Pune, October 20, 2003

Shri. S. Ramakrishnan took charge as the Director General of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) recently from Shri. R.K. Arora, who has completed his deputed term of five years at C-DAC. Shri. Ramakrishnan has been the Group Coordinator for Convergence, Communication and Broadband technologies in the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) before assuming charge as Executive Director C-DAC. He brings with him vast experience of a number of prestigious assignments as the National Y2K Coordinator during 1998-2000, Founder Project Director of ERNET, Director of National Centre for Software Technology and Head, Education, Research & Technology and Founder Director of Media Lab Asia.

The appointment of Shri. Ramakrishnan comes at a time when C-DAC has chalked out a renewed R & D agenda in the light of the merger of the three scientific societies of the Department of Information Technology, namely NCST, ER&DCI and CEDTI, Mohali with C-DAC.

Addressing members of C-DAC soon after taking over, Shri. Ramakrishnan expressed a keen desire to work with some of the best minds in R & D in India and exhorted C-DACians to continue to strengthen its Intellectual Property and strive to emerge as the premier institution for focused R&D in emerging technologies. 'C-DAC in its unified framework with its core strengths integrated should be recognized as an R & D institute for developing tomorrow's computing technology' he added.

Shri. Ramakrishnan was Founder Project Director of ERNET, the National Academic and Research Network, which brought Internet working into the country during 1986-96 as a collaborative effort with five IIT's, IISc, erstwhile NCST and DeitY. It is well known that ERNET pioneered many milestones in the field of computer networking. Over 800 institutions and 100,000 users were connected by 1996 before the initiative led to a society, ERNET India, in 1998 and was rated as one of the most successful UNDP projects in the world.

He handled a variety of development, coordination and promotional portfolios in telecommunications during 1976-1985 in the Department of Electronics. He was earlier a Design Engineer in Avionics Design Bureau, Hyderabad, for three years.

A B.Tech and M. Tech in Electronics from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras wherein he was a merit scholar and Siemens Prize winner, Shri. Ramakrishnan later did a PGDBA from MDI. He has traveled widely and has presented a number of papers. He is the Vice President and Governor of the International Council for Computer Communications (ICCC) registered in Washington D.C., USA. He has also been a member of IETE, IEEE and Internet Society.

Shri. R.K. Arora has moved back to the Department of Electronics and Information Technology and will now be spearheading R&D in Convergence in Telecommunication, Internet and Broadband Technologies, as also Media lab Asia, TDIL and other areas.

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