Panel Discussion: Intelligent Technologies and Systems for Palm Leaf Manuscript Understanding

Dr. P. Ramanujan has held numerous professional positions such as the Director, Programme Co-ordinator, Language Computing Group at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Bangalore, India. Dr. Ramanujan presented DESIKA software, a Natural Language Understanding system for Sanskrit at Parliament Annexe, New Delhi. He has authored technical papers such as “Computer and Sanskrit research – national status”, "Computerization of Vedic Texts". His publications also include “Sapta Lakshana Parishkara”, a text related to subtle details regarding Vedic recitation of Krshna YajurVeda with a detailed commentary, computerised analysis, indices etc. in Devanagari script with Vedic accent-markers for the first time, the Vedic text “Shadvimsati Sutram” with detailed commentary and critical edition based on over 30 palm-leaf manuscripts in various scripts collected from across the country using a special-purpose computer-based manuscript editor for collation and editing. He has several awards to his credit. To mention a few, "VEDA VARIDHI" in 1988, by Veda Dharma Paripalana Sabha, Bangalore ; "VEDA VIJNANA SIROMANI" in 1997, "VAIDIKA BHUSHANAM" in 1998. He was conferred the degree “VACASPATI”, D.Litt. (Honoris Causa) from Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, New Delhi, Feb. 2001.

Dr. Mukul K Sinha is a Director at Expert Software Consultants Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. He has been active in the field of Computer Science and Language Processing since last 45+ years, in various dimensions, viz., research, academia, govt. policy making bodies, product development and consultancy services, etc. He has done research in the areas of Operating Systems, Distributed Databases, Software Engineering, Cloud Computing, Digital Preservation and Indic Languages Computing. He is and has been a member in various committees of Dept. of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India for many years, in the fields of Software R&D, Technology Development in Indian Languages (TDIL). Presently, he is the Chairman of Project Review and Steering Group (PRSG) on Long Term Digital Preservation, and North-east Cultural Heritage Project for DeitY. He is also the member of the Advisory Committee of Computer Informatics Laboratory (CIL) of Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi for last ten years. His company was associated with “Indian Language to Indian Language Machine Translation System (ILMT)” Consortium Project, as its Software Engineering Group. He is a Mentor of eBhasha Setu Languages Service Private Limited, Hyderabad, a Startup in the field of AI assisted Natural Language Processing (NLP) field since 2016. He is B.Tech from BIT Sindri, Bihar; M.Tech from IIT Kanpur; and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. He is a Senior Member IEEE Inc. since last 35 years, and has been nominated as a Senior Life Member from January 2021.

Dr. M A Alwar is an Assistant Professor of Nyaya Sastra and Professor In Charge at Govt. Maharaja’s Sanskrit College, Mysore (Constituent College of Karnataka Sanskrit University, Bangalore. He is currently the Hon. Project Director, Transdisciplinary University (TDU), Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT), Bangalore, South India, implementing the following projects: i. Digital Repository of Medical Manuscripts and books of Karnataka, ii. Comprehensive Descriptive Catalogue of Medical Manuscripts, iii. Critical Edition, Translation and Publication of rare books of Ayurveda and Traditional Dietetics and other such projects. He was also a research scholar for approximately 3 years at Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi & Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha (Deemed University), Tirupathi, Andhra Pradesh. He is an approved Guide for M.Phil and Ph.D of the Karnataka Sanskrit University.

Dr G Penchala Prasad is an Assistant Director in-charge RAIFR, CCRAS, Ministry of AYUSH, Pune, India.

Dr. Christopher Kermorvant is the CEO and AI Expert at Teklia, a French AI software company focused on document processing solutions. He has 20 years of experience in Machine Learning both in the academia and in the industry. He graduated from ENSIIE and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Université de Lyon-Saint-Etienne. He is associated researcher at the LITIS lab and teaches Machine Learning at CentraleSupélec Exed and in Master Data Science and Engineering at Université de Rouen.

Dr. Ravi Kiran Sarvadevabhatla (panel moderator) is an Assistant Professor affiliated with Centre for Visual Information Technology (CVIT) at IIIT Hyderabad since 2018. He is also the Lead for Mobility-related Applied Projects and Academic Programs at IHub-Data. Dr. Ravi Kiran obtained his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore in 2018. His Ph.D. thesis is the recipient of IUPRAI Best Thesis Award and Sir Vital R Chandavarkar Memorial Gold Medal. Before joining IISc in 2014, he worked in US-based R&D companies during the period 2008-2013. He obtained his MS in Computer Science from University of Washington, Seattle, USA in 2008. Dr. Ravi Kiran has broad-ranging research interests and likes to work on inter-disciplinary problems involving multi-modal multimedia data (e.g. images,videos, text, audio/speech, eye-tracking data) and disciplines (e.g. Graphics, Robotics, Human-Computer Interaction). His team's research on application of AI-based tools and approaches for analyzing historical palm-leaf manuscripts has been presented at top international conferences and has received TV, newspaper media coverage. For additional details, visit https://ihdia.iiit.ac.in/ .