Department of ICT4D (Information Communication Technology for Development)

1. Department of ICT4D (Information Communication Technology for Development) Welcome to NAAC Peer Team.

2. Motivation • What is obvious is the fact that Impressive ICT related Human Resources at various levels and competencies are created in Karnataka (and India). • These range from IISc, NITK, Engg. Colleges, Univ’s ,down to ITI’s, Finishing schools, NIIT’s, etc. • All these predominantly do for Service Sector Jobs in ICT domain which is volume in nature (200 K jobs). What is “missing” is Designers & HR in ICT for Challenging tasks of Direct development in India. • A need of the hour is to craft ICT Human Resources, capable of implementing tasks related to direct development of India (poverty alleviation, QoL improvement, Equitable & Cost effective Justice, etc) .

3. Preamble • A program directly funded by UGC under Innovative Category in Aug 2007 • A Grant of Rs 23 Lakhs over 5 years, Plus • A fulltime Professor for Five Years. • I am Dr Ashok Rao, appointed as Professor for this program and it is also my (our) Proposal. • We run a 2 Year, PG Diploma Program of 4 Semesters. Started in Aug.2007 • We have just finished the first Two semesters and a Summer Term in August 2008

4. Details • The Only such program in the country. • Very few like this in the World (expanding). • Started with much thought and practical work done (I have done 10 years of work on this) . • Very timely, challenging and rewarding. • Started from Scratch here, since I had to relocate / reorient and reshape. I carry a impressive Legacy. • Started with open mind, trying to FIT this here. • I have 22+ years of Teaching & Research experience at IIT Bombay (85-91), SJCE Mysore (93-99, 05-07), IISc, Bangalore (92-93, 99-05) & currently a Visiting Professor at IIM Bangalore.

5. Features • VERY LIBERAL: Any bachelors Degree holder is permitted to join. • VERY DIVERSE: Field work, Laboratory, Economics, Sociology, Sustainable Development, Social Work, ICT, Environment and Software subjects. • VERY INTENSE: Three semesters of courses, TWO summer terms, One semester Project, Two winters of Skilling. • VERY EXPERIMENTAL: Plenty of Innovations, Best Practices and Novelties (some done and many more in pipe line)

6. SCHEME OF INSTRUCTION AND EXAMINATION for PG Diploma in ICT for Development

8. Novelty / Academic Reforms • Open Book (ICT enabled) Exams and Tests in Economics, etc., All subjects (taught by ICT4D department) has “open” component. • Almost 85-100% compulsory Questions. • All students have books on the PC for use and other books provided to them. • Extensive use of I-net and Library for teaching, learning, tests and examination. • In addition Seminars, Workshops, Field Trips are components of learning. • High Quality two day residential workshop on Development was done in realistic rural setting.

9. Novelty / Academic Reforms • All students are given the Customized option of Self Study course of Two subjects in the program with maximum of one per semester. This is under the mentorship of the faculty. Examination etc. for this is same as other subjects. One student has already exercised this last semester. • Summer term course on Entrepreneurship and Leadership was done, with examination having 50 % Oral component and Customized QP for each of the students has been done. • Winter Term skilling exercises are done: keeps students academically active about 300 days a year.

10. Quality Measures • Some of the “Best” books used for teaching (Eg: Amartya Sen’s Devp. As Freedom, Yunus Md. World without Poverty, DVR’s , Urs Hereli) • Excellent BoS, with Two young Ph.D’s from Germany and USA and experienced faculty from Mysore University. • Excellent Lab, with I-net facility. • Mixture of White Board, PPT, I-net, Reading. • Discussion & Practical Case Studies as mode of learning. • Self learning & Incremental Learning components (20% of syllabus) promotes Learning to Learn skills. • Reading and comprehension skills, Experiential Learning. • Student Participation in BoS (Enhanced Democracy).

11. Progress (in One year) • Two semesters completed, One summer term completed, a winter term done. • Some Research and Industry Interaction has started (here), not significant but useful. • One subject under self study-mentored, 2nd. initiated. • Six MPhil. In Comp Sci Completed, (all under my supervision since 07 Aug) • Workshop(@Melukote) , Field Projects (@ Timbaktu) done very successfully. • The entire dept. Comp. networking done by students. • All students (6) have passed both sem exams so far. • Availability of Teachers time to students is significant and number of “Other” issues sorted by faculty.

12. Inauguration of the TWO day Workshop From L-R: Dr Ashok Rao (JSS College), Shri;Surendra Koulagi (Chief Guest, JPST, Melukote) and Mr.M.P.Somashekar (JSS College)

13. Dr Deepak Malghan (Univ. of Maryland, USA) Lecture on Global Warming and Explaining Carbon foot print of Humans activities.

