Computer Science a unifying science

Volume 5, Issue 2 September 2012

Editors Column
The sky today is azure, The sun warm and golden A filigree of light and shadowplay Through the gently swaying trees. I clean my brushes, Choose my palette

By Prof. Sandeep Sen

The IT revolution is likely to have a more profound impact on the future of our civilization than even the Industrial Revolution. In a short span of approximately 40 years, it has transformed our lifestyles and thought processes in a way that is comparable to any science fiction. The area of Computer Science, is the driving force behind IT which has rapidly matured into an independent research area that has influenced many traditional engineering and science subjects including Mathematics. The B.Tech programs and to some extent the MCA programs in Computer Science focus on the problem solving paradigms rather than use of specific software like excel sheets or power point . In fact the emphasis is on understanding the principles behind designing of such complicated software. One of the most striking and unique features of the software industry is the rapid pace of changes (aka software upgradation). There are two primary reasons for this. One, complex software is prone to containing errors that must be corrected as they get For many of us, Computer Science discovered and second, improved is synonymous with Googling on features are incorporated on a conInternet Explorer/ Mozilla/Chrome tinuous basis. There is no ultimate or preparing a power-point presen- software as there is always scope tation or preparing an excel docufor improvement. Likewise, the ment. Incidentally, the notion of situation in the hardware world is computation has been in existence no different. The complex elecmuch longer than computers or tronic circuits that drive the softComputer Sciware and packence. Compuaged in miniaWhat Computer Science has tation is synachieved is the integration of diverse ture sized chips onymous with are also underfields of knowledge and has expeAlgorithms going tremendited progress tremendously which is the dous changes. common thread of Computer Science. An algo- One must understand the basic rithm is a well defined formal strat- technology starting from electrical egy for solving a given problem, circuits to device level Physics to be including the way we were taught able to sustain this continuous deto do basic arithmetic operations velopment. Most of the hardware like addition, multiplication and design itself is guided by very sodivision. All the constructions of phisticated software. That complane geometry including bisecting pletes the cycle - software runs on an angle are classical examples of hardware that is itself designed with algorithms that go back more than software. This process of bootstrapa thousand years. Although the ping has been a powerful mechanotion of algorithms is quite old, nism for technological advances the formal theory behind it has throughout the history of mankind. been one of the core contributions What Computer Science has of Computer Science and is rooted achieved is the integration of diin Logic and Mathematics. Pro- verse fields of knowledge and has grams, or more generally software, expedited progress tremendously. are implementations of algorithms It provides tools those are driving in some specific computer lan- innovations and discovery in every guage. The effectiveness of any field including Medicine and Socisoftware, in terms of speed and ology apart from Science and Engithoroughness, is largely dependent neering. The underlying principle is on the efficiency of the underlying the algorithmic process that natualgorithms. In summary, Com- rally models human behavior. puter Science exemplifies problem Some of the most tantalizing probsolving using computers which is not only intellectually challenging lems being pursued with the help of Computer Science include decoding but the problems are motivated by DNA sequences, reliable weather real applications. prediction, and design of intelligent

CSE Newsletter
Inside this issue:

Of vibrant, living colors, And begin to fill Todays blank canvas (~ John McLeod) Each new session is a blank canvas for us to fill with memories of moments of joy, success, growth and a hope for future. As we move ahead in this session, let us have a break and take an overview of the growth of the department as a whole. This issue starts with an article discussing the progress and growth of Computer Science in general over the past few decades. In the subsequent columns, we also discuss various departmental activities like Hack U!, Freshers Welcome as well as Open House. This year, being the centenary of Alan Turings birth is special for Computer Science community all over the world, and we discuss some of the events organized in honor of the legend. When we talk of Alan Turing, another name that comes to our mind is Alonzo Church (Church Turing Thesis). In his remembrances we also discuss the life of Alonzo Church. An interesting project article, poem and crossword are some of our regular features which continue as usual. All this and much more follows as you turn the pages of this issue.

Computer Science-a unifying science Project article Personality Profile Newsflashes ACM Turing Centenary ACM DSP Open House 2012

Brought out by ACM STUDENT Chapter

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6 7 8

ACM a plethora of activi- 9, 10 ties Fun Section 11,12

Aditi Kapoor, Chief Editor

Computer Science a unifying science (continued...)

robots. Like every science, it has the malevolent facets leading to ethical and moral debate. There is a (relatively benevolent) race amongst nations to develop more powerful computers and preventing others from acquiring them which has some similarities to Nuclear Arms development. Having easy access to information can lead to serious compromise of privacy and would render financial / banking software completely vulnerable. Therefore security is an important subarea of Computer Science where the scientists and mathematicians are rediscovering the intriguing theory of ciphering and deciphering. The primary difference between programs that focus on IT (as opposed to Computer Science) is the emphasis on the applications and deployment of computers rather than design. There is more scope for interdisciplinary collaboration. One such very challenging area is human cognition including vision and speech. It requires sophisticated techniques ranging from linguistics, signal processing, optics and neuroscience. The underlying connection of these diverse knowledge domains is algorithmic. These will continue to be pursued by many researchers for many years to come. One of the direct challenges facing Computer Science is to develop computers based on radically different technology like quantum mechanics, or biological synthesis. To make contributions to such esoteric areas of knowledge, a B.Tech is only a qualifying degree. One must be prepared to pursue a Ph.D. which can be in any of the diverse areas that have been mentioned before. It is said that the deeper you investigate in different areas, the more unified they appear.

