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Cover Article:

Volume 1, Issue 3 (May ‘08)


Editor’s Column Innovation: A Challenge for the
Creative to be Productive
By Prof. M. Balakrishnan
From the sweltering sun, nnovation is the new buzz
You require some shade; I word today and everyone with the society. Here again
Hectic exams & assignments; from your employer and fam- the word is confused with
Also need to fade; ily expects you to be innovative. “invention”. Invention is
Coming from you & for you, Many a times the word is con- something much more funda-
Ideas here are laid; fused with “entrepreneurship” mental and has a longer term
With such motives, but is quite distinct. From a impact on the society. Unlike
This newsletter is made ! business or any other complex innovation, it may or may not
venture perspective, it is clear be useful even in the longer
Ideas, Inventions and Innova- term and is done with the joy
that both innovation and entre-
tions– what’s common is the ‘I’. of discovering something new
preneurship is required to make
CSE Newsletter
BROUGHT OUT BY ACM STUDENT CHAPTER

I gives rise to all these. And or solving some unsolved


a mark but that doesn’t make
hence this edition of the news- puzzle. Time frames and re-
them synonymous. To me entre-
letter inquires, intrigues and sources available for generat-
preneurship relates to one’s
incites you to discover the ‘I’ in ing innovative solutions are
ability to pool in all resources
You. Sometimes it is difficult, much smaller compared to
(time, human, material and fi-
sometimes it is the ‘aha’ mo- what is acceptable in an in-
nancial) effectively to achieve
ment, sometimes a stroke of vention. The abilities and/or
one’s objective. These resources
luck. But when an idea comes, the training required to per-
need not necessarily belong to
not only should you be joyous form invention are much
you but it is your entrepreneur-
about it, but also preserve it, not higher and beyond the scope
ship which makes them accessi-
let it go to waste, for you never of this article.
ble to you. Normally this re-
know in what form and at what
quires clear thinking, intense Innovation in our field is pri-
time it could solve a problem
work and communication abili- marily technology driven. It
that you encounter. Our cover
ties to convince others of your requires clear understanding
article in this issue, is on chal-
objective. of the potential as well as
lenges in innovation by Prof.
Balakrishnan. On the other hand, I consider limitations of “current” de-
innovation to be a reasonably ployable technology, and
Knowledge management is a hot “common sense”. Many a
“simple” ability which unfortu-
research topic today and the times I find my colleagues as
nately in my opinion very few
projects section features the well as students suggesting
develop. Innovation can be in
same. Articles on innovation solutions which in my opinion
feature the work of a recent are in the realm of science
graduate from CSE, IITD in Innovation in our field is fiction as they do not corre-
robotics and a brief understand- spond to deployable technolo-
ing of the various types of inno- primarily technology driven. It gies. It is true that every day
vation. Besides these, we have requires clear understanding .. we are pushing the boundaries
the regular fun section featuring of “deployable technologies”
crosswords and a caption con- but having a clear understand-
test. A poem by Aditi also ing of the current boundaries
any area including that of
seems to be a regular feature and one’s capability to push it
“copying assignments”. Human
now. beings tend to be naturally are the keys to the success of
Inside this issue: “innovative” if it can reduce any innovation. The word
Hope you will like this edition
of the newsletter as much as you their effort and I will not dis- “common sense” suggests
Innovation—Challenge for Creative to be 1
Productive liked the previous ones. This cuss this further as I am sure that most of us would possess
Open House 2 will be the last edition with me you are already aware of real it but unfortunately that is far
Personality Profile— Charles Babbage 3 as the lead editor. At this point, I “experts” in the area. Many of from reality! Common sense
Who Innovates? 3 would like to thank the team of such innovations are not scal- in social behavior relates to
Robotics and Healthcare 4 this year for their immense sup- able; it reduces their effort but our ability to see the others’
Project 5 port, and also welcome the team generally at the cost of much point of view but that goes
Perspectives — PhD Survey 6 for next year and wish them higher additional effort by peo- against the basic human trait
Faculty Profile— Vinay J. Ribeiro 6 good luck. ple around them. of “me” being at the centre of
Department News Flashes 7
any analysis. What is possible
Anubha Verma On the other hand, one is al- in one society or organization
Linux User Group @ IITD 9
ways looking for innovation in may or may not be possible in
Fun Section 8,9,10 (Editor) solving problems associated
Caption Contest 10 (contd. on Page 2)
Cover Article (Contd.)
another society or organization and this vice. Alternatively, you can vow to listen to work on innovation in deploying the
gives an unlimited scope for innovation to the bhavishyavani in the morning TV available technologies in a sustainable
in any situation. channels before you start on the same manner. This could be solar heaters in the
mission next time. hostels, water recycling plants or green
In my earlier discussion, I hinted that the
transport for the campus. All these re-
capacity to innovate can be Finally, I would like to
quire formation of interdisciplinary
developed. For that you share with the readers
groups and huge innovations as one has
need to do a test whether I would like some of you to work something which bothers
to look at the complete process including
you are innovative or not. A on innovation in deploying the me a lot these days. IIT
costing and operational issues and create
simple test revolves around Campus, in our day to day,
available technologies in a stake holders for sustainability. Only
analyzing what you do living has one thing miss-
when this happens, we can upgrade our-
when you come across long sustainable manner. ing and that is technology.
selves from the current College of Engi-
delays in a queue or proc- Technology remains con-
neering and Science to the name Indian
essing time or when you get shell fined to our laboratories. The society is
Institute of Technology.
shocked by the unexpected, exorbitant facing huge challenges in terms of en-
price of a service? One reaction could be ergy, environment, transportation, access -Prof. M. Balakrishnan
recreating the service process and think- for the disabled etc. We may be working
ing of applying some technology to pro- on “inventions” in all these areas in our
vide more efficient or economical ser- laboratories but I would like some of you