14. Dr-Ing Punit Singh (Univ of Karlsruhe, Germany) Dr Singh Discussing the Intricacies of Deliver of Appropriate Technology Solutions in rural and remote areas

15. “Seminar Hall” of the Workshop High Quality @ Low Cost, Highly Relevant and Intense Learning

16. Delivery of Appropriate Technology at Remote –Rural Areas for Hi-QoL issues Objective: To understand the Subtleties and Methodologies to deliver Relevant Technology to Rural Area for improved QoL. Task Team: Mr Joy Monteiro and Dr. Ashok Rao, Dept of ICT4D JSS College of A, C & S, Mysore- 570 025. Local Facilitator: Dr.U.Subba Raju, Timbaktu Collective, AP.

17. Birds Eye View of Timbaktu Collective, AP Notice the Revival and Rejuvenation of the area.

18. The strategy of Timbaktu Living Dr.U. Subba Raju in the background.

19. Lights for the asking It has Proximity Sensor system attached

20. You cannot get any Higher Quality at Lower Cost All are local Material, Innovatively used, Except the Hi-Tech LED

21. Joy with Joyful residents of Timbaktu Post Implementation

23. 12 11 X-Axis: Time in hours Y-Axis: Current (mA) 10 9 8 7 6 Y 5 4 3 2 1 6PM 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 AM X

24. 12 11 X-Axis: Time in hours Y-Axis: Current (mA) 10 9 8 7 6 Y 5 4 3 2 1 -- --- -- - - - - --- ------- -- --- --------- - 6PM 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 AM X

25. Significant Aspects • The “Best” publications by research in Any Univ. in Computer Science for 07-08 (comparable with IISc/IIT). • Interacting / Collaborating with CEDT, IISc Bangalore on research (publications too). • Invited Visiting Professor and Jointly Teaching course at IIM Bangalore (2007 & 2008), CSIR Lab’s. • One of the Leading resource person for Teaching-Learning, Curriculum, ICT, etc in India (11 Events so far 07-08 ) • Invited to IITG, in 2007 & 2008 for conducting five day workshops (on ICT , Human Dimensions of ICT). • Interaction with “ICT” companies in Bangalore, (all students have received 50% of fees as Scholarship)

26. List of peer reviewed Publications by Dr.Ashok Rao, since Aug 2007 • Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI, Pune, Dec 2007). Performance evaluation of Subspace • Methods and a study of their robust behavior., will appear in the book series Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences, • (LNICS) Springer International, Berlin (IF around 2.5), DBLP tracked. • International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence (PReMI – Dec 2007, Kolkatta). 2 Papers • Mixture of Laplacian faces and its application to Face Recognition. • Language Independent Skew Estimation Technique based on Gaussian Mixture Models: A case study on South Indian scripts. • Has appeared in the book series Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences, (LNICS) Springer International, Berlin, LNCS 4815, • (IF around 20.0) DBLP Tracked. • Workshop on Image and Signal Processing – (WISP 2007, Dec 07, IIT Guwhati) 3 Papers • 1) Effect of Orthogonalization on FLD based Algorithms. • 2) A multilingual Character Recognition System based on Subspace Methods and Neural Classifiers. • 3) Match Score Fusion for Person Verification System using Face and Speech. • (IF around 4.0) DBLP Not Tracked. • 5Th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generation (ITNG) – 2008, Las Vegas, USA • Novel Window functions for Digital Filter, April 2008., Las Vegas, USA • (Paper in joint research collaboration with CEDT, IISc, Bangalore) (IF around 10.0) DBLP Tracked. • -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • NONUNIFORM MULTI LEVEL CROSSINGS, FOR SIGNAL RECONSTRUCTION • Chapter-1pp 1-17, Published by World Scientific, 2008, In Press, (IF around 25.0) • ICVGIP 2008 , Sixth Indian Conference on , Computer Vision, Graphics & Image Processing, Dec 16th-18th Bhubaneswar. • One Paper Accepted (IF around 25.0) • Journal Article Reviewed: • One paper reviewed for the Journal “Sadhana” Journal of Indian Academy of Science, May 2008.. (IF around 20.0) DBLP Tracked. • Total (9): Peer reviewed International Conferences papers: 4 (ave. IF around 3.0) • Peer Reviewed International Pub/ Edited books: 5 (average IF around 20.0) • I have used the scale of IF with Maximum 40.

27. Future Plans • Get two good Faculty in ICT / Development / Green or Sustainable Economics. • Ramp up ICT lab to include Wireless facilities and Mobile Computing. • Problem Formulation and Problem solving skills to be inculcated in students and in curriculum. • Interaction with Govt. NGO’s, ICT, VO’s S/W companies & Development agencies, to initiate projects for development with ICT component. • Internationalize this program with project interaction and people exchanges. • More Industry and Sponsored Research (YET….).