Big Day for IISc

Yes, our Institute -- the Indian Institute of Science -- enters its Centenary Year today.

The year-long celebrations are being kicked off today, with the inauguration of the first of a series of Centenary conferences: Managing Complexity in a Distributed World. Christened MCDES-2008, this conference is organized by the Institute's Electrical Sciences Division which has under its wing the formidable departments of Electrical Engineering, Electrical Communication Engineering, and Computer Science and Automation, and the Centre for Electronic Design and Technology.

The inaugural lecture of MCDES -- The Foundations of a Digital Wireless World by Prof. Andrew Viterbi of the University of Southern California -- will also double up as the Institute's second Centenary Lecture. [I blogged about the first Lecture by Prof. C.N.R. Rao].

The Centenary year will feature quite a few events -- conferences, public lectures, focused seminars, and panel discussions. If you are an Institute alumnus / alumna (or, if you know one), you'll be interested in the flagship event the year: The IISc Centenary Conference (13-16 December 2008).

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Among the newspapers, the Hindu carried an op-ed piece by Gopal Raj to mark the Centenary Celebrations with a focus on the Institute's pre-history.