An interesting project article: Experience with Heterogeneous Clock -Skew based Device Fingerprinting
Swati Sharma
Student : Swati Sharma Supervisor : Prof. Huzur Saran Publication Details : S. Sharma, A. Hussain, H. Saran, Experience with Heterogenous Clock-Skew based Device Fingerprinting, LASER 2012 (Learning from Authoritative Security Experiment Results), Arlington, Virginia, July 2012. Introduction : Clock skew based fingerprinting allows uniquely identifying a physical device on the network. Device identification and tracking has numerous applications. For instance, some of the major applications amongst others include computer forensics and attack attribution, monitoring active hosts in the network and intrusion detection for all these active hosts once their normal behavior has been established. Host identification today can be done at many layers of the network protocol stack. Traditionally, unique host identification has been done by using the MAC addresses or static or dynamic IP addresses. Alternative strategies for host identification depend on difference in host's response to non-standard and standard packet types. Typically, these can be broadly classified as operating system fingerprints, browser fingerprints, MAC sequence numbers based fingerprints, active behavioral fingerprints and fingerprints from other iden-tification parameters from the packet headers at the Physical, Data Link, Network & Transport Layers. Clock skew based fingerprint identifies a device based on the negligible shift in system clocks and hence, provides a robust hardware dependent method of identification. Background : Clock skew based device identification was introduced by Kohno et. al. in 2005. This technique utilized a constructive exploitation of the shift in system clock, to identify devices uniquely. Prior to this ap- proach, Moon and Paxson showed that clock skews were only a source of distortions in network measurements and accuracy in network protocols and network measurements necessitated synchronization of clocks for all devices in the network. Contributions : The contributions of this work are: Validation of the clock-skew based fingerprinting approach put forth by Kohno in 2005. The maximum error threshold we observed in the clock skew under all investigation parameters was 0.3 ppm. Systematic evaluation of the stability of clock skew based device fingerprint and the factors influencing it in a heterogeneous environment. During the nine month experimentation period, we fingerprinted and tracked 162 devices by performing a multi-dimensional comparison of factors influencing clock skews. These dimensions were (a) measurement techniques, (b) target host measurement environments, and (c) target host configurations. Exploring the feasibility of heterogeneous target identification in modern networks. We found that the skew pattern for the desktops and laptops was very different than that of the handheld devices. We observed skew jumps in the handheld devices caused by changes in the ambient temperature and power state of the device, suggesting a thorough investigation into it. Identification of factors affecting device's clock skew. The deviations from Kohno's measurement techniques included modifications in ICMP timestamp collection process, variable length measurement intervals between timestamp collections, operating temperature variations at target devices, power source variations from batteryPage 2

An interesting project article: Experience with Heterogeneous Clock -Skew based Device Fingerprinting (continued...)
backed to AC power operated, variations in operating systems on same target device, variations in system state, device configurations, network conn ectivit y and vantage points while calculating the skew estimate of a target device. Methodology : A clock's skew is defined as the first-order derivative of its time offset with respect to the true time or the reported time of another clock. This can be interpreted as the time difference between two machines for every second of true time that elapses and is measured in ppm (parts per million). This is shown in the figure. X -axis shows the observed offset between the target device and measurement point while the y-axis shows the time at the measurement point. The precision of the skew calculation lies in the accurate extraction of system time generated by the oscillator frequency. TCP timestamps from the TCP header and ICMP timestamps from the ICMP timestamp response header provide the adequate granularity for this purpose. TCP timestamps were captured from TCP communication taking place between the main server and clients, while for ICMP timestamps, the server initiated communication in the form of ICMP Timestamp Request mesgerprinting technique in a moderate size, heterogeneous device network. Specifically, we explore the feasibility of device identification on a network comprised of 152 desktops and laptops, 48 virtual machines, and 10 handheld devices and demonstrate that to achieve an error-free and stable clock skew estimate at least 70 timestamped packets must be captured from a target device. The introduction of batch ICMP mode helped improve the accuracy of the skew estimation algorithm and reduced the maximum observed error threshold to 0.3 ppm. The clock-skew was evaluated across measurement methodologies, target device environments and target device configurations. Our findings indicate that the skew estimate is affected by power state of handhelds, regular NTP updates in desktops, and the capture duration.

sages and extracted the target machine timestamps from ICMP Timestamp Response messages. We then measure the effect of several investigation parameters under the dimensions mentioned above for our set of heterogenous devices. For each of these investigation parameters we calculate the clock skew of the device with respect to multiple measurement points in the network repetitively for a duration of 9 months. A summary of our observations is provided in the tables given below.

