INDIAN CITIES: TALENT INFLOW-OUTFLOW Hyderabad attracts a lot of talent, mainly from Bengaluru.
talent, mainly from Bengaluru.
24848 Number of tech professionals willing to move out of/ into the city
16257
14472
14198
Delhi Mumbai
Why `8k-cr for quantum tech,
and what it means for techies
Quantum
technologies will
exponentially
increase computing
speeds, and will
impact every field
Swati Rathor & Habeeba Salim | TNN
T
he Union budget for 2020-21
presented on Feb 1 allo-
cated a humongous Rs 8,000
crore for quantum comput-
ing over five years. The govern-
ment said it would be used for a
National Mission on Quantum
Technologies and Applications.
The US, China and the Euro-
pean Union are all in a battle for
quantum superiority. In 2018, US
president Donald Trump signed a
law that earmarked $1.2 billion for
quantum research. Chinese presi-
dent Xi Jinping has committed bil-
lions of dollars for quantum com-
puting, including to establish a
Chinese National Laboratory for
Quantum Information Sciences.
China expects to achieve signifi-
cant quantum breakthroughs by
2030. India clearly does not want to
be left behind.
Why this race to quantum? It’s
the holy grail of the technology
industry. Quantum computing will
process data of mind-boggling
sizes in a few milliseconds, some-
thing a classical computer would
take years to do. Google recently
demonstrated the possibilities
when a quantum computer it built
called Sycamore performed a ran-
dom sampling calculation in three
minutes and 20 seconds, something
that it said would take today’s most
powerful supercomputer about
10,000 years to solve. IBM, whose
supercomputer Google had used to
perform portions of the same cal-
culation, later said that program-
ming tweaks would enable the su-
percomputer to do the calculation
Liberal arts stream
as crucial to tech
innovation as engg
Akhil.George@timesgroup.com
T
he idea that skills imparted
by a liberal arts education
don’t translate well to the tech
industry is a well-entrenched myth.
On the contrary, it has never been
more crucial.
In Scott Hartley’s book, ‘The
fuzzy and the techie’, a fuzzy is
someone who has a liberal arts
background while a computer sci-
ence or engineering graduate, natu-
rally, is a techie. Hartley expounds
in his book that it is the collabora-
tion between fuzzies and techies
that drive innovation and is behind
the success of Silicon Valley start-
ups and even behemoths like Goog-
le, where Hartley, a political science
major, worked.
IGNITE
YOUR CAREER
The importance of the ubiqui-
tous user interface (UI) is a case in
point, where a badly made, clumsy
UI can make or break the latest of-
ferings of tech companies.
“If you’re studying engineering
nowadays, you’re learning design
thinking and using methodologies
of sociology and anthropology for
user experience research,” Hartley
said in a 2017 ‘Talks at Google’
appearance.
Ravi Kothari, head of
the department of computer
science at Ashoka Univer-
sity, says questions on eth-
ics, creativity and emotive
aspects are all playing larger
roles in the conceptualisation
and design of technology products.
“With AI playing a mainstream role
in all activities of daily life (wheth-
er it be as an aid in clinical decision
making, resume screening or a fash-
ion recommendation) it becomes
important to ask questions related
to the fairness of AI algorithms and
questions related to ethics. Simul-
taneously, a natural question that
follows the unprecedented progress
in computer science is to ask if ma-
chines can be creative – can a ma-
chine compose music, or write a
novel, or create a painting. Answer-
32904
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14945
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WHAT COMPANIES MUST DO
P
rof Indranil Chakrabarty
of the Centre for Security,
Theory & Algorithms
(CSTAR) at IIIT Hyderabad,
says the first step that tech com-
panies interested in building
quantum solutions can take is to
set up a special interest group
(SIG) and start training their em-
ployees in this field by bringing in
academics. “As a follow-up pro-
cess, they should invest in provid-
ing quantum technological solu-
tions to various unsolved prob-
lems in the fields of security,
banking, healthcare. These re-
quire engineers (well-versed in
quantum computing and informa-
tion theory), physicists and math-
ematicians,” he says.
The other area of interest for
tech companies could be building
quantum computers on their own.
But this will require huge finan-
cial investment and expertise in
in 2.5 days. Either way, the differ-
ence is massive. And quantum is
still in its infancy.
