five years old. When asked thinking. Don't let the noise of other's about his "adoptive parents," Jobs replied opinions drown out your own inner emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs Jobs returned to Atari and was given voice. And most important, have the "were my parents." the task of creating a circuit board for courage to follow your heart and intuiAfter graduating high school, Jobs went the game Breakout. Atari offered $100 tion. They somehow already know what to Reed College in Portland, Odegan. for each chip that was eliminated in the you truly want to become. Everything Although he dropped out after only one machine. Jobs had little interest in or else is secondary. semester, he continued auditing classes at knowledge of circuit board design and Reed, while sleeping on the floor in made a deal with Wozniak to split the Sources: friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for bonus evenly between them if Wozniak 1. Wikipedia food money, and getting weekly free could minimize the number of chips. meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Wozniak reduced the number of chips 2. http://typelogic.com/entj.html Jobs later said, by 50, a design so tight that it was im"If I had never dropped in on that single possible to reproduce on an assembly Compiled by : Aayush Goel calligraphy course in college, the Mac line.

our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they

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Faculty Profile : Dr. Smruti Ranjan Sarangi

toppers from different universities from across the globe and it was a culturally diverse community. The toughest part was peer evaluation as your papers were reviewed and often rejected by peers. You ended up writing a paper, re-writing it again and again till it was accepted. India. While I was in US, I had a skewed and distorted view of India. The western media blamed India and China for all wrongs. 10 years back, the work environment in software companies in India and the US were greatly different. As a result of globalization and easy travel, there is some parity now.

Q.1. Please take us through your career journey Ans. 1. I did my B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur in 2002 after which I finished my MS and PhD from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL(UIUC). Then I worked in Synopsis research for almost 6 months from where I moved to IBM systems and technologies lab in Bangalore by late 2007. I moved again to IBM Research Labs in Early 2009 and then joined here as assistant professor.

Q.2. Please share some enlightening experiences as a student at IIT Kharagpur Ans. 2. I couldnt say I enjoyed my time there. My father was a professor in Kharagpur and so I was a dayscholar After missing a few classes I found it difficult to latch on to what was being taught and so I had to get the help of my classmates. Surprisingly helping hands were usually those who were among non topper students of the class. But still it was difficult to cop in next lectures after missing one or two of some subject. This is something I try to take care here. Even if people miss classes, I try to put in some effort to give them the current coordinates

Q.7. Was there any incident in life that Q.4. How did you decide Computer greatly influenced you? Architecture as your field of specializaAns. 7. Back during my PG days, an Intion? dustry leader from India had visited Ans. 4. Well, it was not by choice. Back UIUC. He was the CEO of one of the in the UG years, our seniors used to adbiggest software companies in India. A vice that there were two main streams of few of us wanted to know why none of Computer Science: Theoretical Computer the Indian companies attempted to bring Science and Networking. Also, Theoretiout their own products. He told us that as cal Computer Science was for smart peolong as there was money from services, ple. At that point in life you have too there was no need to get into products. much faith in your seniors. While in many This answer from a supposed visionary situations they were more informed than shocked us. What people fail to recognize we were, a lot of what they knew was is that even companies outside the US half-baked. At that time there was a lot of have brought out products that have been prestige associated with RA-ship. Since huge successes. the networks group didnt have a RA slot, approached a professor who at the time was well funded in his projects. He told Q.8. What are the important qualities me to do well in a paper and then he for someone going into teaching and would consider me. I got an A in that, but by then I had another offer for RA-ship. research? So I approached the professor again and Ans. 8. One should be dedicated, sensible he straightaway accepted me. I asked him and should be persist in trying to solve about the project only then. He gave me a problems. Additionally, he should be tough name and I was bewildered. So I thick skinned to deal with the reviews, asked him to explain in layman terms and many of which would be peer reviews. I was very surprised that the field was One should always be ready to learn new Computer Architecture. After that there things. This is something I found different was a lot of learning and finally I did my in India from the US. Education in the PhD in the area. society is less. In the US people read books magazines etc when they travel but I hardly see anyone reading in Delhi Q.5. How was your industry experi- Metro. ence? Ans. 5. I had made up my mind during my PhD period that I was going to join academics. However I didn't want to join academics at that stage and so I joined the industry to make up my mind. The pay package of academia was low at the time.
Q.9. Message to students Ans. 9. Just try to come with the best in you. Students should focus on both productivity and quality in their work.

