Biology today, in the post-genomic era, occupies the fore front in the context of a multitude of recent scientific and technological developments. With biology interfacing with almost all walks of life, a typical bio-related R and D environment today needs to interface with skills in diverse areas of mathematics and statistics, sciences and engineering, especially from the domain of computer science and IT. This has spurred the demand for high quality manpower in the rapidly developing interdisciplinary domain of Bioinformatics which interfaces biological and computational sciences. In addition to large scale data management and data processing issues, this scientific field deals with the computational management of diverse biological information, which may be about genes, their products and their structures, about biochemical processes and interactions in the cells, tissues, organs or whole organisms or even about ecological systems and evolution.

The seminar is intended to address future IT professionals about the IT and computational challenges and opportunities, both in industries and research environments dealing in biotechnology and bioinformatics. It also will highlight aspects of bioinformatics which requires serious inputs from the areas of computational linguistics, language technologies, data engineering, data and web mining, Software engineering and technologies, AI and soft computing techniques and computer vision.

Innovative communication services are rapidly changing the way end users communicate with each other. In addition to voice, these new communication services offer tools such as instant messaging, presence, push-to-talk, and video. Communication applications that use these tools should be able to manage sessions between two participants without the knowledge of any underlying transport protocol. Futhermore, applications should be able to dynamically negotiate capabilities with participants using different end-points. In this talk, we discuss an emerging IETF standard, session initiation protocol (SIP), which is a general purpose tool that can manage sessions independent of the underlying transport protocol. We also discuss the need for an application layer level control of end-points and application servers, and propose a SIP-based application framework for intelligent end-points.

The speaker is PhD in Biology from the University of California, San Diego and has research interests in Genetic variation, Statistical population genetics and Conservation genetics.

Investigating evolutionary history and predicting future evolution of populations requires quantification of and differentiation between mutation, drift and migration. Population genetics provides a theoretical framework for such investigations. However, we face many theoretical challenges when attempting to apply current frameworks to novel empirical data sets. Using primarily simulation-based approaches, I attempt to identify limitations of existing frameworks and extend as well as develop novel ones, with applications to empirical data. I present results on four independent research projects demonstrating my approach. Coalescence-based simulations reveal that linked genetic marker systems provide more accurate and precise estimates of divergence time between populations than do unlinked markers. Serial coalescent simulations used to model ancient DNA samples reveal the effects of sample size and true evolutionary history on our ability to detect it. Detailed, individual-based models of effective population size reveal the importance of different ecological parameters in various species. Using genetic data in combination with the rejection algorithm, a novel method provides accurate estimates of the number of breeding males in a population. In future research, I plan to investigate 1) the evolutionary history of population groups in India and 2) the genetic consequences of small population size on the chances of extinction for animal populations in India. I hope that such methods allow us to investigate population processes in a more complete and detailed way, and can potentially be applied to gain a better understanding of evolutionary biology.

Prof KV Nori, has been with the TCS for more than 2 decades. He has played a key role in TCS's research centre at Pune. He has developed compiler compiler tools, which have been successfully used in the industrial setting. He has been thinking of next generation user-goal aware systems as computing system of the future.

We manage organisations. Both organisation and societies are man made, and hence can be subject to scrutiny from the Engineering standpoint. Dr Fukuda is a Deming prize winner. In this talk, we will look at his view of Managerial Engineering & Management Technology, in relation to his innovations (called PO Matrix and SEDAC) for which he won the Deming prize.

In European universities HCI is found at several levels, from a two-hour invited lecture and one book chapter to a full four-year human-centred design curriculum. Its location varies between disciplines (Industrial Design, Computer Science, Psychology, etc.) and between types of universities, including distant education institutes. This seminar is aimed at University staff and will seek to investigate the relation between market needs, university expertise, and the international HCI curriculum model. It aims to co-develop understanding of the core content fit to any model chosen. Andy, Liam and Jon will discuss possible choices, requirements, collaboration opportunities, sources of information and material; and develop sketches for a development process.

Interdisciplinary issues: HCI at University level. Curriculum: goals, models, formats, content, examples. The needs of the market: University education and ICT industry in India. Approaches to HCI in Indian Universities.

Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) is the industry term which describes the identification and/or direct collection of data into a microprocessor controlled device such as a computer system or a programmable logic controller (PLC), without the use of a keyboard. At their core, all AIDC technologies support two common goals: To eliminate errors associated with identification and/or data collection To accelerate the through-put process As an industry family, AIDC covers six distinct groups of technologies and services. They are: Card Technologies, Data Communications Technologies, Bar Code Technologies, Radio Frequency Identification Technologies, Emerging Technologies, and the Support and Supplies which serve the industry. As an enabling family of business and manufacturing technologies, AIDC takes on another, more universal profile. These wireless AIDC systems allow for non-contact reading and are effective in manufacturing and other hostile environments where bar code labels could not survive. RFID has established itself in a wide range of markets including livestock identification and automated vehicle identification (AVI) systems because of its ability to track moving objects.