In classical computing, machines
use binary code, a series of ones and
zeros, to transmit and process infor-
mation, whereas in a quantum com-
The researchers that
understand the problem
don’t get the tech, while
the people who
understand the
tech don’t know the
research
Ramesh
Loganathan |
PROFESSOR AND HEAD
OF RESEARCH
OUTREACH, IIIT-
HYDERABAD
We advise our teachers
to not just teach students
about tech but to also expose
them to creative thinking
to broaden their
perspective. Without
it, innovation is
impossible
G Vijayakumari
| DIRECTOR
J-HUB JNTU,
HYDERABAD
ing these questions requires a much
closer collaboration between tech-
nology and liberal arts,” he says.
Liberal arts is also essential in
other AI areas like chatbots. Ensur-
ing seamless human-machine inter-
actions requires sound semantic
analysis and empathy, best
provided by the liberal arts.
The ability to collabo-
rate with academia and
think critically is another
crucial factor, says Ramesh
Lo- ganathan, professor and
head of research outreach at
IIIT-Hyderabad. He said that
while there is quality research com-
ing out of Indian universities,
which get published in reputed
journals, there are very few solu-
tions and products that actually
come out of this research. “We
badly need creative and critical
thinkers, which the liberal arts gen-
erates in plenty, to tie up with re-
searchers and figure out use cases
for the actual people working in the
tech industry to boost innovation.
The potential use cases of new tech
is never obvious, “ he says.
INFLOW TECH I’D LIKE TO SEE
The distance between these two cities is the least,
hence making relocation an easier task
21117
13953
Hyderabad
© Gettyimages
the field of experimental physics.
Chakrabarty points out that
theoretical work in quantum com-
puting requires expertise in quan-
tum mechanics, linear algebra,
theory of computation, informa-
tion theory and information secu-
rity. He says skills such as quan-
tum algorithms, quantum cryp-
tography and programming are
required for the development of
algorithms and protocols to pro-
vide quantum solutions for exist-
ing challenges in the fields of se-
curity, privacy and healthcare.
Building a quantum comput-
er will require a different kind
of expertise – “in handling sys-
tems like optical lattices, quan-
tum dots, nuclear magnetic reso-
nance of molecules in solution,
superconducting qubits, trapped
atoms coupled to high-finesse
cavities and several other physi-
cal systems.”
puter, it is qubit (a quantum bit) that
enables the communication.
“A qubit can be in the states of
zero and one, but it can also be in a
combination of these two states (su-
perposition). The state space in a
quantum is exponential. As you in-
CELEBRATING INT’L DAY OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE
UNESCO data shows only around 30% of all female students select STEM-related fields in higher education. Till 2019, only
53 women have been awarded the Nobel Prize against 866 men, and of the women, only around 20 have won it in the fields
of medicine/physiology, chemistry and physics. The UN adopted Feb 11 as the International Day of Women and Girls in
Science to end the gender imbalance in science. On this occasion, here are three enormously talented women researchers/
technologists in the Bengaluru centre of Siemens Healthineers, the €14-billion medical tech company
Nachamai M
DATA SCIENTIST
Holds a PhD in AI. She developed
proficiency in model-building
particularly in computer vision,
pattern recognition, cognitive
modeling, neural networks
and data representation. She
owns two patents and has 50
publications in international
journals and conferences like
ACM, Elsevier and IEEE
I’m proud to say that women comprise 30% of our R&D workforce in India and they are doing some
exceptional work. This International Day of Women and Girls in Science, I urge talented women in
STEM to make a difference by solving the global health challenges of the 21st century
– Gerd Hoefner | MD, SIEMENS HEALTHINEERS
Learn math, it’s at the core of today’s tech
Arpita.Misra@timesgroup.com
M
ath is the foundation of
computer science and In-
dia should focus much
more on rigorous math training,
right from the high-school level,
says Prof Yadati Narahari, who
teaches computer science (CS) and
automation at Indian Institute of
Science (IISc). Math, he says, has
become the bedrock of everything
that is currently happening.
“If one wants to become a de-
signer of new tools, an architect
of new sensational products, cre-
ate new knowledge, and prove fu-
ture theorems, then math and
conceptual foundations are the
key,” he says.
28245
Bangalore
crease the number of qubits, the
number of states available goes up.
And that’s the value it provides,”
says Shesha Shayee Raghunathan,
advisory R&D engineer and Q Am-
bassador at IBM.
Marc Carrel-Billiard, senior
managing director at Accenture
Labs and Accenture Extended Real-
ity, says the quantum computing
revolution will drive a definitive
transformation in how innovation
is accomplished in the enterprise.