Q.3. How was the transition from UG to PG and PhD? Ans. 3. It was an enlightening experience culturally and academically. The competition was tough. There were

Compiled by :

Q.6. What pulls you back to India? Ans. 6. I had always wanted to return to

Swati Verma & Georgy Sebastian

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Flipkart in the making : Sachin Bansal, CEO & Co-founder, Flipkart.com

Q.1. How did the idea of Flipkart come into being? Please take us though the journey of the beginning of Flipkart.. Ans. 1. After IIT Delhi, both Binny and I worked with IT companies. After working for over two and a half years, we felt that we could add more value to our career by starting our own venture. The first thought was to set up a comparison shopping website that would cater to the growing Indian ecommerce market. However when we probed this idea further, our research revealed that companies in India had still not succeeded in creating a conducive ecosystem for ecommerce. The entire category was known to have issues like delay in deliveries, wrong product deliveries, improper product description, etc and with very little focus on the customer. We sensed an opportunity and decided to start an e-commerce company, focusing on providing a great shopping experience to its customers. That is how, Flipkart.com was born. Q.2. What are the important ingredients towards a successful startup? Ans. 2. These include: A good idea The first ingredient of a successful startup is a workable idea; one that is financially viable and relevant for a large number of customers. Second, the team should have the managerial and technical capability to convert the idea into reality. Although this seems very simple, this is where most of the start-ups face problems. A great team Having a good team is an asset. It is essential for a start-up to have team members who are committed, have the drive and are willing to work hard to make it successful. It is good to have Convenience: We ensure convenience to our customers at every step of the buying process. We have a simple-to-use search facility which can help find desired products conveniently and a payment option such as Cash-on-Delivery ensures that our customers can pay us as late as after they receive their order. We also provide 24/7 customer service support so that our customers can reach us at any time of the day. Trustworthy: We are a very predictable company to our customers. We ensure that the delivery reaches our customers within the promised time period and in the best possible condition. We have a no-questions-asked return policy. This predictability helps build customer trust in us. We wish to be even more several entrepreneurs in the organization. predictable in times to come, with faster It also helps, if the team members are from deliveries and a richer product line. different backgrounds, a start-up like ours has to grapple with various aspects like Q.4. Please describe the advantages of the technology, operations, marketing, etc. company over Amazon etc. Ambition One must want to make a difference; start Ans. 4. In India, we are better than Amazon off being ambitious and when the first set of in many ways. Unlike Amazon, with us, you ambitions is met, one must get even more do not have to pay any delivery charge if ambitious! The drive could be the size of your order is above Rs. 100. Also, our reach the company, the number of customers you in India is beyond comparison. Our product touch, the difference that the business range is also more suited to cater to the Inmakes to the lives of customers, the profit- dian audience than Amazons. ability or whatever else. What is really important is that we must keep aiming higher Q. 5. What are the future goals? or wanting to do even better. That is the true Ans. 5. Our future goal is to be the largest spirit of the entrepreneur. and most customer friendly e-commerce company in the country. Q.3. What are some of the key values of the company? Q.6. What kind of career opportunities Ans. 3. At Flipkart, we believe first and does it offer to IIT graduates and post foremost in providing a great shopping ex- graduates respectively? What kind of perience to our customers. Some of our key work would they be involved in? values that have led us to the position of Ans. 6. We are growing aggressively and being the leading e-commerce destination in that means we have to continuously scale up the country are: our systems and infrastructure to remain ahead of the curve. At Flipkart, we Simplicity: Everything, from navigation on our website work in some of the most innovative and to the buying process and delivery, has been cutting edge technology areas across kept simple to ensure hassle free shopping teams like - Engineering, Product Manageexperience for our customers. This is a con- ment, Business Development, Supply stant with us. Our internal processes also Chain Management, Logistics, and Marketing. We have already hired more than follow the same rule.
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Flipkart in the making