Future work involves exploring the effect of drastic ambient temperature changes on the target device clock skew and the reason for the 1 ppm skew jump with change in the handheld power source. There do exist countermeasures that an adversary can take to escape unique identification, by tampering with the timeConclusions : We present an exten- stamp values inserted in ICMP and TCP sive systematic evaluation of the sta- packets or by playing with the abovebility of clock skew based device fin- mentioned factors that may affect the clock skew estimate. The only possibility to thwart such a countermeasure is to club the clock skew based fingerprint with another parameter and combine their results to provide unique identification .

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Personality Profile : Alonzo Church

proof of the Entscheidungs problem, which asks for a decision procedure to determine the truth of arbitrary propositions in a mathematical theory. This is Church was awarded the two-year Na- also known as Churchs Theorem. Yet tional Research Fellowship, which he another remarkable achievement of this spent visiting Harvard and then Gottin- gentleman would be what is known as the Lambda-calculus today. The Churchgen (in Germany) and Amsterdam. He was invited to return to Princeton to Turing thesis about the effective calculabegin his academic career, and he spent bility of functions is a cornerstone in a major part of his life in Princeton computability theory. thereafter. Early in his career, Church Alonzo Church had the polite manners put together A Bibliography of Sym- of a gentleman who had grown up in bolic Logic - nothing less than a com- Virginia. He was never known to be Alonzo Church, the father of Lambda plete annotated bibliography of every rude, even with people with whom he Calculus, was born in Washington, D.C., publication in symbolic logic up to that had strong disagreements. A deeply relion June 14, 1903, to Samuel Robbins time. Thus it would be an understate- gious person, he was a lifelong member Church and Mildred Hannah Letterman ment to say that he had a complete fa- of the Presbyterian church. In his habits Church. His father, Samuel Robbins miliarity with the literature: he had he was very careful and very deliberate. The students in his classes Church, was a Justice of the Muwould discover this on the nicipal Court of the District of Columbia, until failing vision and I was generally interested in things of a fundamen- first day, when they saw how hearing compelled him to give up tal nature. As an undergraduate I even published a he would erase a blackboard. that post. The family then had to minor paper about the Lorentz transformation, the The material he wrote out on paper (he did not type) was move to rural Virginia, where foundation of special relativity theory." often done in several colors Church and his younger brother of ink, sometimes colors grew up. Alonzo Church had an ~Alonzo Church. made by mixing bottles touncle (also named Alonzo Church) gether and always written in living in Newark, New Jersey, who was financially helpful to the family, tak- read, organized, and indexed (by au- his distinctive unslanted handwriting. He ing an interest in the children's education. thors and subject) that literature. Of was a master at using white-out fluid to An air-gun incident in high school left course, the literature was in many lan- eliminate imperfections. guages. Church not only had a wide Church blind in one eye. knowledge of modern languages; he Church passed away in Hudson, Ohio (where his son lived), on August 11, Despite the series of misfortunes, Church also had studied Latin and Greek. 1995. He was buried in the Princeton attended the Ridgefield School, a preparatory school in Connecticut, graduating in Princeton in the 1930's was an exciting Cemetery, where his wife and his parents 1920. After graduating from Ridgefield place for logic. There was Church to- had been buried. The legacy of his paSchool, he went to Princeton. He was an gether with his students Stephen Kleene pers was donated to the Princeton Uniexceptional student and published his first and Barkley Rosser. John von Neu- versity Library. paper while still an undergraduate stu- mann was there. Alan Turing, who had Sources dent. He graduated with an A.B. in been thinking about the concept of efmathematics, 1924 and then went on to fective calculability, came as a visiting 1. http://www.math.ucla.edu/~hbe/ church.pdf completing a Ph.D. degree in three years graduate student in 1936. He ended up (in 1927) under Oswald Veblen at Prince- writing his dissertation under Church. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Kurt Godel visited the Institute for Adton . Alonzo_Church vanced Study in 1933-34 (when he lecIt was while he was a graduate student tured on his then-recent incompleteness 3. http://quotetank.com/graduationthat, he married (1925) Mary Julia theorem) and 1935, before moving quotes/i-was-generally-interested-inKuczinski, who was training to be a there permanently. Since Church had things-27345.html nurse. (This in spite of the fact that his recently been to Gottingen and Amstersenior class had voted him the most dam, he knew personally almost every 4. https://www.princeton.edu/pr/ pwb/03/0505/7a.shtml likely to remain a bachelor - his hand- logician. some features notwithstanding! ). In the summer of 1924, Church stepped off the Churchs accomplishments are great. Compiled by : Aayush Goel However, he is best known for his
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curb and was hit by a trolley car coming from his blind side; Mary was a nurse-trainee at the hospital, where they first met.