He said Accenture is helping clients
understand the future potential of
this new computing power and has
developed more than 150 use cases
globally across various industries
where quantum computing will
bring breakthroughs in solving
problems that couldn’t be solved in
the past. “We’re also helping to guide
business experimentation and build-
ing quantum-enabled applications
that create new sources of competi-
tive advantage,” he added.
Intel Labs in December 2019 un-
veiled what is believed to be a first-
of-its-kind cryogenic control chip
— code-named Horse Ridge — that
will speed up development of full-
stack quantum computing systems.
Jim Clarke, Intel’s director of quan-
tum hardware, had said during its
launch that there had been a lot of
emphasis on the qubits themselves,
but the ability to control many qu-
bits at the same time had been a
challenge for the industry. “Intel
recognised that quantum controls
were an essential piece of the puzzle
we needed to solve in order to de-
velop a large-scale commercial
quantum system,” he said.
Chennai-based startup Quan-
tica Computacao’s founder and
CEO Bhagvan Kommadi says the
company has started providing
quantum AI solutions to trading
and wealth management custom-
ers. “IBM, Google, and Microsoft
are providing quantum OS (operat-
ing system) and SDK (software
development kit). We look to pro-
vide quantum cloud services
soon,” he says.
Divya Choudhary
DATA SCIENTIST
Holds a Master’s from IISc,
specialising in business analytics
and technology management.
Previously at Infosys, she
worked on tools that predicted
oil production from oil wells.
At Siemens, she takes cues
from the problems faced in the
financial industry and applies
them to the healthcare industry
HEAR THE PROF
Narahari, chairman of the di-
vision of electrical, electronics,
and computer sciences at the world
renowned institute in Bengaluru,
says theoretical computer science
is essentially math, and subjects
such as probability, statistics, lin-
ear algebra, graph theory, combi-
natorics and optimisation are at
the heart of artificial intelligence
(AI), machine learning (ML), data
science and CS in general. At IISc,
CS students are required to take
mandatory math courses as part
of their research preparation.
“This is very crucial to maintain-
ing the rigour and quality of re-
OUTFLOW
13359
32904
Chennai
Source: Catenon
With quantum computers,
classical computers will
not go away. For the foreseeable
future, the model will be a
hybrid one. You’re going to have
a classical computer where
everything happens. You will go
to a quantum computer to solve
certain coordinates of a
problem and get the
result back from the
classical computer
Shesha Shayee
Raghunathan
| ADVISORY R&D
ENGINEER AND Q
AMBASSADOR, IBM
While this hyper-disruptive
technology is still in its
infancy, it’s advancing quickly
and organizations should be
thinking seriously about what it
means for their industry and their
company. Early adopters will have
a significant edge over those who
take a wait and see
approach
Marc Carrel-Billiard |
SENIOR MD, ACCENTURE
LABS AND
ACCENTURE
EXTENDED
REALITY
In IISc, there is an active
group emerging in various
aspects of quantum technologies.
It is spread over multiple
departments such as physics,
instrumentation, nanoscience
and engineering, electronics &
communications, and computer
science. In computer science,
IISc is looking to recruit faculty
members in quantum computation
at high priority. Currently we have
ongoing work in post-quantum
cryptography, and our 3-5-year
plan includes developing at least
8 qubit quantum superconducting
transmon processors
Yadati Narahari | PROFESSOR, COMPUTER
SCIENCE AND AUTOMATION, IISC
Nivedita Mitra
SENIOR KEY EXPERT
Holds a PhD from IISc, where she
worked towards understanding
why proteins are shaped a
certain way and how they
interact with other molecules.
She later went to UC San Diego,
department of medicine, for
investigating the role of certain
immune proteins in evolution
and disease, including cancer
DON’T STUDY ONLY FOR A JOB
Rigour and depth in learning should never be
compromised. You join IISc because you want
to become a leader, whether in academics or
industry or startups. Never settle for a comfort zone by
focusing only on job-oriented learning
Yadati Narahari | PROFESSOR, COMPUTER SCIENCE
,
AND AUTOMATION IISC
search,” says Narahari.
Last year, IISc introduced an
MTech programme in AI. It re-
ceived 1,600-plus applications for
just 40 seats, a measure of the way
the wind is blowing. “A large num-
ber of students are interested in
Master’s in computer science,”
says Narahari. However, in his
observation, an average engineer-
Teleportation is no longer fantasy
I f driverless cars are going to
disrupt travel and other
industries, then the ultimate
disrupter will be teleportation.
