Mr. Sakthi Balan has recently submitted his Ph.D. thesis in the Department of Computer Sceince and Engg, IIT Madras. Prior to his PhD he did his M.S. (by research) in the same Department in IIT Madras. He was a visiting researcher in the Department of Computer Sceince, University of Western Ontario, Canada for one month in the year 2002. He has attended many conferences abroad (USA, Canada and Swiss) for presenting his papers.

Peptide is a sequence of amino acids attached by covalent bonds called peptide bonds. A peptide consists of recognition sites called epitopes for the antibodies. Peptide can contain more than one epitope for the same or different antibodies. For each antibody which attaches to a specifc epitope there is a binding power associated with it called as andnity. If more than one antibody participate in the recognition of sites which overlaps in the given peptide, then the antibody with more andnity gets the higher priority. In the peptide computing model the peptides represent the solution space (the set of all possible solutions) of a given problem and antibodies are used to select certain subsets of this solution space, which will eventually give the solution set for the given problem. Parallel interactions between the peptide sequences and the antibodies make it possible to solve NP-complete problems more epitopesciently. In this presentation we give algorithms to solve two of the well known NP-complete problems namely the Hamiltonian path problem and a variant of the set cover problem called the exact cover by 3-sets problem using peptide-antibody interactions. We also show that this model of computation is computationally complete by simulating a Turing Machine with peptide and antibody interaction. Using the interactions between peptides and antibodies we model simple switching operations like OR, AND and NOT gates. We also extend the models to few more gates: XOR, NOR, NAND and ultimately to simulate a Boolean circuit. We also model simple binary operations like addition and subtraction using this paradigm. The interesting thing to note here is that the number of steps in the arithmetical operations are independent of the number of bits involved in the operations. We also define automata like model which is motivated by the interaction between peptides and antibodies called as binding-blocking automata. We study the power and complexity of all its variants.

Ramesh Raskar joined MERL as a Research Scientist in 2000 after his doctoral research at U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he developed a framework for projector based displays. Dr. Raskar's work spans a range of topics in computer vision and graphics including projective geometry, non-photorealistic rendering and intelligent user interfaces. He has developed algorithms for image projection on planar, non-planar and quadric curved surfaces that simplify constraints on conventional displays and has proposed Shader Lamps, a new approach for projector-based augmented reality. Current projects include composite RFID, multi-flash non-photorealistic camera for depth edge detection, locale-aware mobile projectors, high dynamic range video, image fusion for context enhancement and quadric transfer methods for multi-projector curved screen displays. Dr. Raskar received the Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology R&D Award in June 2003. Recently, he was named a winner of the Global Indus Technovator Award, instituted at MIT to recognize the top 20 Indian technology innovators on the globe. His papers have appeared in SIGGRAPH, Eurographics, IEEE Visualization,CVPR and many other graphics and vision conferences. He has taught courses and has served as a member of international program committees at major conferences. He is a member of the ACM and IEEE.

In a company with products ranging from satellites, bullet trains, and power plants, to semiconductors and mobile phones, what are the interesting computer graphics, vision, HCI and UbiComp problems? I will describe the challenges and exciting research opportunities in a global technology conglomerate. I will give an overview of some of the ongoing projects in the lab. They include algorithms for smart elevators, quantifying presence and flow of people, multi-user touch screens, LED based communication and chemical sensing. I will also describe projects in my group such as composite RFIDs, locale-aware mobile projectors, image fusion and multi-flash depth-edge detecting camera.

Speaking in the language of our customers who are increasingly tech savvy is a challenge faced by many of us today. The session provides a breadth of knowledge about the emerging technologies without bogging us down with technical details and hence is relevant. The objective is to provide an overview of the Strategic Top Ten Technologies for 2004 as proposed by Gartner.
These technologies are

• Instant Messaging
• RFID Tags
• Unified Network Security
• Wireless Networking
• Grid Computing
• Utility Computing
• Policy Based Computing
• IP Telephony
• Web Services
• Real-time Data warehouses

The session aims to provide a breadth of knowledge around the mentioned technologies and discussion would revolve around

• Overview of each of the technologies
• Business benefit attained in using the technology
• Major players on the scene
• Cases where the technology has been adopted
• Analysts predictions