IBM announces ‘Best PhD and CAS Students Award’ winners

• Email
• Print
• ( 0 )
• 

This year’s winners are students from the Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Technology and Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

IBM has announced winners of the ‘IBM Best PhD Students Award' and 'IBM Best CAS Students Award' for this year. Prof. Robert J. Aumann, the 2005 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics will give a talk on War & Peace at the award ceremony to be held at the JN Tata Auditorium, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore on Tuesday, January 16, 2007, and present the Awards.

This year’s winners are students from the Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Technology and Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

Prof. Aumann will hand the IBM Best PhD Students Award to Kannan S, IIT- Madras, Asharaf S, IISc, Sobhan Babu, IIT - Bombay, Parag K Chaudhuri, IIT - Delhi, Md. Abdul Hai Zahid, IIT - Roorkey, and Piyush Kurur, IMSc, Chennai while Rudresh Acharya, IISc and Vinay Kumar (M.Tech), IIT Kanpur will receive the IBM Best CAS Students Award.

“IBM is committed to nurturing talent and innovation in the region. As part of this initiative, IBM confers the Best PhD

Students Award to students in India for their outstanding work done in the area of Computer Science and allied fields” said Director, IBM India Research Laboratory, Dr. Daniel Dias. “IBM Best CAS student Award is given for outstanding work done by students who collaborate with IBM technical leaders under the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) collaborative research initiative”.

Selection of the students is based on the novelty of the dissertation, impact of work and quality of research as judged by publications and peer review. Nominations were invited from many premier institutes - including all IITs, IISc, TIFR, ISI, CMI and IMSc during 2006.

“Students of today will become the innovators of tomorrow. Today's increasingly complex world requires students and researchers to innovate as never before. To have real impact, whether within a company or society as a whole, we must not only develop technologically superior solutions, but also know how to think systemically and

lead strategically”, said Dr. Dias.

IBM has a rich history of engagement with leading universities and colleges around the world that supports basic research, curriculum, innovation, and educational assistance in focus areas, which are fundamental to innovation in the 21st Century.

IBM in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, one of the premier academic institutes in Asia, will host the Nobel Lecture on War & Peace where Prof. Aumann will talk on different aspects of game theory or interactive decision theory and interact with the students and faculty.

This Nobel Lecture is a part of IBM’s initiative to help promote cross-pollination of ideas within the technical ecosystem in the region.

Prof. Aumann shared the Nobel Prize in Economics with Dr. Thomas Schelling of the University of Maryland. Prof. Aumann has made groundbreaking contributions to game theory, a branch of applied mathematics that stu

dies strategic situations where players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns.

Aumann’s “repeated games” analysis promotes a unified interdisciplinary view of rational behaviour, in many different disciplines: chiefly economics, but also computer science, political science, biology, and corporate practices. He has broken new ground in many areas, the many notable being perfect competition, repeated games, correlated equilibrium, interactive knowledge and rationality, and coalitions and cooperation.