Open House: Display of research & technical innovations


In the midst of final proaching buses, veillance and crowd management, real
projects and assign- These projects have time rendering of minute details present on
ments submissions for been completed surfaces and an efficient implementation of
the semester, was the through a collabora- ray tracing implemented on GPUs by using
time to showcase tion between IITD bounding volume hierarchies. Some of
proudly the hard work and The National these projects left the school students spell
put in by the students, A s - bound.
professors and other ...a brilliant event, with over 200
An interesting project in
staff. The Open House,
as it has always been, innovations ranging from an easy computer vision was on
time-lapsed photography, a
was a brilliant event, Braille reading device to a leaves technique wherein recorded
with over 200 innova-
collector video frames are time
tions ranging from an
warped linearly or non-
easy Braille reading device to a leaves col- sociation for the Blind.
linearly during playback to create interest-
lector displayed to school and college stu- Another interesting project was the "Smart
ing visual effects. Events that extend over
dents, teachers and other visitors from in- Passenger Alert System", which is a smart
a long period of time are captured, ana-
dustry and alumni associations. The entire technology solution that sends automatic
lyzed and meaningfully condensed to con-
Bharti building was alive with school stu- SMSes to all passengers when the bus is
vey the concept more expeditiously. It
dents and teachers beaming with joy and about to reach their bus stop, so that pas-
involved implementing some of the exist-
curiosity, jostling each other in order to sengers don’t need to wait outside in harsh
ing techniques to generate time lapse video
catch a glimpse of the inventions. weather conditions. Other embedded sys-
of continuous processes such as growth of
tems projects from our department include
One distinguishing achievement among all a flower from seed to full bloom and ex-
the bicycle vending system, automatic
projects displayed was the "Smart Cane for ploring newer visualization techniques
lights system, among many others. The
the visually impaired". The gadget de- involving event detection i.e. a time lapse
results clearly reflect the long night outs
signed for the blind can detect objects even video generated by picking up only the
put in by students involved in the projects.
above their knee height like a table, relevant parts, from a video, in which an
through a user-triggered wireless identifica- One could see the diversity in the areas of event takes place. Instead of selecting
tion system with vibration as a warning research with projects related to simulat- frames at a uniform interval, adaptive
signal. This along with another project ing explosions by fundamental principles frame selection was done depending on the
work can be used to assist a blind in using of physics like Black Body radiations and relative importance of the frame in the
the bus transport with ease. This is fluid dynamics, in order to create photo- recorded video.
achieved by giving audio instructions at realistic renderings with improved stabil-
(..contd. on Page 5)
bus stop about the bus numbers of ap- ity, crowd behavior analysis to assist sur-

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3 (MAY ‘08) Page 2


Personality Profile: Charles Babbage Unplugged
Mathematician, philosopher, computer reflected in one of the greatest innovative with the joy of getting his
scientist are the various roles which experiments of that time- walking on the difficulties in Mathemat-
Charles Babbage, a renowned personal- river Dart. He attached to his each foot ics explained. But his
ity, assumed. He was the man behind the two boards closely connected together by high hopes of Cambridge
inception of the idea of a programmable hinges fixed to the shoe-sole. According speedily dissolved as he
computer. Here we try to explore some of to him, when he would lift his leg up, the was also disappointed by
his lesser known dimensions. two boards would close up towards each the professors there. Charles found him-
other while on pushing down his foot, the self actively participating in various so-
Born in 1791 in London in one of the water would rush between the boards cieties and associations formed in Cam-
richest families of that time, Charles re- causing them to open out into a flat sur- bridge. At the age of 30, he began to con-
ceived his elementary education from face, thereby offering him greater resis- struct a machine for making mathemati-
several elite schools and teachers. But tance towards sinking in the water. He cal tables. Building his first Difference
around the age of 8 he was sent to a coun- took a pair of boots for the experiment and Engine led to crucial advances in ma-
try school near Exeter to recover from a cut a couple of old volumes with thick chine tools and engineering techniques
life-threatening fever. His parents ordered bindings. In this way, he fixed the boards affecting the whole development of preci-
that his “brain was not to be taxed too by the hinges. sion mechanical engineering. In 1834,
much” and Babbage felt that “this great Babbage started working on the Analytics
idleness may have led to some of my Equipped with his machine, he went down Engine. These are one of the greatest
childish reasonings.” He then joined a to the river to test his discovery. He could intellectual achievements in the history of
30-student Holmwood academy which manage to float down the river with a very the mankind. While constructing his first
had a well-stocked library that prompted slight exertion of force. Unfortunately the engine, he developed his doctrine for the
Babbage's love of mathematics. He stud- apparatus malfunctioned and Charles was union of theory and practice. He also led
ied with two more private tutors after nearly drowned. Nevertheless, the experi- many campaigns for the application of
leaving the academy. The young Charles ment became the torchbearer of many scientific methods to solve industrial
was always interested in mechanical giz- future experiments. Babbage went to problems.
mos and this experimental approach got Cambridge in 1810, his eyes twinkling Compiled by: Anshuman and Rahul

