TGC speakers
From IIITM-k-wiki
Contents |
T.B. Dinesh
Technical Director, Janastu
Dinesh holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Iowa. He has worked on European research projects while at the Center for Mathematics and computer science in Amsterdam and has worked in the industry in the area of delivering educational content on the Web in Palo Alto, California. He has publications in the area of program slicing, rewrite systems, compilers, semantic web, and object-oriented languages. His current interests are in community-oriented computing.
He has been associated with the development of Pantoto Communities software that can used for community information management, with the goal of reducing software developer dependency in small organizations. This experience has resulted in interacting and understand various issues and needs of local community and small organizations.
Rene Ejury
Rene Ejury is a freelancer, teacher and consultant in the IT area with specialization on Free Software and Wireless Mesh Community Networks from Germany. Combining his knowledge in Software development, Computer engineering and social sciences he focuses mainly on the adaption of IT solutions to existing scenarios and the role of Free Software for bridging the digital divide. As a member of the German Chaos Computer Club he cares about privacy issues and social responsible IT usage.
Rene Ejury holds an engineering degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, where his main focus was the development of neuronal networks for similarity comparison. Realizing the importance of educational and social purposes for adapting IT solutions to existing scenarios, he additionally studied educational science at the Free University of Berlin, Germany and finished with a PhD in Philosophy. Publications hold in the area of social sciences and information technology, for instance about gender issues in information technology or IT requirement analysis for social projects. IT Publications are made in his role as the maintainer of free software projects. With 15 years of IT experience, his current focus is in the field of network administration, the development of free software for wireless networks and adaption of IT solutions for community networks.
After exploring possibilities of wireless networks in India last year, Rene Ejury lives now in Bangalore and works in cooperation with Janastu.org to establish Wireless Community Networks in rural India.
Rameesh Kailasam
Director of the ORACLE-HP India e-Governance Center of Excellence at ORACLE INDIA
RAMEESH KAILASAM is the DIRECTOR for ORACLE-HP INDIA E-GOVERNANCE CENTER OF EXCELLENCE at Oracle India. RAMEESH KAILASAM, under the aegis of the center, focuses on Administrative Reforms and e-governance issues in the region. He also advises governments on e-governance strategies, capacity building initiatives, proof of concepts and case studies that enable government departments in their e-Governance activities.
RAMEESH KAILASAM joined Oracle in 2004, as CENTER MANAGER for ORACLE-HP INDIA E-GOVERNANCE CENTER OF EXCELLENCE. Prior to joining Oracle, he has worked in various corporates & consulting firms. He was part of the Andhra Pradesh Government’s Centre for Good Governance under the Governance Reform Programme and also the Lead/supporting advisor in many prestigious reform projects for State Governments including World Bank and DFID. He has worked closely with governments for implementation of various reforms.
He has extensive field and sector experience in Consulting, Finance, Health, Education, Agriculture, General Administration, e-Governance and Local Government reforms.
He holds a graduate degree in Commerce. He is also a fellow member of Cost and Management Accountants of India, an MDP from IIM Kolkata and Certification on Community Information Centers, Public Information Centers from ADB Institute, Japan.
He has also authored and published many papers and reports for World Bank, DFID, International Development Department (IDD) of the School of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham, Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, Governance Resource Exchange etc.
Rameesh fluently speaks English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu.
He is a visiting faculty at the INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT (IIM) –KOLKATA on Public Financial Management Reforms and ICT in Government. He was also a visiting faculty at ICFAI SCHOOL OF FINANCE & MANAGEMENT, Hyderabad.
Abha Sur
Lecturer, Program in Women’s Studies & Program in Science, Technology, and Society MIT, Cambridge, MA
Abha Sur received her Bachelor and Masters degrees in Chemistry from the University of Delhi and her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, worked for several years in molecular electronic spectroscopy, and is now a lecturer in the Program in Women's Studies at MIT. Her current research is on caste, gender, and nationalism in modern Indian science. She was a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Harvard University and at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. Abha Sur is a long standing member of the Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, a Cambridge based organization that raises awareness about issues of social justice through seminars, panel discussions and cultural events in the area. She received the Peace and Justice Award from the City of Cambridge for her work with the Alliance and has been selected as one of the peace commissioners of the city.
