5th Undergraduate Summer School
Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
3rd - 8th July 2017
Vedant Goel (18179) student of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering was selected to attend the 5th Undergraduate Summer School held at IISc, Bengaluru. The Summer School 2017 took place from 3rd - 8th July 2017 at Computer Science and Automation Department, Seminar Hall, CSA, IISc, Bengaluru
The main objective of the summer school was to introduce undergraduate students to cutting-edge research in computer science. The summer school contained talks, demos and hands-on sessions by the department faculty, research scholars and industry experts, covering theoretical and applied aspects of computer science.
Day 1
Prof. Jayant Harista, Chairman of CSA Department started the event by giving a brief description of Summer School. The first talk of the day was the Joy of Cryptography by Arpita Patra, Assistant Professor, CSA, IISc. She gave an overview of cryptography and applications of cryptography.
Next Mr. Harit Vishwakarma, Blue Scholar at IBM Research, India explained “Introduction to Machine Learning”. He mainly gave an overview on machine learning algorithms namely supervised machine learning, unsupervised machine learning, reinforcement of machine learning. Later Stanley Samuel, M.Tech Research, CSA, IISc gave the students a Demo Talk on Alloy Tool . He was followed by Prof. N.S Kumar, visiting faculty, PES University. He explained issues in modern language design. He told students various aspects of a programming language.
Day 2
The first talk of the day was Counting Necklace by Prof. Vittal Rao, IISc. The talk mainly included the concept of counting the different designs of a necklace given that it had N beads and K colors. It was followed by Prof. Arun, IISc. He said - If one can make computers play chess, why can’t make them see. He discussed why it is important to have a good computerized eye. Continuing the talk Mr. Nitesh Tripathi, M.Tech Research Scholar, IISc explained Graph theory and its application. He basically discussed matching in bipartite graph which would help solve the problems like scheduling trains, teachers for periods, marriage matches for stability, exam schedule without any intersection of subject timings. He was followed by Mr. Chandramouli, PhD, IISc. He spoke on ‘The art of guessing’. The talk was how one must guess in order to find proofs. Later Prof. Shridhar Devarajan, IISc explained Computational Cognitive Neuroscience. He explained Granger’s Causalities – technique to measure causal interaction. Following him Prof. Vijay Natarajan, IISc talked on the topic Scientific Visualization – from data to insights. The last talk of the day was based on Program Analysis by Mr. Suvam Mukharjee, PhD, IISc. He demonstrated his tool to find if the assertions in the program are correct.
Day 3
The third day started with talk on Introduction to Dataflow Analysis by Mr. Snigdha Athaiya, PhD, IISc. The discussion was on compiler optimization techniques that could also be used for software engineering and security domains for verifying properties and detection of bugs. He was followed by Mr. Ullas Aparanji, PhD, IISc. He explained Angluin’s algorithm for learning DFA. Angluin’s algorithm for constructing a DFA which involves the structure of a teacher and a learner where leaner will ask the teacher the membership queries and equivalence queries were explained .Then Mr. Kavi Mahesh, Former Dean, PES University spoke on the topic “Creating and curating Indian datasets for analytics”. Next Mr. Shubham Gupta, PhD, IISc spoke on Paradoxes in probability. He explained some of the famous and interesting paradoxes which included Envelop paradox, Friendship paradox, Monty hall paradox, St. Petersburg paradox, Infinite monkey paradox, Necktie paradox, Will Roger’s phenomenon. He was followed by Mr. Shreedhar Kodate, M.Tech, IISc on the topic Essence of Linear Algebra. This talk was about the basics of linear algebraic concepts like Vectors, Space, Basis vectors, and Gauss Jordan elimination method, Rank of a matrix, Determinants, Eigen vector and Eigen values.
Day 4
The fourth day began with the discussion on Polynomials and their duals by Mr. Kaushal Verma, Math Department, IISc. His talk was focused on how to find the roots of the polynomial employing some simple methods proposed by a mathematician named Viete. He was followed by Prof. Partha Talukdhar, IISc. He spoke on the topic Knowledge graphs. His discussion focused on how to get bots and agents keep moving around the web, extracting data, growing daily, learning to reason as well as read automatically extending its ontology. Next Mr. Colin Scott from Microsoft Research, Bengaluru spoke on the topic People powered bulk data networking. He was followed by Prof. Jayant Harista, Chairman, CSA, IISc. He spoke on the topic Latent Power of absurd ideas. Then, he explained his student’s work called PLAN BOUQUETS which completely abandons the estimation of operator cardinalities and instead make runtime cardinality discovery using compile time selected bouquet of plans. After the lunch break Mr. Tushar Shinde, M.Tech, IISc spoke on the topic Creative Artificial intelligence. He showed few music composed by machines which were so melodious as if composed by humans. He argued that humans are not taught by themselves, the nature supports them to learn. Likewise, telling that computers need humans at first stage of learning. The last talk of the day was DEMO TALK Recommender Systems by Mr. Saneem Ahmed, SWE, IBM Research. The talk was all about how the transactions and activity of user on web is mined and the trend and taste is observed based on user behavior and how items (product, movie, news, etc.) are recommended.
Day 5
First discussion of the fifth day was on Operating System Security by Prof. Vinod Ganapathy, IISc. He explained, it is difficult to build secure systems and computer system security is a fruitful area for research. Speaking about the malicious attacks / software, he told that firstly the utilities/libraries will be targeted, followed by operating system if libraries are secured, then if OS are also secured, then malwares target the hardware and tools. He was followed by Mr. Arun Rajkumar, Research scientist, Conduent Labs India. He spoke on the topic Introduction to optimization. He was the founder of idea of SUMMER SCHOOL at IISc. He spoke about the optimization of functions using Taylor series. After the coffee break Mr.Ramsuri Narayanam, IBM Research spoke on the topic Introduction to social network analysis. He mainly spoke about Uses of Social Network Analysis for Target audience, E-commerce, e-job, e-firms, Monetizing uses, etc. He was followed Mr.Abhinash Khare, M.Tech, IISc. He spoke on the topic Demo Talk-using deep learning to play games. This was followed by a tech quiz.
Day 6
The last day of summer school began with the final round of tech quiz. Mr. Sambaran Bandyopadhyay, Research Software Engineer, IBM Research spoke on the topic Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Computational Sustainability. He was followed by Mr. Aniket Basu, Phd, IISc. He spoke on the topic Guarding Art Galleries. This was followed by Feedback, Certificate, and Prize Distribution.
All the talks were followed by a question - answer session, where students put in intriguing questions and the speakers gave prominent answers which cleared the doubts of everyone. The sessions proved to be very interactive and informative. After the last talk on the 5th day a quiz was held. This was followed by announcement of winners and prize distribution.
The 5th Undergraduate Summer School gave all the students clear insights about different domains of Computer Science via the seminars and talks of great and eminent researchers and PhD students and also who come from an industrial research profile. They also explained various career opportunities at the IISc, Bengaluru and how one can apply for different courses at IISc, Bengaluru.