Teleportation converts you on a
subatomic level, transports and
creates a perfect copy, deleting
the original you. The
possibilities with this are
endless. You could save
days on travel, you
could wake up
stronger and younger.
There’ll be drastic
reduction in usage of
fossil fuel and overall
pollution – there
would be no buses,
cars, bikes – just people
zapping in and out of
thin air.
The last
Srikanth Iyer | CO-FOUNDER & CEO, HOMELANE
Making bookings
on airlines like
buying on Amazon
Sujit.John@timesgroup.com
O
n Flipkart and Amazon,
you would put something
in your shopping cart, you
might then take it out if you felt
you didn’t need it or the price
wasn’t right, and sometimes you
might put it back again. The
checkout process is seamless if
you have saved your credit or
debit card details on the site.
Airline seat bookings don’t
happen the same way. You can’t
put a seat into a cart. If you don’t
book a seat the first time, the
next time you will have to do the
search all over again. Many sites
don’t allow you to save your pay-
ment card details.
THE GURUS
“But customers today expect
the airline systems to behave
like a retail system on the inter-
net,” says Denis Lacroix, head
of core shared services and
member of the executive com-
mittee of travel technology com-
pany Amadeus.
So Amadeus and airlines are
working towards building such
systems. “We are trying to evolve
the entire buying process closer
to the way people use Flipkart or
Amazon. Much more natural,”
Lacroix says. It won’t be exactly
the same, because the seat on a
flight is a perishable product. It’s
not something that can stay in a
cart for a few weeks while you are
figuring out whether you are go-
ing to buy it or not. And the price
could change significantly while
in the cart. But the attempt is to
make the whole experience “a lot
more seamless.”
Lacroix says efforts are also
on to remove other areas of fric-
tion. When he flew into Bengal-
uru, there were multiple planes
landing at the same time, which
meant long queues at the immi-
gration counters. And though he
has been coming to India twice
every year for the past 20 years,
it’s still like the immigration
systems don’t know him, trust
him. In Paris, where he boarded,
he had to show his passport
thrice at different places.
“We are looking at how to
solve these problems, to take the
pain out of travel, using biom-
etrics, may be face recognition
ing graduate who comes for an
interview to IISc is often found to
be wanting in analytical and
mathematical foundations. “This
is happening at the BE/BTech
level, where foundations, scien-
tific conceptual details and prob-
lem-solving aren’t being given the
kind of importance they require,”
he says. And lack of quality fac-
decade ended with a
breakthrough in this
technology. Researchers from
the Austrian Academy of
Sciences and the University of
Vienna have experimentally
demonstrated what was only a
theoretical prospect before.
Together with physicists from
the University of Science and
Technology of China, they
have succeeded in
teleporting photons of
data from one
computer chip to
another. This is just the
beginning, but it holds
possibilities which
fundamentally change
the way we
think about
many things.
Denis Lacroix & Magali Viano | Amadeus
BIGGER RISK,
BIGGER SUCCESS
Amadeus’s Bengaluru R&D centre
has been at the centre of some of
the biggest projects the company
has done in recent years. Lacroix
says from the centre’s inception
in 2007, it has taken on some
really risky projects. Magali
Viano, director of people
and culture for key Amadeus
sites, says though the centre
started with more experienced
people, it now has a strong
campus hiring programme. It
is 2,100 strong now. She says
the biggest differentiator here
has been gender diversity.
“It’s much better for women
in engineering here. We’re not
able to do that anymore in
Europe, or the US,” she says.
– a trusted identity that the air-
lines, airports and the govern-
ments would agree to. If planes
are delayed and many are com-
ing at the same time, we are
working to create a system to
ensure the airport authority
takes this into account and staff
up accordingly,” Lacroix says.
AI would be crucial in many
of these areas. It is already being
used in ticket booking and fraud
detection. “When someone is
looking at a route, the system
can figure out what kind of
flight they are looking for. So on
the screen, rather than putting
the cheapest flight at the top,
we’ll put the one that is most
sold,” Lacroix says.
ulty is a major reason for this
mediocrity.
“In a typical CS department of
an undergraduate engineering
college, the faculty members are
those who haven’t got jobs in the
IT sector and have hence settled
for teaching positions. This is the
story of most engineering col-
leges in India, except a select few
like the IITs, NITs and some other
standout institutions. But that
(latter) number is probably just
5% of the total count of engineer-
ing colleges,” he says. One solu-
tion, he thinks, could lie in mak-
ing the teaching profession more
attractive by offering remunera-
tion comparable to IT industry
pay packages.