Keynote Speakers 2023
Dr. Omkar Rai,
Odisha, Govt. of India
Omkar Rai is an Indian technocrat and Information technology/IT Enabled Services policy maker at the Government of India. Rai was ranked top as global IT influencer under Internet of things category by Twitter in November, 2020.He has a Ph.D. in statistics from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.He served as Development Commissioner Information Technology Enabled Service, Special economic zone.Rai has worked on the National IT Policy 2012 and formulated Start-up incubation program for IT/ESDM sector to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and product creation in the country. Dr. Rai is acclaimed for dispersing technology industry to Tier-II and Tier-III cities in India and have worked on National Policy for Software Products.Distinguished alumnus Award by Banaras Hindu University in 2020 was conferred to him for his contribution in enabling start-ups and innovation in Information technology / Information Technology Enabled Service sector and formulation / implementation of Information and communications technology applications across domains.
Rai is credited to bridge the gap between academia and industry and formulated an interface among industry, academia and IT/ESDM sector.
Dr. Shiban K. Koul
Shiban K. Koul (Life Fellow, IEEE) received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the Regional Engineering College, Srinagar, India, in 1977, and the M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees in microwave engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India, in 1979 and 1983, respectively. He served as the Deputy Director (strategy and planning) at IIT Delhi, from 2012 to 2016, and the Mentor Deputy Director (strategy and planning, international affairs) at IIT Jammu, from 2018 to 2021. He was the Chairperson of Astra Microwave Products Ltd., Hyderabad, from 2009 to 2019, and Dr. R. P. Shenoy Astra Microwave Chair Professor at IIT Delhi, from 2014 to 2019. He is currently an Emeritus Professor with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He has authored/coauthored 570 research papers, 19 state-of-the art books, four book chapters, and two e-books. He holds 25 patents, six copyrights and one trademark. He has guided 30 Ph.D. thesis and more than 120 master’s theses. He has successfully completed 151 major sponsored, consultancy, and technology development projects. His research interests include RF MEMS, high frequency wireless communication, microwave engineering, microwave passive and active circuits, device modeling, millimetre and sub-millimetre wave IC design, body area networks, flexible and wearable electronics, medical applications of sub-terahertz waves, and reconfigurable microwave circuits including miniaturized antennas.,Prof. Koul is a fellow of INAE and IETE. He served as a Distinguished Microwave Lecturer for IEEE MTT-S, from 2012 to 2014. He was a recipient of numerous awards including the IEEE MTT Society Distinguished Educator Award, in 2014, the Teaching Excellence Award from IIT Delhi, in 2012, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Young Scientist Award, in 1986, the Top Invention Award from the National Research Development Council for his contributions to the indigenous development of ferrite phase shifter technology, in 1991, the VASVIK Award for the development of Ka-band components and phase shifters, in 1994, the Ram Lal Wadhwa Gold Medal from the Institution of Electronics and Communication Engineers (IETE), in 1995, the Academic Excellence Award from the Indian Government for his pioneering contributions to phase control modules for Rajendra Radar, in 1998, the Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Award in the field of electronics and information technology, in 2009, the VASVIK Award for the contributions made to the area of Information, in 2012, and the Communication Technology (ICT) and M. N. Saha Memorial Award from IETE, in 2013. He is the Chief Editor of IETE Journal of Research and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies (Cambridge University Press).(Based on document published on 7 November 2022).
Dr Ranjana Aggarwal,
Director, CSIR-NIScPR
Prof. Ranjana Aggarwal is the founder Director of CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research (CSIR-NIScPR), a constituent Institute of Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, under the aegis of Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India. The new Institute was formally announced on 14 January 2021 by then Hon’ble Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Dr Harsh Vardhan by merging the two very well recognized institutes namely CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (CSIR-NISCAIR) and CSIR-National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies (CSIR-NISTADS). Earlier Prof. Aggarwal held the position of Director of erstwhile CSIR-NISTADS (since June 2019) with the additional charge of Director of erstwhile CSIR-NISCAIR (since Nov. 2019).
Dr Aggarwal is on lien from Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra where she served as Professor of Chemistry and Director, Women’s Studies Research Centre. She received her BSc, MSc and PhD degrees from Kurukshetra University and then after carrying out two years postdoctoral research on erythromycin biosynthesis at Cambridge University, UK she joined her Alma mater in 1995. Subsequently she worked in many well-known European Labs at University of Trieste, Italy, again at Cambridge University and Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She is actively collaborating with scientists of USA, UK, Spain and Ireland.
Her research interests consist of design and synthesis of azaheterocycles, involving green reagents, of therapeutic interest as anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and photodynamic agents, computational studies and 2D NMR spectroscopy. Her research contributions have been acknowledged in the form of awards and honours notably Commonwealth Fellowship by the Association of Commonwealth Universities, UK (2003), Dr.Basudev Banerji Memorial Award (2014) by Indian Chemical Society, Prof. S. S. Katiyar Endowment Award (2015) by Indian Science Congress and President, Chemical Sciences Section, Indian Science Congress (2020). As an accomplished academician she has been nominated as Member of National Monitoring Committee for Minorities Education by MHRD, New Delhi. She is visitor’s Nominee for Delhi University, Delhi, Central University Assam, Silchar and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; and Chancellor’s Nominee for many Haryana State Universities.