Who Innovates?
The debate over who is most there have been examples of large
likely to innovate dates back to, companies like GE adopting radical
at least Schumpeter, who first innovations while well-established
suggested that small entrepre- players like Xerox have failed to
neurial firms innovate. Later recognize incremental innovation.
people suggested that large To solve this dilemma, other inno-
firms with some degree of mo- vation models have been proposed,
nopoly power in their business which are quite interesting. These
have the potential and will to classify the innovation on the basis
innovate. The focus has shifted of the architectural components that
to individuals and then back to they alter or on the basis of the mar-
firms. But with the evolution ket disruption that they cause. It’s
of study on ‘innovation’ per se, often believed that well established
better classification mecha- companies have more market
nisms have arisen. These at- knowledge and they can thus cater
tempt to categorize the type of to the requirements of the customers
innovation and then explain the Attacker's Advantage, R. Foster, 1986 in terms of the innovation.
source of the same.
It is important here to revisit the differ- While all these are static ways of classify-
The first is a simple distinction between ence between invention and innovation. ing innovations, the actual technology goes
incremental and radical innovation, which Innovation is invention + commercializa- through different life-cycles, and hence the
as the name suggests is based on the extent tion, i.e. putting the invention to a use for dynamic nature of innovation is also impor-
to which the technological knowledge re- the people. While new firms have the tant. In this respect, many people are famil-
quired for the innovation differs from ex- capability and incentive to go for radical iar with Foster’s S curve, which shows that
isting knowledge. Similarly one could innovation, existing companies might not technology goes through the phases of slow
classify it as radical or incremental based have the same, and contribute to only growth, then rapid growth and finally ma-
on the economic impact of the innovation. incremental change. At the same time, turity. (Contd. on Page 10)
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3 (MAY ‘08) Page 3
Interesting Projects—Robotics and Healthcare
This is a project that I, Advait Jain, such that the eye-in-hand camera is
have been a part of since joining the above the object (the front edge of the
Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia object can be determined using the
Tech as a PhD student in August 2007 laser range finder). Then, the object is
and would love to share with the stu- segmented from the background and is
dents in CSE, IIT; because innovation modeled as an ellipse. We choose the
fosters innovation. grasp point as the center of the ellipse
and align the two fingers of the gripper
Our project's aim here is to build a
along the minor axis. This approach is
robot that can perform everyday tasks
successful for a number of common
such as retrieving objects, opening
objects including bottles, wallets, cell-
doors, operating light switches etc.
phones, toothpaste tubes and cups.
with the hope that it can provide peo-
More complicated methods are re-
ple with disability greater independ-
quired for grasping plates, bowls,
ence in their day to day activities. The
books, laptops etc. and that is some-
project started in the summer of 2007
thing that we are working towards.
and so I got the opportunity to work on
this robot from the conception stage Today El-E is a prototype which works
itself. We have now built the first pro- well within a laboratory setting. It
totype of our robot El-E (shown in the takes around 3 minutes to deliver an
figure), which is designed around two object back to a person, too long for an
key ideas. The form and features and able-bodied individual. But, from our
the various components of El-E are collaboration with ALS (Amyotrophic
shown in the figure. lateral sclerosis) Center at Emory Uni-
pointing at an object using a laser versity, we know that disabled people
First, El-E is able to translate its ma- pointer and letting the robot estimate sometimes need to wait for hours be-
nipulator and associated sensors to its 3D location. fore they can get back a dropped cell-
different heights, which enables it to
This is a joint work of three PhD stu- phone, wallet or TV remote. El-E can
grasp objects on a variety of surfaces,
dents (including myself) and my advi- definitely make a huge difference in
such as the floor and tables, using the
sor, Prof. Charles C. Kemp. We di- the lives of these people. My group
same perception and manipulation
vided the main components of the sys- will soon test El-E with patients suffer-
strategies. This effectively takes advan-
tem- laser pointer interface, mobility ing from ALS to better inform our next
tage of a common symmetry found
and manipulation amongst the three design iteration. In the long run, my
within human environments - smooth
students. The division was soft rather goal is for a service robot to relieve me
flat surfaces that are orthogonal to
than hard, with a lot of improvement to of tasks such as cooking, cleaning,
gravity.
all the components as they were inte- washing so that I can maximize time
Second, El-E has a laser pointer inter- grated together. I was responsible for spent on research ☺
face that detects when a user illumi- manipulation i.e. grasping unknown And the good thing is that we made it
nates a location with a green laser objects illuminated using the laser in the news as well! Here is an article
pointer and estimates the 3D location pointer. in the popular press about our work:
selected by the user. This enables a
Grasping is in itself an entire research http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/
user to unambiguously communicate a
area devoted to determining the best technology/16novel.html
3D location to the robot and is a direct
way to tell the robot which object to way to pick up objects whose 3D Also, Videos, publications and techni-
manipulate or where to go. The laser model is known. Our approach is in cal details are available from the lab
pointer interface is a different way of tune with the new thinking that grasp- website: http://www.healthcare-
looking at interaction between humans ing unknown objects is possible using robotics.com/
and robots. The current approaches for models which can be extracted using
human-robot interaction are speech, sensors like cameras and laser range
gestures, pointing. These methods have finders. We grasp objects from the top
Contributed by Advait Jain
greater ambiguity, spatial error and are (which we call an “overhead” grasp).
more complicated as compared to First, the Katana robot arm is moved (an alumni)