50 IIT graduates over the last few years, who are today holding critical responsibilities in these teams and partnering with us in this amazing growth journey. Our requirement for talent will continue to grow and we will specifically look forward to hire anything between 50-100 IIT graduates over the next 2-3years. Flipkart provides an "open canvas", a fast growing and highly versatile work environment and an opportunity to directly impact the organization's growth and success. We are sure that this will appeal to the budding talent pool at IITs. Q.7. Some motivational message for the students based on Flipkarts success story. Ans. 7. All I can say is that being students of one of the best engineering institutes in the country, you should aspire big. You should not restrict your dreams to just getting a good job after college but sincerely start thinking of what you wish to do in the long term. As IITians, you should have a higher appetite for taking risks because no one will doubt your capability and even if you fail, your risks are low. In fact, when we started out, we believed that it was riskier to be employed than to be starting out on our own! You should use this education and the profile of the institution to your advantage and aim for goals that are bigger than what you would normally settle for. Compiled by: Deepansh Agarwal (Flipkart) & Aditi Kapoor

ACM activities with a difference :Hack U!

Yahoo! Hack U is a time for hack lovers to team up and emerge with cool and interesting hacks. This competition is the perfect platform for people who have interesting features to existing web products or have cool new product ideas. After successful HackUs at universities like Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, IITM, IITK, IITkgp; Yahoo! HackU decided to come to IIT Delhi to find more exciting ideas and enthusiastic hackers. The event was organized by ACM IITD Student Chapter in collaboration with Yahoo! from 13th to 16th Oct,2011. No doubt IIT Delhi lived upto its expectations and Y! HackU received an overwhelming response which broke all previous records of HackUs in previous universities. It had all the fun stuff - interesting tech talks, hacking tips and lessons, and hands-on coding workshops and was eventually followed by the main event 24 hour hacking marathon. Students were made familiar about various tools in the Yahoo! Developer Network like YQL, YUI, Flickr, BOSS to teams ultimately managed to demo their successfully running codes. Both these figures are records for any HackU in the past. T-shirts and participation certificates were awarded to all the team members of the 39 teams .Gift hampers were initially to be awarded to the top three teams but team Yahoo! decided to give away prizes to the top five teams, as the competition and submitted hacks were too good! Also, the number of proposed internships from the campus was increased from 5 to 8 as Yahoo! found it tough to select the best five. Many pre-placement interviews were offered to final year B.Tech and M.Tech students. name a few. Refreshments, caffeine and goodies were provided from time to time to keep the hackers awake and hacking ! The craze among the students was such that on the opening day, over 600 students registered to attend the keynote address by Yahoo! India R&D CEO Mr. Shouvick Mukherjee. Also, this was the first time that Yahoo! CEO visited any IIT for Hack U. In total, there were 54 teams who registered for the main event and discussed their ideas/hacks of which 39 The complete event lasted for a total of 4 fun-filled days which opened hitherto unexplored new avenues of creativity and innovation among the participants. The event was a never-seen-before record-breaking success and was enjoyed by all. Consequently, it received a huge appreciation from the Yahoo! team which left the campus with a promise to see the IITD hackers again next year with new exciting hacks and ideas !
Compiled by : Pulkit Yadav & Swati Verma
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ACM activities with a difference :IKES

