Infosys Science Foundation Organizes Public Lecture on 'The Latent Power of Absurd Ideas'

The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) in association with the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology - Delhi (IIIT-D), organized a public lecture  on 'The Latent Power of Absurd Ideas' aka 'Robust Query Processing' by Prof. Jayant Haritsa, Supercomputer Education & Research Centre and Chair of Department of Computer Science & Automation, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. The session was well attended by academicians and students from IIIT and neighbouring colleges.

This lecture is part of the Infosys Science Foundation Lecture series introduced in 2011, with an aim to popularize science and research in the country. ISF Lectures have gained great popularity within the research fraternity and intend to serve as a platform for young talent to stay informed about different fields of scientific research and studies, and inspire them to take up research as a career. The talk by Prof. Haritsa, winner of Infosys Prize 2014 for Engineering and Computer Science, is the tenth lecture in the current year’s series of public talks organized by the Foundation.

Prof. Haritsa’s talk aimed at highlighting how a pair of seemingly irrational ideas, operating in tandem, can substantively address the statistical estimation problem. The session witnessed an interactive discussion on the effective operations of "database engines", and the extremely complex and massive software systems that constitute the backbone of today's information-rich society.

Prof. Haritsa’s work lies at the intersection of database systems and data mining, with a focus on query processing across a range of database systems.He founded the Database Systems Lab at IISc in 1995 from which more than 80 students have completed their post-graduation. He received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award and Distinguished Scientist of ACM award in 2009 and the ACCS CDAC Foundation Award in 2013. He is a Fellow of IEEE, Indian Academyof Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering, and National Academy of Sciences, India.

About the Infosys Science Foundation

The Infosys Prize is awarded under the aegis of the Infosys Science Foundation, a not-for-profit trust instituted in February 2009. The Infosys Science Foundation is funded by a corpus which today stands at over INR 120 Crore, contributed by the trustees and Infosys.