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”
- Albert von Szent-Gyorgy

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3 (MAY ‘08) Page 4


Interesting Projects in Department -
Managing secured documents over long periods
An IIT Delhi student, Baadshah, gradu- tion is to stay one step ahead of Dr. Evil –
ates in 2008 and our institute puts his before he produces the tool, say after only
degree in a electronic format online and N/2 years, we put the existing casket into
plans to continue doing so until Baadshah a larger one and seal it with a lock of
retires (i.e. for at least the next 40 years). strength 2L. With time the jewel will be
Baadshah will no longer have to provide surrounded by several layers of caskets
an attested Xeroxed copy of his degree to each sealed by stronger and stronger
potential employers. Employers in turn locks. That takes care of Dr. Evil. But
will be able to verify effortlessly the cre- what if an insider, for example someone
dentials of Baadshah and the thousands of with a key to the outermost lock, turns
other competing candidates online. foe and wants to replace the jewel with an
mation for longer but there can be no imitation? Worse, what if a group of peo-
Initially Baadshah’s degree and grade ple with keys to different locks want to
guarantee for how long. So how does one
card information are encrypted using the steal the jewel? Yogesh and team have
secure an electronic document for arbi-
IIT-Director’s 128-bit RSA private key mathematically proved that their system
trarily long durations of time?
and stored in a database. Baadshah’s in- is fool-proof to some such attacks.
formation is for the time-being electroni- Ask four BTech students – Sachin Jindal,
cally secure and cannot be tampered with Yogesh Tomar, Vikrant Kumar, and Although the current focus is on degree
— b u t Gorav Jindal. Under the guidance of Prof. certificates, the approach can be easily
Reaching out to the masses with (unfortunatel y) B. N. Jain and Dr. Vinay Ribeiro of the extended to passports, birth certificates,
land sale deeds and other critical docu-
broadband wireless connectivity is n o t forever. Networks Group they have developed a
Within a decade prototype server through which IIT Delhi ments. This work has the potential to
what is the promised potential of greatly extend the capabilities of e-
or so it is quite degree certificates can be made available
WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) likely that with on a need-to-know basis. Their solution governance in India and abroad thereby
fast improving uses “timely re-encryption” which is best bringing ease, transparency and account-
algorithms, CPU speeds and number explained using the following analogy. ability in society.
crunching computer architectures, the Say that we store a jewel in a casket Contributed by- Yogesh Tomar and
Director’s private key will be cracked in sealed with a lock of strength L. Nobody Vinay Ribeiro
a matter of seconds. Using a stronger key can break the lock today but Dr. Evil will
(say a 1024-bit key) will secure the infor- have a tool to do so in N years. Our solu-

Open House : Display of our research and technical innovations

This year's Open House provided a


(.. Contd. from page 2) beacon light towards this approach
And finally, this day long exercise wherein of creating superb works of excel-
students tried their best to make even a lence which don't have any parallel
layman understand and appreciate their in either history or present. See-
work didn't end in a vain. The faculty ap- ing the excellent real life pro-
plauded the contributions by the students jects actually working was
who made this year's Open House a success a cynosure in itself. Hope we con-
story. "IIT Delhi is not just an engineering tinue this tradition of applying inno-
college providing degrees to students. It's a vation in handling the so-called
centre of research and subsequent techno- mundane real life problems. After
logical innovations as well," said Kushal all, any invention must pass the acid
Sen, the coordinator of the event. The CS test of being used in normal day to
department definitely saw the hidden di- day life.
mensions of its students that day.