On 16th October, the ACM CSE Student Chapter, in collaboration with IBM IRL, organized IITs first ever Knowledge Exchange Symposium (IKES 2011) . The aim of this workshop was to bring together researchers from all over India and allow for an exchange of research ideas. The participants were invited to initially submit an abstract of their project. IKES 2011 saw a total of 46 submissions out of which 15 were finally selected for poster presentation. Reviewing committee consisted of various field experts from the IITD faculty. We thank all faculty members who helped in the review process. The finalists were required to give a poster presentation of 7 minutes followed by a The second prize was shared between an IITD team and a team from Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar whereas the third prize went to a team from Maharaja Surajmal Institute of Technology, GGSIP University, Delhi. All finalists were, in appreciation of participation, given T-shirts and all posters were exhibited in the department. question answer session by the panel. The esteemed judges included Dr. Mukesh Mohania, from IBM IRL and Prof. M. Balakrishnan and Prof. Shouribrata Chatterjee from IITD. The prizes were sponsored by IBM. The first prize, that of a Lenovo Atom Laptop was won by a team from IITD for the project titled Design and Implementation of the Workflow of an Academic Cloud . All in all, it was an enriching experience for the organizers and participants alike. The success of the first edition of the event will motivate the organizers to make this an annual event.

Aditi Kapoor, Chief Editor

Call for Articles

We are grateful for the contributions made by students and faculty alike for this as well as previous issues of the newsletter and hope for your continued support in making this a success. the Editorial Board or in the organization and planning of various activities and contests. Suggestions and viewpoints/comments for the same to enhance it further are also most welcome. tions or fun section contribution in the form of poems, jokes, cartoons, and interesting facts. We also invite you, especially the new students to join the team and be involved in all the latest happenings of the department. Aditi Kapoor, Chief Editor

We invite contributions for articles and Your contributions can be in the form of a also membership into the ACM student variety of articles covering any noteworthy chapter. This could be for being part of achievements, interesting projects, publica-

Fun Section: Black bird of the sky

He flies alone, alone he flies; Gliding the deep blue skies; Like a ruler he watches the world below, Others fade into the clouds But not he, I watch him till my eyes tire under the glare As he circles his world above and mine below I watch with wonder at this being How alone he is, Feel for him I do But he tires not, As he teaches me the strength of hope Oh what a glorious wise bird he is ! Black bird of the sky He knows he will find his mates yet, But he worries not till then Nor does he seek company of those not dear, He would much rather enjoy aloofness, that is clear

Till I realize, enjoys his aloneness he does, Comforting me to bear with mine
Contributed by : Aditi Kapoor
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B R O U G H T OU T B Y A C M STUDENT CHAPTER
SponsorM Balakrishnan ACM Student Chapter Sponsor

Newsletter Team in-charge: Magazine in-charge Aditi Kapoor (aditi@cse.iitd.ernet.in) Assisted by ACM chapter members Chair - Savin Goyal Abhishek Gupta Swati Verma Pulkit Yadav Aayush Goel (Photos in above order left to right)

Some tit bits

ACROSS 3.A program designed to carry on a conversation with a human 5.Analyzing biological data for uniquely recognizing humans 7.A state element,____ is the fundamental building block of digital electronic systems. 11.The branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. 12.An attack against a computer system whereby a running process can create another running process 13.A java program designed to be embedded into an HTML document transferred over Web & executed in a browser. 14.A keyboard layout which supposedly decreases typing errors, speeds up typing, and lessens type fatigue. 15. The first asymptotically fast multiplication algorithm whose complexity is less than O(n2). DOWN 1.The brand name of personal computers and an operating system from Apple 2.According to a legend, the lifetime of the world is the time taken to solve this puzzle with 64 discs.(6,2,5) 4.combination of 4 bits is called a ____. 5.Also known as p-code,___ is an instruction set into which Java source code is compiled. 6.One of the early breakthroughs in AI,___ simulated a psychotherapist. 8.The nest of a familiar insect. A popular OS also has a version by the same name. 9.I produce my own source code. 10.An eminent computer scientist and philosopher, he has a famous algorithm in graph theory after his name.

See the website for answers!

Contributed by : Pulkit Yadav

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