Department News Flash

I. Visitors

Shweta Agrawal, UCLA, 16 April 2012 Prof. Satyajit Mayor , NCBS , 20th April 2012 Prof. Madhu Mutyam, IIT Madras, 26th April Dr. Julian M. Bass, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK, 8th June 2012 Sumeet Agarwal from Oxford University, 11th June 2012 Prof. Krishnendu Chakrabarty, Duke University , 5th July 2012 Prof. Inderjit Dhillon, UT Austin, 26th July 2012 Saikat Guha, MSRI, 7th August 2012 Dr. Ramesh Hariharan, Strand Genomics, 8th August 2012 Prof. Chandrajit Bajaj, The thUniversity of Texas at Austin, 9 August 2012 Dr. Steve Scott, CTO for Tesla business, NVIDIA, 9th August 2012 Prof. Kaleem Siddiqi, McGill University, 13th August 2012 Akshay Sundararaman (IRISA Rennes, France, 14th August 2012 Prof. Abhijit Chatterjee, School of Elect & Comp Engg, Georgia Tech, 16th August 2012 Prof. Richard Anderson, University of Washington, 27th August 2012 Dr. Balaji Raman (VERIMAG, France), 27th August 2012 Dr. Mausam, University of Washington, Seattle, 6th September 2012 II. Publications

th

ity of Prebisimulation for Timed Automata , International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV) 2012, Berkeley, California, USA: July 07-13, 2012

Rajesh Kumar Pal, Kolin Paul and Sanjiva Prasad. ReKonf: A Reconfigurable Adaptive ManyCore Architecture. In Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications (ISPA'12), Madrid, Spain, 10-13 July 2012 Adjacent Grid Block Selection (AGBS) kNN-Join Method. In: Proc. of 9th International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining (MLDM) 2012, 16-20 July, Berlin, Germany. Swati Sharma, Alefiya Hussain, Huzur Saran, Experience with Heterogenous Clock-Skew based Device Fingerprinting , LASER 2012 (Learning from Authoritative Security Experimentation and Results, Arlington, Virginia, US, 18-19 July 2012. Swati Sharma, Alefiya Hussain, Huzur Saran, Markov Model Based Experiment Comparison, Comsnets 2012 Shivendra Tiwari, Saroj Kaushik , Boundary Points Detection UsingAdjacent Grid Block Selection (AGBS) kNN-Join Method. In: Proc. of 9th International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining (MLDM) 2012,16-20 July, Berlin, Germany. Priti Jagwani and Saroj Kaushik, Defending Location Privacy using Zero Knowledge Proof Concept in Location Based Services, IEEE MDM 2012: 13th International Conference on Mobile Data Management held during July 23-26, 2012, Bengaluru, India Shivendra Tiwari and Saroj Kaushik, Extracting Region of Interest (ROI) Details using LBS Infrastructure and Web-databases, IEEE MDM 2012: 13th International Conference on Mobile Data Management held during July 23-26, 2012, Bengaluru, India

Vaibhav Jain, Anshul Kumar, Preeti Panda , Exploiting UML based validation for compliance checking of TLM 2 based models, Design Automation for Embedded Systems , Springer Netherlands, Vol 16, Issue 2, Pages 93 -113, 2012 Sonia Khetarpaul, S. K. Gupta, L. Venkat Subramaniam, Ullas Nambiar, Mining GPS traces to recommend common meeting points, IDEAS '12, 16th International Database Engineering & Applications Symposium, Prague, Czech Republic, August 0810, 2012 Piyus Kedia, Sorav Bansal, Deepak Deshpande and Sreekanth Iyer , Building Resilient Cloud Over Unreliable Commodity Infrastructure , IEEE Cloud Computing for Emerging Markets, Bangalore, Oct. 11-12, 2012 Chetan Arora, Subhashis Banerjee, Prem Kalra, and S.N. Maheshwari, Generic Cuts: An Efficient Algorithm for Optimal Inference in Higher , Accepted for Oral Presentation at ECCV 2012 to be held in Italy in October Smruti R. Sarangi, Partha Dutta, Komal Jalan, IT Infrastructure for Providing Energy-as-a-Service to Electric Vehicles , IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 3(2): 594-604 (2012)

III. Department Updates

Arun Kumar Parakh, M. Balakrishnan, Kolin Paul. Performance Estimation of GPUs with Cache. In Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium Workshop, IPDPSW12, pages 23782387, 2012
Shibashis Guha, Chinmay Narayan and S. Arun-Kumar , On Decidabil-

B. V. N. Silpa defended her thesis on 26th April 2012 Tanveer Afzal Faruqiue defended his thesis on 14th May 2012

IV. Awards

The team of Rudradev Basak, Nikhil Garg and Pradeep George Mathis, under the guidance of Prof. Naveen Garg, have secured 18th place in the ACM ICPC 2012 contest.
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ACM Turing Centenary Celebrations