Contributed by:
Anshuman and Rahul

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3 (MAY ‘08) Page 5


Perspectives — PhD Survey
Why is the number of students doing PhD search work happening.” Another felt, some time during the PhD (say 1 year at
in India so less? What goes inside the “The low financial compensation makes least) at these places to work there. Also,
young minds of today? Is there no more it difficult to do that, even though I am the compensation levels to professor in
crave for in-depth research, is the society very much interested.” places like IIT should be much higher
becoming completely money-minded or than their current status, to make me con-
A vast number of stu-
are there more profound reasons. This sider seriously the possibility
dents felt willing to give
was the issue explored in a survey con- of joining back as a professor
PhD a try if they were ...reasons given were a lack of any in India itself. (This would
ducted by Prof. Jalote. A total of 100
given a high assistant- inspiration and even a lack of
students participated in it from under- help increasing quality of re-
ship, good job opportu-
graduate and post graduate course in our thought ! search in India in the long run)
nities and good intern-
department. A significant majority of ”
ship opportunities. An-
them (61%) believed in taking up a job
other lucrative factor for them would be “There should be seminars conducted
instead of further studies. Many of them
to have a joint degree with some foreign which encourage students to take up
felt that PhD took too long and the condi-
university. Interestingly, the difficulty PhDs in India. They should at least show
tions in India are not suitable for good
level of entrance exam or the amount of what kind of work in various research
quality research. The other reasons given
course work was the last thing in their areas is available. We should invite some
were a lack of any inspiration and even a
minds. Some of the suggestions given by PhD students who have been successful
lack of thought! Some felt they had no
students to encourage the number of in their career to come and give a per-
patience left to study more. Surprisingly
only 1% felt that it was too difficult. The PhD’s were: sonal touch to these seminars. ”
young minds know what they want and “As the quality of research being done in Clearly, PhD in India could become a
are not handicapped by the lack of confi- India cannot be improved overnight, the career choice of many provided the aca-
dence even if they are constrained by PhD programmes in India should forge demic conditions are encouraging and
poor research conditions. and promote active collaborations with future prospects lucrative enough.
the best in the world (e.g. MIT, UC
As a student pointed out, “… lack of in- - Compiled by Aditi Kapoor
Berkeley, MSR Redmond, IBM Research
frastructure, I see no world-leading re-
Watson etc.), as well as a chance to spend

Faculty Profile— Vinay J. Ribeiro


After obtaining a My research interests are broadly in the not too bad at football and hockey.
B.Tech. in Electrical areas of Computer Networking and Signal
You young students may wonder what I
Engineering from IIT Processing and my current focus is on the
am doing back here in India, that too as
Madras, I spent 9 design of wireless networking protocols. I
an academician! I’m probably nuts,
years abroad during was featured in a recent Indian Express
eh?? Well, I can assure you that as time
which I completed article along with other IIT faculty: http://
goes by, your own ideas about what is
my M.S. and Ph.D. www.indi anexpress. co m/sunda y/
important in life will change and you
in Electrical Engg. at story/250682.html. Incidentally, my
too might end up going “nuts.” My
the Rice University brother Rahul recently joined the Me-
only advice to you is that success has a
in Houston and was a chanical Engg. Department at IITD as an
3-letter acronym: MTV-- Motivation,
research intern at Assistant Professor. Some of the first-
Talent, and Virtue. I suppose IIT stu-
AT&T Labs New year CS students may bump into him in
dents have a pretty strong “T”-factor so
Jersey, Sprint ATL their engineering drawing class.
you would do well to work on improv-
California, and Insti-
As far as hobbies go, I am an amateur ing your “M” and “V”-factors during
tut Mittag-Leffler
classical guitarist (favorite piece: La- your stay at IIT and thereafter.
Stockholm. After a post-doctoral stint at
grima by Francisco Tarrega) and chess
Rice, I returned to IITD as an Assistant
enthusiast. My best sport is probably bad-
Professor in October 2006.
minton (if only ACES could schedule —Vinay
their tournament before 10pm!) and I’m

“There's a way to do it better—find it.”


