Quantum Science and Technology Hackathon 2022

(Details are mentioned in alphabetical order)

Arun Pati

Arun Pati is a Professor of Quantum Information and Computation Group, at the Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. He is also an adjunct Professor at IISER Mohali and IIIT, Hyderabad. He has been working in the area of Quantum Science, Quantum computing and Quantum information over the last 30 years. He is the National Coordinator of Quantum Enabled Science and Technology (QuEST) Program that is initiated by DST, India.

Prof. Pati has made many pioneering contributions in the area of Quantum Information. His research papers have been featured in Nature, Science, Scientific American and Nature Asia. For his original and creative contributions he has received many awards. This include the Indian Physical Society Award for Young Scientists, Kolkota (1996), Indian Physics Association Award for Young Physicist of the Year, Mumbai (2000),the Samanta Chandra Sekhar Award for the year 2009 from the Orissa Science Academy, India and the Distinguished Alumni award from the Berhampur University Odisha. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore and also Fellow of the National Academy of Science, Allahabad. He has received J C Bose National Fellowship from the Department ofScience and Technology India in 2019. He ranks in top 2% Scientists in the world recently conducted by Stanford University.

Prof Enrique Solano

Prof Enrique Solano is Chief Visionary Officer at Kipu Quantum in Germany.

Erik DeBenedictis

Erik DeBenedictis has a Ph. D. degree in Computer Science from Caltech. Erik then pursued research and development of parallel supercomputers at Bell Labs, startups Ansoft (now Ansys) and nCUBE before joining and continuing this work at Sandia National Laboratories. Erik developed an interest in quantum computing in the early 2000s while at Sandia and is now pursuing research and development of control electronics under the name Zettaflops, LLC. Erik has been an active volunteer with IEEE, founding the Rebooting Computing and Quantum Initiatives and was also founder and  Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering and is the Chair of a Quantum Computing Benchmarking standard effort (P7131). Through Zettaflops, LLC, Erik is a member of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium.

Kanishka Agiwal

Kanishka Agiwal heads AWS’ Service Lines, India/South Asia, with focus on Digital Innovation and Deep Tech such as AI/ML, Analytics, Quantum Computing, HPC, IoT as well as AWS service offerings such as databases, storage, edge, hybrid cloud and security. At AWS, he works with the public sector, central/state governments, education and health care sector, not-for-profit, travel & transportation, and PSUs to drive AI at scale for citizen impact. He has worked extensively across global markets with significant stints in all geographies and major countries.

In his previous stint, he led IBM’s Cognitive Solutions, Watson, for the Travel & Transportation industry globally. He has held key positions around strategy, business development, solutions and offerings and oversee the conception, development and take to market of industry solutions.

Kanishka speaks regularly at industry conferences and trade bodies on areas of artificial intelligence, healthcare, travel, and transportation. He is an adjunct faculty at various b-schools in the areas of consulting, strategy and communications. In addition, he also serves on the board of advisors for startups in the areas of financial services and healthcare.

Mr. Agiwal has a Masters in Business Administration from SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, India as well as a Bachelors in Engineering (Computer Science) from MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, India.

P J Narayanan

P J Narayanan is the Director of IIIT, Hyderabad and a researcher in the areas of 3D vision, computational cameras, and parallel computing. He built the Virtualized Reality system in mid 1990s at the Carnegie Mellon University to capture 3D geometry and appearance of dynamic events. He also was an early adopter of GPUs for several Computer Vision and general computing tasks. He got his Bachelors (1984) from IIT Kharagpur, Masters and PhD (1992) from the University of Maryland, all in Computer Science. He was a research faculty member at the Robotics Institute of CMU from 1992 to 1996 and headed the Vision and Virtual Reality groups of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bangalore from 1996 to 2000. He has been with IIIT Hyderabad from 2000 and has been its PG Coordinator, Dean of Research, and, from 2013, the Director. He was the President of ACM India from 2009 to 2014 and has involved with various activities of ACM such as Awards, Technology Policy, etc.