The year 2012 is being observed as the Alan Turing Year world over to celebrate the life and scientific influence of Alan Turing on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. Alan Turing, born on 23 June 1912 in London, is often considered to be father of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. His contributions in different fields from computation, computing machinery, and artificial intelligence to mathematics, philosophy and theoretical biology have been monumental. Creation of first designs of stored-program computer, ACE and providing a formalization of concepts of 'algorithm' and 'computation' with the Turing machine are some of his landmark contributions in the field of computer science. His work in the field of mathematical biology, mathematical theory of computability and as a cryptanalyst for Britain during world-war II has also been influential. A number of events are being organized across the world throughout the year to celebrate Turing year with most of these events linked to places with special significance in Turings life, such as Cambridge where he studied as student from 1931 to 1934, Manchester and Bletchley Park where he worked on mathematical biology and cryptanalysis. ACM Delhi Chapter is also organizing a Turing centenary lecture in Delhi University on 29th September in honor of the same. A special event was organized by ACM from 15-16 June 2012 in San Francisco to celebrate the Turing Centenary . The event was centered around the ACM A.M. Turing Award winners. The ACM A.M. Turing Award is considered to be among the most prestigious awards in computing and has been in existence since 1966. The event was aimed at engaging researchers, academicians, students from all over the world in a conversation about the importance and direction of field of computing. The Technical Program included moderated panels and tion focused on, when a system innovation emanating from industry becomes an invention and when academic research becomes engineering. The panel on Turing computational model discussed its simplicity and effectiveness in development of computational complexity theory. The impact of ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), general-purpose computer proposed by Turing, on computer architecture and the architectural trade-offs considered in the past and present was also discussed. The panel discussion on Programming languages reinstated how the design of programming languages and their compile-time and run-time implementation are closely related, and are dependent on the underlying computational model. The panelists discussed the lessons learnt about language design and their application across different domains, user needs, and architectural frameworks. Panel discussion on Algorithmic Universe focused on the application of algorithmic way of thinking to the study of phenomena such as the cell, brain, and universe. Digital information revolution, in particular, theory and practice in securing, authenticating and maintaining the integrity of information; and roots of modern cryptography and current topics in this area was discussed in the panel on Information, Data, Security In A Networked Future which included Turing award winners Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir credited for RSA algorithm. The centenary celebration also included talks by eminent A.M. Turing laureates such as Edmund Clarke (2007 ACM Turing Award winner), Alan Kay (2003 ACM Turing Award winner), and Dana Scott (1976 ACM Turing Award winner). The conclusion of the event saw a special preview screening of drama documentary Codebreaker , a film on Alan Turings life and lasting legacy.

invited talks from select speakers and focused on Alan Turing's contributions, as well as the history, and the future of computing. Thirty-three Turing award winners including John Hopcroft, Richard M. Karp, Donald E. Knuth, Ronald Rivest and Adi Sahmir participated in the event which was also webcast live worldwide. The ACM Turing centenary celebration was organized by ACM and ACM SIGs with the collaboration of Microsoft, Intel and Google as corporate sponsors. The panelists discussed a wide range of topics from Turing, the man, to his vision of human memory. Some panelists shared their personal experiences with Alan Turing while others discussed the contributions of Turing in the in various fields, particularly, Artificial Intelligence (AI). The panelists discussed the ways in which AI theories and methods have influenced research on human cognition in behavioral sciences and neuroscience as well as scientific research in general. Driverless cars, Watson computer are some of the practical applications of AI techniques bringing machines closer to being intelligent. Panel discussion on Systems Architecture, Design, Engineering, and Verifica-

Compiled by : Parul Pandey Shukla

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human. ~Alan Turing
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ACM Distinguished Speaker Program

Biochip users (e.g., chemists, nurses, doctors and clinicians) and the biotech/ pharmaceutical industry will adapt more easily to new technology if appropriate design tools and in-system automation methods are made available. This lecture provided an overview of market drivers such as immunoassays, DNA sequencing, clinical chemistry, etc., and electrowetting-based digital microfludic biochips. It also discussed the details of CAD, design-for-testability, and reconfiguration aspects of digital microfluidic biochips. Synthesis tools were described to map assay protocols from the lab bench to a droplet-based microfluidic platform and generate an optimized schedule of bioassay operations, the binding of assay operations to functional units, and the layout and dropletflow paths for the biochip. The role of the digital microfluidic platform as a programmable and reconfigurable processor for biochemical applications was greatly highlighted. Finally, the speaker concluded with am enriching description of the dynamic adaptation of bioassays through cyberphysical system integration sensor-driven on-chip error recovery. About the Speaker: Prof. Krishnendu Chakrabarty received his B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1990, and the M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1992 and 1995, respectively. He is now a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. He is also a Chair Professor in Software Theory at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and a Visiting Chair Professor of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Chung Kung University in Taiwan. Prof. Chakrabarty is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Early Faculty (CAREER) award, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award, the Humboldt Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and several best papers awards at IEEE conferences. Prof. Chakrabartys current research projects include: testing and design-for-testability of integrated circuits; digital microfluidics, biochips, and cyberphysical systems; optimization of digital print and enterprise systems. He has authored 12 books on these topics, published over 400 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings, and given over 180 invited, keynote, and plenary talks. Prof. Chakrabarty is a Fellow of IEEE, a Golden Core Member of the IEEE Computer Society, and a Distinguished Engineer of ACM. He was a 2009 Invitational Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). He is a recipient of the 2008 Duke University Graduate School Deans Award for excellence in mentoring, and the 2010 Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University. He served as a Distinguished Visitor of the IEEE Computer Society during 2005-2007, and as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society during 2006-2007. Currently he serves as an ACM Distinguished Speaker, a Distinguished Visitor of the IEEE Computer Society for 2010-2012, and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (2012-2013). Prof. Chakrabarty is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Design & Test of Computers and ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems. He is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, and IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. He serves as an Editor of the Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications (JETTA). In the recent past, he has served as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems and IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I.