— Thomas Edison

Page 6 CSE NEWSLETTER


Department News Flash
• Ashwin Rao, Arzad Kherani, and • Sonali Chouhan, M Balakrishnan, Ran-
Anirban Mahanti, “Performance jan Bose, "A Framework for Energy
I. Visitors
Evaluation of 802.11 Broadcasts For a Consumption Based Design Space
• Dr. Alefiya Hussain, SPARTA, 29th Feb Single Cell Network with Unsaturated Exploration for Wireless Sensor
Nodes”, Proc. of IFIP/TC6 Network- Nodes", To appear in International
• Prof. Kees Van Hee (Eindhoven UT), ing, Singapore, May 2008. Symposium on Low Power Electronics
11th March and Design (ISLPED) 2008.
• Naimul Basher, Aniket Mahanti, Anir-
• Prof Mateo Valero of UPC Barcelona, ban Mahanti, Carey Williamson, and • Nikhil Bhargava, Priyanaka Kokil,
Spain, 12th March Martin Arlitt, “A Comparative Analy- "Mechanisms to Maintain Confidenti-
• Prof. Rama Chellappa, University of sis of Web and Peer-to-Peer Traffic”, ality of Business Information," NWIP
Proc. of the 17th World Wide Web 2007(http://www.mnnit.ac.in/nwip/nwi
Maryland, College Park, MD, 14th March
(WWW) Conference, Beijing, China, p2007.htm)
• Shishir Nagaraja, April 2008.
Cambridge University, • Nikhil Bhargava, "Switching Gap
• Niklas Carlsson, Anirban Mahanti, Analysis for generalized butterfly net-
26th March
Derek Eager, and Zongpeng Li, works," WPMC 2007
• Dr. Naresh Sehgal, “Optimized Periodic Broadcast of (http://wpmc2007.org/)
Intel Bangalore, 28th Non-Linear Media”, IEEE Transac-
tions on Multimedia, to appear. V. Awards
March
(Accepted December 2007) • Garima Lahoti (MTech) and Priya
• Dr. Subhasis Baner- Gupta (BTech) from our department
jee, Intel, PhD IISc, 31st • Phillipa Gill, Liqi Shi,
among the 16 women Indiawide
March Anirban Mahanti, Zong-
awarded the Google Women in
peng Li, and Derek Eager,
• Prof. Dinesh Manocha, University of “Scalable On-demand Me- Engineering Award.
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 22nd April dia Streaming for Heteroge- • The work Sanjam Garg (BTech
II. Workshops neous Clients”, to appear in 4th year) did for his BTech project
ACM Transactions on Mul- (supervised by Raghav Bhaskar and
• A workshop on Embedded Software by timedia Computing, Communications Satya Lokam of MSR, India) has been
NVidia 7th March and Applications (ACM TOMCCAP) accepted at CRYPTO 2008, the num-
• Digital Heritage Workshop, IIT Delhi, • Phillipa Gill, Martin Arlitt, Zongpeng ber one conference in the area.
22-23 April Li, and Anirban Mahanti, “The Flat- • Anirban Mahanti's paper "*The Flat-
tening Internet Topology: Natural tening Internet Topology: Natural Evo-
• CSE Summer Workshop on Digital Hard- Evolution, Unsightly Barnacles or lution, Unsightly Barnacles or Con-
ware Design, June 1 to July 15, 2008 Contrived Collapse?”, Proc. of Passive trived Collapse?" co-authored with his
• CSE Summer Workshop on Computer and Active Measurement (PAM) Con- M.Sc. Student
Graphics and Vision, June 1 to July 15, ference, Cleveland, USA, April 2008.
• Phillipa Gill and collaborators Martin
2008 • Mark Pauly, Niloy J. Mitra, Johannes Arlitt (HP Labs) and Zongpeng Li,
III. Publications Wallner, Helmut Pottmann, Leonidas (University of Calgary) has won the
Guibas, “Discovering Structural Regu- Best Paper Award at the 9th
• F. Bassino, C. Nicaud, P. Weil, “Random larity in 3D Geometry”, To Appear in Passive and Active Measure-
generation of finitely generated sub- SIGGRAPH 2008 ment (PAM) conference.
groups of a free group,” International
Journal of Algebra and Computation 18 • Martin Kilian, Simon Floery, Zhong- • PhD student Arindam Pal got
(2008) 1-31. gui Chen, Niloy J. Mitra, Alla Sheffer, Infosys fellowship and G.
Helmut Pottmann, “Curved Folding”, Krishnaiah got Lucent fellow-
• P.V. Silva, P. Weil, “On an algorithm to To appear in SIGGRAPH 2008. ship.
decide whether a free group is a free fac-
tor of another”, Theoretical Informatics • Dror Aiger, Niloy J. Mitra, Daniel • Prof M Balakrishnan and Dr Kolin
and Applications 42 (2008) 395-414. Cohen-Or, “4-points Congruent Sets Paul are the winners of 2005 VASVIK
for Robust Surface Registration”, To industrial research awards
• Nadim Parvez, Carey Williamson, Anir- appear in SIGGRAPH 2008.
ban Mahanti, and Niklas Carlsson, VII. Events
“Analysis of BitTorrent-like Protocols for • S. Rajasekaran and S. Sen, “Optimal
and practical algorithms for sorting” • Two online programming contests : C-
On-Demand Stored Media Streaming”,
on the PDM. IEEE Transaction on maphore (2nd March), ACES program-
Proc. of ACM SIGMETRICS, Annapolis,
Computers April, 2008. ming contests (16th Feb)
USA, June 2008.