Rameshchandra Ketharaju

Ramesh is an engineer and a prolific inventor in the area of emerging and disruptive technologies. He has close to 30 issued patents and over 45 patents pending. His areas of interest include Quantum Technology, Cyber Security, Communications, Autonomous Vehicles, Payment Technology, Data, AI related and inspired technologies. He is a TRIZ practitioner.

He got his Engineering degree from Osmania University and an alumnus from Chaitanya Bharati Institute of Technology Hyderabad in the year 1995, he also got a post graduate diploma in business administration from Institute of Public Enterprises, Hyderabad in 1997.

He is an active IEEE senior member and office bearer in various societies and initiatives of IEEE.

Reena Dayal Yadav

Reena Dayal Yadav is a Technology Leader and an Innovation Management Expert. She is known for her work in Establishing and Scaling up Innovation Functions within Organization and Incubating new Tech Oriented Businesses. She is the Founding Chairperson for the Quantum Ecosystems and Technology Council of India ( QETCI) and the CEO and Partner for Benzaiten Advisors. She is on the Steering Committee of the IEEE Quantum Initiative , Chair for the IEEE Quantum Special Interest Group in India and on the Consultative Committee for Quantum for the Government of Telangana. She is the Ex-Chairperson for SNIA in India. She is also on the Governing Board and Executive Committee of The Cloud Computing Innovation Council of India.

She is an Author – her Book “Innovation Magic” is a guide to creating and managing Innovation Management functions within Organizations. Her report on “Innovation Governance: Board Imperatives” has been published and referred to by many organizations.

She is a mindfulness practitioner and believes in Mindful and Compassionate Leadership.

She has an Engineering degree from IIT Roorkee. She is a Chevening Fellow for Science and Innovation Leadership Program from The Said Business School, University of Oxford.

Dr. Rohini Srivathsa

Dr. Rohini Srivathsa is the National Technology Officer at Microsoft India. In her role, she is responsible for driving innovation and growth through ‘tech-intensity’ – across industry and the government. Rohini began her career in R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories and has 25+ technical and business publications in ACM/IEEE and other journals. She engaged with CxOs across emerging markets during her strategy consulting career at the Boston Consulting Group and IBM Global Business Services. As CTO of Janalakshmi Financial Services (now Jana Small Finance Bank), Rohini was responsible for driving tech-driven business transformation towards financial inclusion among the urban underserved. Rohini holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and earned her PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr Sapna Poti

Dr Sapna Poti is the Director, strategic alliances in the Principal Scientific Advisor’s Office, Government of India. Her primary role is to promote Scientific R&D and Innovations for social impact and to address industry problems through Industry, Foundations and Government channels. This includes engaging Science & Technology institutes and the entire start up ecosystem to meet National Missions & National priorities including COVID 19, doubling farmers income, make in India, water mission, waste management mission etc. Dr Poti is a PhD from IIT Madras with a dissertation in Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP)and has around 29 years of experience in Industry, Consulting and Government. Her previous stints were with Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, Tata Trusts and National Skill Development Corporation (under the aegis of Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship) in the social development and Government sector. Dr. Poti also has industry and consulting experience with ITC, Hewitt Associates, Deloitte, Toyota Kirloskar, Tatas and Crompton Greaves. Dr Poti is a member of Niti Aayog’s Expert Group on ‘Skill Development for Mountain States’, Member of GIZ MSME committee and MESA’s advisory committees. Further, Dr Poti is a Chevening Awardee 2015. She is also a member on the Board of studies of skill development and educational institutes. She has authored national and international journal papers. 

Urbasi Sinha

Professor, Quantum Information and Computing Lab

Light and Matter Physics group
Raman Research Institute

Elected member of the C15 Commission for IUPAP: 

https://iupap.org/who-we-are/internal-organization/commissions/

c15-atomic-molecular-and-optical-physics/c15-commission-members/

Editorial Board Member, New Journal of Physics.

[Personal website: https://wwws.rri.res.in/~usinha

Lab website: https://wwws.rri.res.in/quic]