Speaker: Prof. Krishnendu Chakrabarty (Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University ) Title: Digital Microfluidic Biochips and Cyberphysical Integration: A Vision for Functional Diversity and More than Moore Abstract: Advances in droplet-based digital microfluidics have led to the emergence of biochip devices for automating laboratory procedures in biochemistry and molecular biology. These devices enable the precise control of nanoliter-volume droplets of biochemical samples and reagents. Therefore, integrated circuit (IC) technology can be used to transport and transport chemical payload in the form of micro/nanofluidic droplets. As a result, non-traditional biomedical applications and markets (e.g., highthroughout DNA sequencing, portable and point-of-care clinical diagnostics, protein crystallization for drug discovery), and fundamentally new uses are opening up for ICs and systems. However, continued growth depends on advances in chip integration and design -automation tools. Design-automation tools are needed to ensure that biochips are as versatile as the macro-labs that they are intended to replace, and researchers can thereby envision an automated design flow for biochips, in the same way as design automation revolutionized IC design in the 80s and 90s.

Compiled by : Aditi Kapoor

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Open house: I2Tech 2012

The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi hosted the I2tech-2012, annual open house on April 21, 2012 to exhibit an extensive collection of innovative research and product development projects to technology enthusiasts, school students and students from other institutes, industries and general public. The one-day event was aimed at providing insight into the ongoing research, student projects and advanced facilities available in the various laboratories. Continuing the tradition of past seven years, the event was successful in providing a platform for young minds to learn about the current research at IIT-Delhi. Nearly 400 projects were on display at the event which saw a huge turnout of around 2000 visitors including various school and college level students as well as families of students. The projects showcased the ongoing research in different departments like Biochemical and Biotechnology, Computer Science, Chemical, esting projects were on display. Fabric Physics, Rural Technology Department feel tester, an interesting innovation which and others. can accurately inform whether the fabric is real or not. Responsive Camouflage textile, The event started with a welcome address capable of making the color of textile by Prof. R. K. Shevgaonkar, Director, match the color of background at the touch IITD. Next, the much awaited RoboAna- of a button. Invoxel, a fun visual display lyzer workshop was conducted by Prof. S. medium and a blend of display technolK. Saha. Prof. Aditya Mittal delivered a ogy, virtual multi-dimensional imagery and multi-touch interaction on visual display. Besides these, projects which were exclusively directed towards enhancing human life, were also showcased These include: Indoor navigation system for visually impaired, technology for electrically enhanced needle -free (non-invasive) transdermal delivery of drugs and technology to restrict large scale damage caused by earthquakes among others. talk on Biological evolution and Prof. M. L. Gulrajani delivered talk on Art and Science of Nanocoloration. There were demos and live shows on Needle punched and non-woven & jacquard loom, hydrogen powered three-wheeler, a demo by robotic club etc. Numerous interAll in all, the event was a huge success in providing a common platform for bright innovators to showcase the latest research , in exchange of knowledge and ideas and in inspiring young minds at school level to learn about new innovations and research.
Contributed by : Parul Pandey Shukla

ACM, a plethora of activities : H5 DevCon (HTML5 Developers Conference)

HTML5 is a markup language with a significantly richer set of features than its predecessors. Playing music without plugins, rich input control such as date picker without javascript and offline data storage are some of the features of HTML5. With all major browsers aggressively supporting HTML5, it is all set to become the standard of the web. pointed out that HTML5 is the future standard of the web. It holds immense unexplored possibilities and potential for developing many web and mobile applications in an organized manner. With all the major browsers and websites modifying themselves to support HTML5, it becomes very important to Shwetank Dixit from Opera Solutions learn and master HTML5. threw light on the new age applications To make the students aware about the with HTML5 and CSS3 and their impor- With students and developers within true potential and myriad applications tance in the near future. According to him, and outside IIT attending the event in of HTML5, ACM IIT Delhi Student HTML5 is an excellent potential candidate large numbers, it was a big success. Chapter in association with Delhi Tech- as a development tool for cross-platform Abhishek, an IIT student who became nology Forum organized HTML5 De- applications due to its various APIs and part of the event pointed out that he veloper's Conference (H5 DevCon) at other features. Sameer Bhat of Adobe pro- found the event extremely useful while the IIT Delhi campus on 28th July. Mi- vided some important insights into how to gaining significant practical insights crosoft and Telerik were the sponsors develop and package mobile applications and asserted that he would like to attend with Phonegap.The event closed with a such events in future too. of the event. panel discussion on the topic "HTML5 in H5 was a full day event focussed on Compiled by : Pulkit Yadav real world". Vivek Goyal from Microsoft
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Web and Mobile Development related to HTML 5 & CSS 3. Apart from the lecture sessions, the students also had a platform to interact with and have their questions answered by the industry people. The star lineup of speakers from industry was an added attraction to the event.