Page 7 CSE NEWSLETTER


Think of Invisibility !
Floating candles, mov- material science and computer science to to give the image a natural feel. Normal
ing staircases, invisibil- spring to reality some of these wonderful screens give too flat a look, losing the
ity cloak and even talk- magical creations. Turning science fiction impression of seeing through the person.
ing portraits, such are into reality, researchers are developing an The magic is in your hands just at click of
the magical contents of "invisibility cloak"; wrap it around you a button.
Hogwarts school. Such and people just see through you as if you
This technology of missing real and vir-
fascinating stuff has weren't there. Professor Susumu Tachi of
tual world bears great potential to solve
made the Harry Potter the University of Tokyo (http://
daily life problems. Imagine, if you can
books and movies a w w w .s t a r. t .u -to kyo . a c .j p /p roj e ct s /
see through the back of your car, how
worldwide success. It is MEDIA/xv/oc.html) has developed a
easy would it be to park your car in ga-
interesting to see how it cloak made of thousands of tiny beads.
rage! If used in cockpit to make floor
all started in the prolific imagination of Cameras video what is behind you and a
transparent, it can reduce landing acci-
author JK Rowling as she sat in a café in computer system then projects the appro-
dents, which accounts for more than a
Edinburgh. The world of scientists and priate image onto the front of the cloak.
engineers is not uninfluenced. These third of all general aviation accidents.
The beads are made of a special material
Muggles without magical powers turn to called retro-reflective material. It is vital Contributed by: Himanshu Gupta

Acknowledgement Section and Call for Articles


No fruit is complete, till all its rightful Kiran and Vikram, who took on the initia- projects, experiences or views. Everyone
bearers are acknowledged. tive and motivated us to write for the news- of us has the ability to write, its those
letter. And finally the team which contrib- who overcome the inertia and shyness,
Its through our teachers that the experience
uted this time and is set to take over reigns who come forward and make it happen.
here in IIT is complete, for whether inside
of ACM chapter and this newsletter. I feel a Please send across articles for the next
class or outside, their support and guidance
lot confident of their ability. I sincerely issue to Aditi or acm@cse.iitd.ernet.in by
is immense. For our newsletter, the profes-
wish that you will all support and encour- July 15th, 2008. For detailed call for
sors certainly took time out from their
age them. articles, see the ACM Newsletter home-
schedules and wrote quite some motivating
page.
articles for us and I hope they will continue And of course contributions from students
their support. The senior team of Neeraj, of our department, who wrote about their -Anubha (Editor)

Fun Section: Crossword


1 2 14) A partial shadow, as in an eclipse, 4) Acronym for a mechanism within an IC
3 4 between regions of complete shadow and that verifies all or a portion of its internal
5 complete illumination functionality.
6 7 16) Ownership of ideas and control over 6) A device that both transmits and re-
the tangible or virtual representation of ceives analog or digital signals.
those ideas.(12,8)
8 9 10 7) Transmissions which occur in only one
11 12
17) The signaling rate of a line, a meas- direction at a time, but that direction can
ure of data transmission rate change.(4,6)
13
14 15
18) The process of converting the po- 10) A short computer program that is per-
lygonal or data specification of an image manently resident or easily loaded into a
to the image itself, including color and computer and whose execution brings a
16 opacity information larger program, such as an OS or its loader,
into memory.
Down
17 11) A program which copies other pro-
1) Acronym for computerized online grams from auxiliary memory to main
18
catalog of the materials, used in our memory prior to its execution.
central library
Clues : Across 13)In computer programming, this would
2) An interlocked sequence of signals refer to a specific identifying enclosing
5)A sequence of related images viewed in rapid succession to see between connected components in which context.
and experience the apparent movement of objects. each component waits for the acknowl-
8) An array of elements in row and column form a ___ edgement of its previous signal before 14) kilo mega giga tera ____ exa
proceeding with its action, such as data
9) The ‘___ problem’ is a decision problem, also the simplest transfer. 15) A small glass sealed vial which is used
problem that is undecidable over Turing machines. to contain or preserve a fluid
3) The process of computing new inter-
12) Firmware that activates peripheral devices in a PC, Basic mediate data values between existing Built by Anubha Verma (Solutions at:
Input Output System data values. http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~acm/
newsletter.html

