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PUNE SEARCHES FOR PASSWORD TO GET BILL GATES LAB

Pune, a renowned centre for high-end studies, is all set to join the big league as the world’s largest software company. Microsoft Corporation is exploring possibilities of collaborating with leading research institutions in seven key areas.

The three-member Microsoft team, led by its Corporate Vice-President Daniel T Ling, will be at the University of Pune (UoP) to check the chances of setting up a research laboratory in the city. Although Microsoft has a big software development centre in Hyderabad, Ling’s visit is significant as he will scout for a partner to develop next generation computer applications and relevant tools.

Sources said Ling, accompanied by senior research manager P S Anandan and Microsoft country head Ravi Venkatesan, would interact with leading research scientists and academics including Vice Chancellor Dr Ashok Kolaskar, the man behind the initiative.

According to sources, representatives from Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Pune Institute of Engineering and Technology ( formerly COEP), Cummins College of Engineering and the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture and Industries (MCCIA) have confirmed their participation.

Sources in the university said the Microsoft team would be given presentations on affordable computing and use of communication technology in rural areas, application of Information Technology (IT) in health, natural languages applications besides modelling and simulation in social sciences and humanities.

Dr Sharad Purohit, Director C-DAC, while confirming his participation at the meet said the team members would be taken on a round of their facility. "We will show them our high-end low cost supercomputing capabilities developed over the years," he said. Interestingly, Dr Purohit said C-DAC will be looking at collaborating with Microsoft in fundamental research related to High Performance Computing (Supercomputing), scientific computing and bioinformatics.

Dr Narendra Karmarkar, head of the Computational Mathematics Laboratory at TIFR, also confirmed his participation. "I will be talking about cutting-edge research done by our lab in New Computer architecture and hardware accelerator for computational algorithms," said Karmarkar who worked with US-based Bell Laboratories for 15 years before shifting back to Pune.

Home-lad Anand Deshpande, head of city-based Persistent Software Systems Limited (PSPL) has been given the task of explaining to the Microsoft team the availability of talent pool in the city.

Dan, the research Don

Daniel T Ling, currently Vice-President of Microsoft Research, Redmond at headquarters of Microsoft Corporation, Washington, is dedicated to basic and applied research in computer science. He contributes to the development of new technologies such as Microsoft.Net platform. A Stanford alumni, Dan was one of the founders of the Microsoft research laboratory after joining the company in March 1992. During his tenure, the Microsoft lab did research in areas such as networking, data mining, computer mediated collaboration, streaming media, devices and tools. Earlier, Ling was manager at the IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center.