ACM, a plethora of activities : Freshers Welcome

The ACM Chapter and along with its sister branch, Association of Computer Engineers and Scientists (ACES), kicked off the academic year with a fun -filled welcome session for the latest batch of enterprising UG and PG students of the department. The ACM Chapter also conducted its own freshers welcome, a technical orientation session to guide them through the labyrinths of the computing world. The success of these events was largely due to the energy and enthusiasm shown by the freshers. ACM and ACES Cultural Welcome Session: Beginning with an introduction about the role of ACM in a students life here at IITD, the various events and activities conducted by the ACM in the previous years and those to come were highlighted. After the introductions, the students and the organizers jumped into the days activities. All freshers were given an innovative questionnaire to fully express their creativity and stake claim to the coveted Mr and Ms. Fresher. The day saw them acting out impromptu dramas and dances based come session was more technical in nature, helping the freshers learn the nitty-gritty of the various tools at their disposal. Several members of the ACM team provided a number of invaluable insights, while also giving brief but informative demos. The topics covered included using Linux, Coding Competitions, Photoshop and Designing, Video Editing, Hacking, App Development, and Web Designing. Each topic was explained and the different softwares used were mentioned, followed by a quick demo, leaving the students to experiment and explore later on their own. They were also encouraged to make the fullest use of the ACM online forum in case of any issues. This ensured that the students got an in-depth over-view of all the software they are likely to encounter during their stay here at IITD. The session saw a packed audience with almost the entire batch turning up, and true to their geeky nature, they enjoyed themselves thoroughly, actively participating throughout the session making the event a resounding success!
Contributed by : Sai Praneeth

on themes given to them. The fun quotient was maintained high with the outstanding and hilarious performances. Finishing up the night with a dance party on the Bharti balcony, the energy which the refreshments and the loud music infused in everyone set the mood. Not even the moist weather could check the high spirits, in fact the rain and the absence of lighting added to the already groovy mood, setting this event firmly in the minds of everyone. ACMs Technical Welcome Session: The ACM Chapters Freshers wel-

ACM, a plethora of activities : Hack U!

lots of creative ideas and hacks, turning at students participating in theven for the the event into a grand success. first time. The event was organized by ACM IIT Delhi Student Chapter in collaboration with Yahoo! from 16th to 19th August. It kicked off with keynote speeches by Yahoo! India's VP Mr. Amit Dayal and IIT Delhi's Deputy Director Prof. S. N. Singh. Next came the warm up sessions. Before the 24-hour coding challenge, students had tutorial sessions on various technologies to be used during the competition. Yahoo! engineers made students familiar with various Yahoo! APIs and products like YQL, BOSS, etc that could be useful for the students in developing their hacks. These were especially aimed This was followed by idea discussion and brainstorming session when everyone sat down together to discuss their ideas and got feedback or any necessary help from Yahoo! team for their hack ideas. After various interesting tech talks, hacking tips and hands-on coding workshops, the 24-hour hacking marathon began on Saturday morning. All the teams started to transform their ideas into code, using the existing resources to come up with something new and purposeful - which is the basic idea of a hack.

After organizing two successful HackU's at IIT Delhi in the past, Yahoo! decided to see the IIT Delhi hackers in action again for the third time. Invariably, this time also, students showed a lot of enthusiasm and came up with

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ACM, a plethora of activities : Hack U ! (continued...)

The participants relentlessly carried on coding for the entire duration with amazing vigour and energy. With the excitement of creating something new in a given time frame, sleep was nowhere to be seen! Refreshments and drinks were also provided to the participants during the entire coding session. Finally, after the coding round, teams presented their hacks, which was followed by the selection of winners and prize distribution. The event turned out to be immensely popular with students from nearly all years and disciplines becoming a part of it. A total of 35 hacks were registered out of which 28 were finally presented by the teams. Top 5 teams walked away with exciting prizes while Tshirts and participation certificates were awarded to all the participants. The complete event lasted for a total of 4 fun-filled days of learning, creating and coding and was enjoyed by all. Consequently, it received many accolades from the Yahoo! team which left the campus with a promise to see the IITD hackers again in future with new exciting hacks and ideas !
Compiled by : Pulkit Yadav