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3 (MAY ‘08) Page 8


Linux User Group@ IIT Delhi
Linux user group is an initiative of the stu- edit the page and assign the responsibility to generates vector based education videos,
dents of IIT Delhi for promoting the himself. This work distribution shows the which is intended to replace whiteboard
use of Linux among IIT Delhi students. equal participation and further motivates the teaching technique to more efficient elec-
The group was started on Jan 12, 2008 and group. It also demonstrates the work culture tronic board teaching. This would result
over the period of four months has done of an open-source community. in size efficient videos, which reduces the
extensive work. Major initiatives of the internet bandwidth and storage disc
LUG@IIT are an active mailing list for space. Both of these projects are in devel-
Apart from the workshops, LUG also organ-
discussing issues with Linux and its opment stage.
ized two installation demonstrations-
usage, organizing workshops and open-
"install fest" and another was during Open-
source projects.
house 2008. In the Openhouse LUG organ-
The group has organized three workshops. ized discussions, talks and demos on various Fore more details, visit:
The first workshop was on the basics of aspects of Linux, both for kids and for [1] LUG@IIT Delhi Group webpage :
Linux which included basic commands grownups. In the effort of helping IIT Delhi http://gro up s.goo gle.co.in/gro up/
and a demo installation along with a lecture students in their Linux installations,
iitdlug/
on shell programming. All the lectures and LUG@IITD has setup a vast local reposi-
demos were given by the student members tory of various Linux distributions [2] LUG@IIT website: http://www.lug-
of the LUG group. Coda-voda, the second (Repository can be accessed at iitd.org
workshop, focused on various coding is- http://10.10.4.1). Using this repository, one
sues and methods. Third, the documenta- can install from the network as well as burn [3] Eduvid Project webpage: http://
tion workshop involved tutorial and dem- their own DVDs of any Linux version. sites.google.com/e/techfandu.org/
onstration sessions on various tools and eduvid/Home
The community has also started two open-
softwares in Linux. These were helpful for [4] Free World Project webpage :
source projects- Free world and Eduvid.
writing thesis, making presentations, dia-
More projects are expected to start in near http://sites.google.com/e/techfandu.org/
grams and webpages.
future. The idea of Free world project is to freeworld/Home
An important characteristic of these work- create peer to peer communication network
shops were open invitation to participate for sharing data and for instant messaging.
and organize. For each workshop, a web- The peer to peer network will be based on -Contributed by Neeraj
page for workshop is created on the group some form of network connectivity, e.g,
of 250+ members, where each member can LAN, WAN or internet. The project Eduvid

“What happens when you read some doc and either it doesn't answer your question or is demonstrably wrong? In
Linux, you say "Linux sucks" and go read the code. In Windows/Oracle/etc you say "Windows sucks" and start
banging your head against the wall.” --- Denis Vlasenko

A Poem—First flight
Don’t hold me this time, let me try Pace is just right On this first flight
Don’t push me away On my first flight The trees are greener than green
But don’t force me to stay New leaves awaiting to curl me
I need this test Testing my new feathered appendages New twigs and things awaiting my game of
pursuit
Even though I love my nest Seeking my own grains and bondages
Dusk comes and I settle in my nested space
I migrate far out across seas
And go to new skies, my heart warms with a With its blues and purples and violets
I will come back I tell you
new peace My heart yearns home and eyes threaten tear
My eyes sparkle
droplets
My steps are light -Contributed by Aditi Kapoor
The sun gleams its reds, oranges and yellows
Future seems bright

Page 9 CSE NEWSLETTER


BROUGHT OUT BY ACM STUDENT
CHAPTER

ACM Student Chapter Sponsor—M Balakrishnan

Newsletter Team
Magazine in-charge: Anubha Verma

Assisted by ACM chapter members


Associate Editors—
Aditi Kapoor
Rahul Gupta
Anshuman Aggarwal
Chair - Neeraj Goel
(Photos in above order left to right)

Email—acm@cse.iitd.ernet.in

To leave you…
Who Innovates? (Contd.) Caption Contest
But the nature of innovation cycle is such that a new technol-
ogy can totally alter the curve. Typically such technologies are
called Disruptive Technologies. These technologies when com-
pared on conventional parameters have a lower benefit-curve,
but soon catch up to what the customers need at a much re-
duced cost. It is difficult to know upfront if the innovation is
disruptive or not, however, one could look at other features
which describe it as incremental or radical, architectural or
modular and decide its value. Besides valuation, knowing the
types of innovations also allows us to think along these lines,
especially when one runs outs of ideas.

Well-established companies find it difficult, if not impossible,


to do radical innovation, while new entrants are easily able to
do so. Similarly as entrants into the industry, we could think of
new ideas and innovations, which can help in our projects,
when we enter companies. It is important to realize this, not
only for those who step out into the new world, but also those Landmarks in Life or just on the road or Heights achieved. What
who are doing their projects, wherein they have a very flexible does this picture (courtesy—Prof Suban) make you think?
environment to experiment with new ideas and techniques. Give a caption to this picture and the best entries(2) will be pub-
lished in the next issue, besides winning exciting prizes !
— Contributed by Anubha
One entry per person to be sent to
acm@cse.iitd.ernet.in by July 15th.

WINNERS of previous edition’s Caption contest-


King of the birds caught by king of the profs (Prof. Suban ;-) ) - by Anand
Come out rainbow! Let's see who is more colorful, you or me? - by Snigdha Goyal

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