VIRTUAL OBSERVATORY




People Involved


Profile of IUCAA

         The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) is an internationally known centre of excellence for research in astronomy, astrophysics and related areas. It has a faculty of 14 astronomers and many research students and post-doctoral fellows. Research in various branches of theoretical astrophysics, observational astronomy and instrumentation development are carried out in IUCAA. The Centre has more than 80 visiting associates from universities and colleges who spend significant periods of time in IUCAA, participating in the research and developmental activities.

         IUCAA has very well developed infrastructure and one of its high points is the state-of-the-art computer centre. This has about 50 sophisticated work stations and more than a hundred PCs for numerical computation, image processing, visualization and other computer applications. The computers are linked together by a fibre optic network. IUCAA is one of the important nodes of ERNET and is linked by three independent 2MBPS line to other nodes, and thus has high speed connectivity to research establishments spread all over India and the world.

         The computer centre at IUCAA has a data centre which was developed in situ, and also houses mirrors of very large astronomical databases and scientific literature. The academics at IUCAA and the computer centre staff are very skilled in the use and development of databases. IUCAA is now in the process of setting up a 2m optical telescope facility located about a 100 kms from Pune which will begin to generate data early in 2002.


J.V. Narlikar : Professor J.V. Narlikar is a distinguished astrophysicist and cosmologist of great international repute. He has made seminal contributions to these subjects. After spending many years at the University of Cambridge, England and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Professor J.V. Narlikar moved to Pune to set up IUCAA of which he has been the Director since its founding in 1988. Professor Narlikar has made important contributions to the planning and setting up of institutions, observatories and computing facilities. He has contributed immensely to the spread of research and teaching in astronomy and astrophysics in India. He is known for his involvement with the popularization of science in India and abroad.

Ajit Kembhavi : Professor Ajit Kembhavi is well known for his contributions to theoretical astrophysics and observational astronomy. After spending many years abroad and at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, he moved to Pune along with Professor Narlikar for the setting up of IUCAA. Professor Kembhavi has been responsible for the planning and development of the IUCAA computer centre and computer network, which is recognized as one of the best in the country. He is an expert in the use of computers for varied applications including data analysis and image processing. He has developed data centres and has been responsible for setting up the ERNET node at IUCAA.

Sarah Ponrathnam : Ms Sarah Ponrathnam is in-charge of the computer systems and network in IUCAA. She is a trained computer scientist with immense experience in computer programmes, software development, systems management and the setting up of networks and communication links. She has worked with a whole range of computer hardware, operating systems and applications. She has developed software for the management and use of large astronomical databases.

Profile of Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd.

         Persistent Systems Private Limited (http://www.persistent.co.in) is an 11-year old 350-person software development company located in Pune. Persistent Systems specializes in developing data infrastructure software and has developed such software for companies including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies, Informix, i2 Technologies, Engage Technologies etc. More specifically, Persistent Systems has developed data management components such as bit-vector indexes, query optimizers, ETL Tools, OLAP Tools etc. Persistent Systems' expertise in development of data management software would be beneficial to the development of data management software for astronomy databases.

         Persistent Systems proposes to contribute a team of four software developers at no cost to the Virtual Observatory project. As a Company, Persistent Systems has the expertise to develop and project manage software teams that would make a significant contribution to the project.

Profiles of some of the key individuals with data management experience:

Anand Deshpande: founder and Managing Director of Persistent Systems did his B. Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, did his M. S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indiana University, Bloomington where he worked on implementations for nested relational databases.. After a short stint in Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, California, he returned to India to establish Persistent Systems. Over the last 11 years Dr. Deshpande has been active in the database community in India.

Shridhar Shukla: He did his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Bombay in 1983, M.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech in 1985 and Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 1990. He worked as Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey California until April 1995 when he returned to India. Shridhar is involved in Workflow, Distributed Computing and Directory Services projects at PSPL.

T. M. Vijayaraman: He did an M.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Madras in 1976 and then joined National Centre for Software Development and Computing Techniques (NCSDCT) at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. Vijay worked in the Database Division of National Centre for Software Technology (NCST), Mumbai when NCSDCT became NCST an autonmous centre in 1986. He was a visitor to PSPL from 1997 April till he joined PSPL in October 1998. His areas of interests and work experience are in databases and object oriented systems

A. Balachandran: He did his B. E. from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1982 and his Ph.D. from IIT, Bombay in 1992. He worked with ORG Systems, Baroda and TRDDC before joining PSPL in 1994. Bala specializes in Database implementations, optimization, compiler implementations.