I-CARE 2011 & IBM Centennial Colloquia

IBM has a tradition of research collaboration with our colleagues in academia. The goal of IBM's Collaborative Research Initiatives is to expedite these collaborations by diminishing barriers and reducing complexities caused by the implications of intellectual property ownership. IBM Collaborative Academia Research Exchange, an annual event started in 2009, aims to promote collaborative innovation and explores the new ways of fostering a culture of innovation. The 3^rdI-CARE Workshop organized on October 13, 2011 in New Delhi was successful in its endeavors with more than 250 students, researchers, and academicians participating in the event. It held in conjunction with IBM's Centennial Colloquia, and had compelling presentations, panel discussion and poster presentation. Throughout the centennial year, IBM is hosting colloquia discussions and a series of lectures globally, exploring how the world has changed in the past 100 years—and how it will change in the decades ahead. I-CARE 2011 was one of a handful of special events to mark the occasion and examine the role of future technologies and their potential impact on business and society.

The theme of the I-CARE & Indian Colloquia was "India 2020: Technologies for A Smarter Nation". The event served as a platform for a discussion to advance IBM thinking in strategic areas and help India become a smarter nation.

Inaugural and Keynote Addresses

Mr. N Ravi Shanker, Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of India inaugurated the event. In his inaugural address, Mr. Ravi Shanker talked about the importance of technology in bringing social transformation. For a country like India, due to its enormous scale, multi-faceted diversity, and unique demographics, technology is even more critical. To ensure that the nation's growth results in socio-economic progress and better standards of living for its people, technology must become a key enabler, Mr N Ravi Shanker stressed.

Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthy, Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, discussed the importance of sustainability in creating a smarter nation. In an insightful presentation, titled "Sustainable Nation, Smarter Nation", Prof. Ramamurthy, shed light on various facets of a smarter nation, like energy, healthcare, telecommunication, and agriculture among others, and how technology can bring higher efficiency and greater productivity in each of these areas.

Panel Discussion

The panel discussion, based on the overall theme of the event, was highly engaging and sparked several interesting questions and comments from the audience. Prof. Pankaj Jalote, Director, IIIT Delhi; Dr. Tilak Agerwala, Vice President, Systems, IBM Research; Dr. Manish Gupta, Director, IBM Research – India, along with Mr. N Ravi Shanker and Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthy, were part of the panel. It was moderated by Dr. Raghuram Krishnapuram, Associate Director – Solutions, IBM Research – India.

The key themes that emerged from the panel discussion for developing a technology vision for India were education, innovation, data and public-private partnership. All the panelists found it imperative to have an education system that truly nurtures knowledge and learning. They also opined that the eco-system should learn to accept failure as part of learning that would help innovative ideas to flourish into successful entrepreneurial endeavors. Public-private partnership, still at a nascent stage in India, many thought, is a way forward for enabling technology to build a nation of the future.

Another key issue discussed is the need to develop technologies that can deal with highly unstructured and noisy data, especially in the context of a diverse and developing country like India. The panelists also stressed the importance of establishing scalable, affordable, robust and effective delivery models.

Parallel Tracks

I-CARE 2011 had 4 parallel tracks where experts from academia and IBM Research discussed various aspects of research in the areas of smarter cities, services for emerging countries, software technologies and next generation systems.