ACM : A plethora of activities

identified a concern at the school level in terms of lack of knowledge of school students towards Computer Science and its various fields. Most for example, are as yet not able to distinguish between Computer Science and IT. We thus plan to spread awareness about the In session, we have already organized a same. Also, we are now committed to few such events including an HTML5 cultivate a culture of Good Coding in Developers Conference (H5 DevCon) the department, something which is that saw participation from not only more about practice than course knowlwithin the institute but also from the More recently, we helped Yahoo! organize edge. The emphasis will be on competiadjoining regions. There were speakers from the industry, from companies like an even more successful version of the tive coding. Microsoft, Telerik, Opera, etc. The top- much awaited Hack U legacy. Just like ics covered were extensive with quite a last year, people were very enthusiastic This new academic session has just bit of emphasis on the new technologies about the event and the hacks developed started, and the ACM student chapter at such as HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery. were very innovative to say the least. A IIT Delhi is already making its presence Special focus was on mobile as a de- total of 28 out of the 34 registered teams felt across the campus. We are aiming successfully submitted their hacks, and for even bigger goals for the coming ployment platform. cool prizes like Hard-disks, Digital Cam- year! There will be something for everyone. So be sure to keep tabs on our This years talk as part of the ACM eras and I-pod Shuffles were given. website for events of your interest ! Distinguished Speaker Programme was given by Prof Krishnendu Chakraborty For the year ahead, we are planning to do Contributed by : Aayush Goel things a little differently. For one, we have Each year, ACM@IITD organizes various activities which bring out the fun side of computer science while educating the local community about latest trends and advancements in the field. on the topic Digital Microfluidic Biochips and Cyberphysical Integration: A Vision for Functional Diversity and More than Moore. He is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. This talk was largely aimed at the post-graduate or higher level students. ACM tries every year to bring the research at the cutting edge of technology to campus.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. ~Confucius
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Call for articles

As yet another session starts and the old team gives way to the new, what remains constant is that this is still your newsletter. The newsletter is for the entire department. Through this newsletter, we share news and views among ourselves. We take pride in presenting the work undertaken by our department as well as ACM in diverse fields to the world. Students are invited to get involved in the ACM Chapter activities by providing articles and as well as participating in the various upcoming events of the Chapter. Suggestions and inputs for the improvement of the newsletter are most welcome and contributions are invited from the faculty and students of the department. Contributions can be from any of the whole gamut of activities in the department like any special achievement, an admirable project, a publication or even the fun section material like jokes, cartoons, interesting facts or poems. You can also report any interesting workshops or talks taking place in the department. Contributory material can be given to any member of the Editorial Board or mailed at aditi@cse.iitd.ac.in.
Aditi Kapoor, Chief Editor

Fun Section: It will happen

It will happen when all pieces of your life will fall in place.... when all weathers will seem equally delightful, the sun will give comforting warmth and the cold winter chills pleasure, the rains will exhilarate and winds will tickle, the bloom will bring a spring in your step, and the fall will cushion your souls with the crunch of its leaves. When you will wake with a smile to start another day so beautiful but never be ready to sleep to end a day so dreamy and full when life will seem complete and with the present, no past will be able to compete A smile today, an eager step towards tomorrow Secrets to share, dreams to borrow When all music will seem as if made for you, when all dance steps will seem as if made by you, when art will flow out of your fingers onto the canvass so bright when ideas will write themselves into words so right
Contributed by : Aditi Kapoor

Will leave no place for sorrow

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you cant get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. ~IBM Manual, 1925
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B R O U G H T OU T B Y A C M STUDENT CHAPTER Sponsor ACM Student Chapter SponsorDr. S. Sarangi Newsletter Team inMagazine in-charge: Aditi Kapoor (aditi@cse.iitd.ernet.in) Assisted by ACM chapter members Aayush Goel Parul Pandey Shukla Pulkit Yadav (Photos in above order left to right)

Some tit bits

ACROSS : 5.An optimization technique often used in dynamic programming. 6.Beginners' All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code 9.The time 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970. 10.Who invented the ctrl+alt+del sequence? 13.What Linux command displays the last part of a file without editing it? 14.A computer program that translates source code from a high-level programming language to a lower level language, usually generating an executable. 15.Which Company invented the laptop? 16.Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim created this in 2005. DOWN : 1.The name of Google's recent augmented reality based product. 2.Conversational Hypertext Across Technology 3.What is a collection of computer instructions written using some humanreadable computer language called? (Also the name of a Hollywood movie) 4.Field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. 7.The data structure used in various string processing algorithms. 8.This hardware giant has recently been acquired by Google for $12.5bn 11.Which American company has recently become the most valuable company in American history surpassing Microsoft's record of 1999? 12.An Indian e-commerce company based in Bangalore, founded by IIT Delhi Alumni.

See the website in second week of October for answers!

Contributed by : Pulkit Yadav and Aayush Goel

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