Moving on from strength to strength .....

Devashish Pandya’s sojourn with C-DAC, has been a series of journeys, spanning more than six and a half years. An association, which emerged out of wanting to excel in the realm of Visual Computing and IT applications. Shivaramakrishanan Iyer profiles him for C-DAC Connect.

Debu, (as he’s fondly known), started his career, with several options to choose from. He graduated from the Sardar Patel College of Engineering (SPCE), Mumbai, in Mechanical Engineering. During that period Devashish took up a project at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), which enticed him to work in the area of Finite Element Modelling of Coupled Heat Transfer. Building several pre and post processors for the same led to the realisation of his passion for 3D Graphics and modelling. Sometime later, while still in college, Devashish also developed software for analysing tides - as part of a UNDP funded project to study the Green-house effect.

Debu’s, love for Visualisation and Graphics led him to enrolling for the Advanced Computing Training School(ACTS), of C-DAC. Not surprisingly, Debu, aced the DAC course!

The enriching environment of ACTS fueled with constant interaction with the faculty (who were part of C-DAC themselves!) motivated him to join C-DAC.

Devashish joined the Visual Computing Group in C-DAC as a Research Associate in 1994, chucking aside offers from other private organisations.

Developing ‘Systems for Systems’ has always been Debu’s trademark approach, which was honed by Mr. Rajesh Kumar, the then head of the Visual Computing Group. This inspiring collusion saw the birth and development of many projects and products, ‘ASHA 3DTPS’ (3 Dimensional Treatment Planning System) and the design of System Software for 3D rendering drivers for one of the Japanese giants of Multimedia rendering devices.

Devashish also participated in the development of the OpenGL initiative in C-DAC, mostly testing and development of applications by providing visualization support for some of the scientific applications that used public domain tools - Khoros, Vis5D. These were customised for the critical work requirements engaged by the scientific application development team members. A noteworthy contribution was a framework developed in Java to enable users to execute applications on PARAM (from anywhere in the world) - and receive the results in the desired format.

Embarking on the use of PARAM as a high-end Visualisation Server, Devashish also portedan MPEG kernel to PARAM and benchmarked the same.

As a part of the Visual computing group, Devashish provided support for authoring various multimedia titles and presentations that resulted in the development of a scaleable framework for rendering the Dnyaneshwari Multimedia Presentation. This was later released as a CDROM title on the 11th foundation day of C-DAC.

The interest in Medical Informatics, born out of the association with the development of the ASHA 3DTPS, led to envisioning, formulation and finally proposing and defending a project - Telemedicine - in 1997, from Medical Group (MIG) of C-DAC.

While the Telemedicine project proposal was being evaluated by the Department of Information Technology (DIT), the funding agency, Devashish built up a team , under the guidance of Dr. Ajit Karnik and Dr. P. K. Sinha, that concentrated on developing the necessary skills needed for attaining prowess that demanded convergence of technologies.

The dearth of core protocols for Telemedicine, was quickly capitalised by C-DAC in the form of “CDAC’s Communication Protocol for Telemedicine Systems” - heralding an entirely new set of protocols developed by the MIG examined the numerous interfaces required with the various clinical systems and exisiting Data Exchange Protocols (Like HL7 (now an ANSI Standard) and DICOM) relevant to Telemedicine.

An abridged version was developed to allow early implementations by collaborating organisations.

The protocol specification addresses issues of setting up and maintaining Telemdicine Sessions, stream formats for medical data transfer, and messaging related to Telemedicine. The ‘cool’ part of this protocol is that it is extensible - it has been designed to make it possible for vendors to extend the object model and the protocol and provides a mechanism to publish the same. This, Devashish hopes, is aligned with the charter of the MIG - ‘to provide turnkey IT solutions in the area of Healthcare’.

Providing the right inspriation by learning, developing and leading, Devashish, today regards himself as more of an architect than a coding person - having weaned away from core development to that of a ‘faciltator’ and a debugger, a role that he hopes will not let him blunt his skill set.

Retrospecting on his achievements, Devashish is modest and exacting. He rates the formation of a dedicated and skilled teams as the most significant achievement. In his words, ‘the MIG has always seen a group of members, learning and developing solutions in the fields of Medical Informatics.

Devashish mentions humbly his work at C-DAC as one that is full of responsibility and challenge. The Telemedicine project when approved in 1998, worth almost 2 million US dollars, on the shoulders of a 27 year old, keeps reminding him of the miles, he has to go. He is grateful to C-DAC for reposing trust in his abilities and providing him with opportunities.

Debu, blends professional and personal aspirations through his sheer enthusiasm in reading (Sun Tsu’s Art of War- remains his favourite- It’s more about strategies for sustained growth in a challenging world than the actual act of war!) both non-fictional and fictional (he prefers the fast, action kind of stuff), photography (he’s got ‘a couple of’ Pentax(es) and a Kodak digital camera, for ‘experimentation’), and of course, bird watching (no qualifiers intended here!) not to forget music (any kind that appeals - favorite being rock. Lesser known fact - he has been one of the founder members of a band called the Witchammer).

From the humble beginnings of a Research Associate with the Visual Computing, to that of an invited speaker on Innovations in Healthcare Informatics at the IT Asia Conference, Devasish has achieved a lot, with more to come. Providing an insight into the future - he visualises mobile computing bringing an impact through ‘lifestyle’ computing. With considerable amount of latitude from C-DAC and self-determination, the alchemy is complete.