Besides chemistry, Prof. Aggarwal is actively engaged in addressing the issues concerning Women’s equality and development and seek to find explanations and remedies for the unequal position of women in the society, patriarchal roots of society that leads to women’s suppression. She was instrumental in policy formulation on Prohibition of Sexual Harassment at Workplace for several Higher Education Institutions. She actively participates in capacity building programs for women in Higher Education and skill development programs for rural women.
Under her mentorship, CSIR-NIScPR is undertaking evidence based STI Policy studies and Science Communication initiatives of national relevance. Some of the most relevant are: Compendium of CSIR technologies based on their assessment on Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale, Livelihood creation for rural India through deployment of CSIR technologies by collaborating with UNNAT Bharat Abhiyan and Vijanana Bharti (VIBHA), Scientifically Validated Societal Traditional Knowledge (SVASTIK) to the society in multiple languages to the masses through social media, KISAN SABHA-App for supply chain and freight transportation management systems for Indian farmers.
Dinesh Arora
Senior Deals Leader and Partner, PwC
Prof. MP Gupta,
Modi Foundation Chair Professor, IIT Delhi
Known for pioneering works in the area of e-governance, he has been spending significant amount of resources in developing cases, tools and frameworks to promote e-governance research in the country. These included 30 Doctoral thesis, 22 sponsored & consultancy projects worth >5 crores, co-authored book ‘Government Online’, two other edited books ‘Towards E-government’ & ‘Promise of E-governance’ and 200+ research papers appeared in National and International Journals/Conference Proceedings. He has guided production of 14 edited volumes (large collection of literature on e-gov) via the International Conference on E-governance (ICEG) since 2003.
He has been closely following ‘Digital India’ and ‘Smart City’ programs of the Government of India (GoI), where his studies have suitably fed into these programs, in general and ‘Cyber Security Policy of India’ in particular. He is steering a European Union (EU) funded project ‘EU-India Cooperation Platform in Future Internet and Electronic Media’, which deals with the setting up of cluster to cluster partnerships between India and EU into areas pertaining to Future Internet and smart cities. This helped introducing ‘Fiware’ in India, which is now being showcased by World Bank via few pilot smart city projects. FIWARE platform is a library of middleware developed by a consortium of 5 EU based Tech companies and supported by the European Union (EU). He has also developed a report on ‘Smart Campus@IITD’ setting the agenda for smart campus living at IIT Delhi. The report was received well during the presentation at the NEM summit during Frankfurt Book Fair (14-16 Oct 2015).
He is involved in several policy making committees on ICT in the Center and State Governments in India; also on jury of prestigious awards committees viz. Digital India Awards, National Awards on e-gov, Data Security Council of India (DSCI), and Computer Society of India (CSI) Egov Awards. He is a recipient of the prestigious Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS) fellowship of Shastri Indo Canadian Institute, Calgary (Canada) 1996 and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Manitoba. Conferred Best Professor award in 2012 at Singapore World Education Congress and CMO Asia.
Plenary Speakers 2022
Elena Popkova
Doctor of Economics, Professor
Prof. Elena G. Popkova – Doctor of Science (Economics), the founder and president of the Institute of Scientific Communications (Russia) and Leading researcher of the Center for applied research of the chair “Economic policy and public-private partnership” of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) (Moscow, Russia). Her scientific interests include the theory of economic growth, sustainable development, globalization, humanization of economic growth, emerging markets, social entrepreneurship, and the digital economy and Industry 4.0. Elena G. Popkova organizes Russian and international scientific and practical conferences and is the editor and author of collective monographs, and serves as a guest editor of international scientific journals. She has published more than 300 works in Russian and foreign peer-reviewed scientific journals and books.
Manas Chatterji
Professor, School of Management, Binghamton University
Manas Chatterji is Professor of Management and Adjunct Professor in Economics and the Asian and Asian-American Studies Program at Binghamton University, State University of New York and Guest Professor, Peking University, Visiting Professor, Central University of Finance and Economics, Distinguished Professor in Poznan University, Poland. He also served as a Richard P. Nathan Fellow in Public Policy at Rockefeller Institute of Government, SUNY. He is a Distinguished Fellow in the Program in Political Psychology and Decision Making (POP-DM) at Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, Israel. He was also an Honorary Distinguished Professor at Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, India and George Mason University, U.S. He is an elected member of Polish Academy of Science – Committee on Regional Planning. Professor Chatterji is currently a fellow of the international organization Economists for Peace and Security. He previously taught at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and has held visiting appointments at Cornell University, Erasmus University, University of Karlsruhe, University of Munster and many other universities in the United States, Europe, Asia and South Africa. He established the Mahatma Gandhi International Research Center on Conflict Prevention and Management in Bangalore, India. Organized the several events in the past.
He has organized international meetings on Peace Science, Disaster Management, Health Care, Technology Management, Disaster Management, etc. in many countries including Japan, China and Russia. During his career, he has edited three journals and serves on editorial boards of many others. Presently, he is the coeditor of International Studies of Peace Economics and Peace Science published by Cambridge Scholars, UK. He is also the General Editor of a book series on Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development published by Emerald Publishing Company, UK. Twenty-seven volumes in this series have been published and two more are forthcoming. He has authored/edited more than thirty books and published about 80 scholarly articles in the areas of Peace Science, Military Spending, Disarmament, Economic Conversion, Conflict Management, Regional Science, Technology Management, Health Care Management, Energy, Environmental and Urban Management.
Education:
- B.A. (with honors in Statistics), Calcutta University
- M.A. (Statistics), Calcutta University
- Ph. D., Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
