Dr. Neha Sharma is a data science crusader who advocates its application for achieving sustainable goals, solving societal, governmental and business problems as well as promotes the use of open data. She has more than 22 years of experience and presently working with Tata Consultancy Services and is a Founder Secretary, Society for Data Science. Prior to this she has worked as Director of premier Institute of Pune, that run post-graduation courses like MCA and MBA. She is an alumnus of a premier College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneshwar and completed her PhD from prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Dhanbad. She is a Senior IEEE member, Secretary – IEEE Pune Section and ACM Distinguished Speaker. She is an astute academician and has organized several national and international conferences and published several research papers. She is the recipient of “Best PhD Thesis Award” and “Best Paper Presenter at International Conference Award” at National Level. She is a well-known figure among the IT circle, and well sought over for her sound knowledge and professional skills. Neha Sharma has been instrumental in integrating teaching with the current needs of the Industry and steering students towards their bright future. Dr. Amol C. Goje is a President of Society of Data Science and served as a Director, Vidya Pratishthan’s Institute of Information Technology (VIIT), Baramati, Pune for last 19 Years. He has a total of over Twenty Five years of experience in the field of Information and Computer Technology (ICT). He has developed many systems for the University. Dr. Amol’s main area of interest is to work for underprivileged people in the rural part of India. In his nineteen years as a Director, he has designed and implemented numerous path-breaking, innovative and cost effective solutions. Some solutions to name a few are – number of computer labs, which are economically sustainable to the rural schools and colleges. Dr. Amols’s main innovation is Computer Mobile Van. He has done lot of research work in Information Technology and its application for rural community. In appreciation to his exemplary work, Dr. Amol has received the Ashoka Fellow award in the year 2002. He is engaged as a Technical advisor on many government and non-government organizations. He was also a member of sub-committee of the Planning Commission, Government of India in Information Technology division. In his tenure as the Director at VIIT, he has organized 8 international conferences in Baramati under the aegis of Baramati Initiatives. Dr. Goje has received the Marathwada Bhushan Award for spreading the IT education to the masses. He is the member of the Working group on Agricultural Extension Constituted by Planning Commission government of India. He is key player in setting up the Community Training and Learning Centers (CTLC) in Mah arashtra. In this project, VIIT is providing Computer Training to the women from the Self Help groups (SHG). Dr. Goje has received the Manthan (AIF) award successively for two years in Year 2005 and 2006.Governemt of Maharashtra “Maharashtra IT award (IT HRD) in 2008. He is also the President of Community Radio Association (CRA) of India. Recently he has been bestowed with the honor of ‘Best Director’ of Pune University -2016-17. Currently he is a Chairman Board of Studies,Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune.Amlan Chakrabarti is presently a Full Professor and Director of the A.K.Choudhury School of Information Technology, University of Calcutta. He is an M.Tech. from University of Calcutta and did his Doctoral research at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He was a Post-Doctoral fellow at the School of Engineering, Princeton University, USA during 2011-2012. He is the recipient of DST BOYSCAST fellowship award in the area of Engineering Science in 2011, Indian National Science Academy Visiting Scientist Fellowship in 2014, JSPS Invitation Research Award from Japan in 2016, Erasmus Mundus Leaders Award from European Union in 2017, Hamied Visiting Fellowship University of Cambridge in 2018 and Shiksha Ratna Award from Govt. of West Bengal, in 2018. He is the Team Leader of European Center for Research in Nuclear Science (CERN, Geneva) ALICE-India project for University of Calcutta and also a key member of the CBM-FAIR project at Darmstadt Germany. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Center of Excellence in Systems Biology and Biomedical Engineering, University of Calcutta funded by MHRD (TEQIP-II). He has published around 150 research papers in referred journals and conferences and has graduated 10 Ph.D. students till date. He has been involved in research projects funded by DRDO, DST, DAE, MietY, UGC, Ministry of Social Empowerment, TCS, Intel India and TEQIP.. He is a Sr. Member of IEEE and ACM, Secretary of IEEE CEDA India Chapter and Vice President Society for Data Science. His research interests are: Quantum Computing, VLSI design, Embedded System Design, Computer Vision and Analytics.Professor Alfred M. Bruckstein, BSc, MSc in EE from the Technion IIT, Haifa, Israel, and PhD in EE, from Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA, is a Technion Ollendorff Professor of Science, in the Computer Science Department there, and is a Visiting Professor at NTU, Singapore, in the SPMS. He has done research on Neural Coding Processes, and Stochastic Point Processes, Estimation Theory, and Scattering Theory, Signal and Image Processing Topics, Computer Vision and Graphics, and Robotics. Over the years he held visiting positions at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, USA, (1987-2001) and TsingHua University, Beijing, China, (2002-223), and made short time visits to many universities and research centers worldwide. At the Technion, he was the Dean of the Graduate School, and is currently the Head of the Technion Excellence Program.