Kavita Philip
Associate Professor, UC Irvine
Kavita Philip's research interests are in transnational studies of science and technology; feminist technocultures; gender, race, globalization and postcolonialism; environmental history; and new media theory. Her book Civilizing Natures (Rutgers University Press, 2004; Orient Longman 2003) explored the colonial politics of science, technology, and the environment in South Asia. She has also published in critical studies of information technology, and has advised graduate students in information design and technology. Her essays have appeared in the journals Cultural Studies, Postmodern Culture, NMediaC, Radical History Review, and Environment and History. She is co-editor, Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization (M.E. Sharpe, 2003), with Neil Englehart, Mahmood Monshipouri & Andrew Nathan; co-editor of Multiple Contentions (Radical History Review 2003) with Andor Skotnes; editor of Homeland Securities (Radical History Review 2005, recipieent of "Best Special Issue" award); and is co-authoring, with Terry Harpold, a forthcoming book entitled Going Native: Cyberculture and Postcolonialism.
Banu Subramaniam
Associate Professor, U Mass Amherst
Research Areas: Feminist Science Studies, Science Studies, Invasion Biology, Population Genetics, Postcolonial Studies. Banu's primary research interest lies in the relationships between gender, race, colonialism and science. Primarily trained as a biologist, I am interested in building bridges between the natural sciences and the social sciences and the humanities. Her current aim is to develop a "reconstructive" project for feminism and science. Woven across many disciplines and interdisciplines. Her work seeks to reconnect the worlds of "natures" and "cultures." By bringing together scholarship from women's studies, biological sciences, science studies, postcolonial studies, and ethnic studies, she is attempting to develop innovative academic practices, informed and shaped by experimental practice in the sciences, and feminist scholarship from the humanities and social sciences. Her numerous publications include coeditor, Feminist Science Studies: A New Generation. New York/London: Routledge, 2001; A Question of Variation: Gender, Race, and the Practice of Science (book manuscript in progress); co-author, "Global Circulations: Nature, Culture and the Possibility of Sustainable Development." In Development of Post-Development: Which way for Women and Development? Kriemild Saunders ed., Zed Books, London (forthcoming); author, "Imagining India: Religious Nationalism in the Age of Science and Devleopment." In Women, Culture and Development: Towards a New Paradigm. Priya Kurian, Kum-Kum Bhavnani, and John Foran eds. Zed Books, London (forthcoming); author, "The Aliens Have Landed! Reflections on the Rhetoric of Biological Invasions." Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 26-40, 2001; author "Technoscientific Imaginations." Forum on Women's Studies and Interdisciplinarity. Feminist Studies. Vol. 27, no 3, 2001, and many others.
Sainath Suryanarayanan
PhD Student, Zoology, University of Madison , Wisconsin
Sai is completing his PhD in Zoology, specializing in wasps. He has a strong interest in Science and Technology Studies, and will present work in progress about building bridges between STS and the practice of science, particularly drawing on his experience in field biology.
Rob La Frenais
Artist/ Technologist, Curator
Rob La Frenais is Curator of The Arts Catalyst, the UK's art-science agency founded in 1992. He has curated major installations, performance, technology and art/science commissions both in museums and public places since 1987, and has worked with many major international artists ranging through James Turrell, Marina Abramovic, Stelarc, Orlan, HR Giger, Linda Montano, Helen Chadwick, Mona Hatoum, Cornelia Parker, and the Residents as well as initiating over a hundred projects with emerging artists. He has directed major arts festivals in England, Scotland, Switzerland and Spain. Between 1979 -1988 he was the editor of Performance Magaine, an international cultural journal publishing over 70 issues. Between 1970 and 1979 he worked with video in both an art and a community setting. With the Arts Catalyst he has curated 'Atomic', a controversial show about art and nuclear materials, 'Gravity Zero', an ongoing collaboration between French space dancer Kitsou Dubois, the European Space Agency and Imperial College, London and the upcoming 'Searching' about art and SETI. He recently experienced weightlessness in a zero-gravity parabolic flight at the Yuri Gararin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City Moscow - possibly the first curator ever to float around in space! He is currently combining curating with doctoral research on performance and the scientific study of consciousness.
Rohan D’Souza
Associate Professor at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy
Rohan is a historian of India, and has recently published a book on Dams in India. He was awarded his PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He has worked on the technology of hydraulic manipulation in the Indian subcontinent. His publications and concerns range from issues dealing with environmental history, the political economy of nature conservation and history of technology. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University, University of California (Berkeley) and was a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex.
Esha Shah
IDS Research Fellow
Esha is an environmental engineer turned social scientist whose work involves anthropology and history of science and technology with special reference to agrarian development in India and risk and vulnerability of emerging, new technologies in developing societies.
