|
 C-DAC
celebrated its Thirteenth Foundation
day on April 5, 2000 on the auspicious occasion of
Gudi Padwa; the Maharash- trian New Year. Dr.
F C Kohli, Deputy Chairman, Tata
Consultancy Services was the Chief Guest. Shri
P V Jayakrishnan, Secretary,
Department of Information Technology, Government of India,
presided over the function. Dr R A Mashelkar,
Director General CSIR and Secretary,
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, (DSIR) Government
of India, delivered the Foundation Day address.
Addressing
the distinguished audience, the Executive Director, Shri R K Arora
shared the excitement of C-DACians in meeting the challenges of
the IT revolution in the new millennium and the rapid strides,
C-DAC had made in keeping abreast of these developments.
He
appreciated and applauded the pivotal role of the hardware, system
software, benchmark teams and the business division in developing
and launching PARAM Anant
- the next step in C-DAC’s parallel processing technology approach.
He
declared that the National PARAM Supercomputing
Facility (NPSF) is now available to researchers and
institutions countrywide for solving their compute intensive problems.
Expressing happiness over the ‘PARAM 10000 for Premier Institutes’
project,  Shri
Arora informed that the first PARAM 10000
system had already been commissioned at BITS, Pilani.
As
many as eight product launches were announced, during the year
including LEAP 2000, Pratibimb,
ISM ver 3.0, Devnagiri OCR, TALAASH, Quick MM album, Multimedia
Portal,
Axess Kiosk and LILA Prabodh. He also shared
the progress of C-DAC’s activities in the areas of e-Commerce,
e-Governance and Internet security.
Lauding
the efforts and achievements of C-DAC, Dr Kohli, emphasized on
the need to increase the number of software and hardware professionals.
Shri
P V Jayakrishnan, reiterated the need to create a pool of large
trained manpower in the area of Information Technology.
Recalling
his long association with C-DAC, Dr R A Mashelkar, congratulated
C-DAC on its achievements and emphasized on the need to strike
a balance between professionals in IT and other scientific disciplines.
In appreciation of their dedicated and outstanding contribution
to C-DAC, sixteen members were presented awards on the occasion.
As many as twenty seven C-DACians, were felicitated for ‘A decade
of service’ in
C-DAC. 
C-DAC
also felicitated Dr Vijay Bhatkar, former Executive Director of
C-DAC and Dr R A Mashelkar on their being honored with the Padma
Shri and Padma Bhushan Awards respectively by the Government of
India.
The
evening, prior to the Foundation Day, saw the
‘Magic of Santoor’ unfold before C-DACians and their
family members, when Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma accompanied by Ustad
Shafaat Ahmad Khan regaled the audience with their melodies.
|
Dr
Murli Manohar Joshi,
Minister for Science and Technology, Human Resources Development
and Ocean Development, Government of India inaugurated the Russian
Indian Centre For Advanced Computing Research at the Institute
For Computer Aided Design (ICAD), of Russian Academy of Sciences
on July 3, 2000 in Moscow. The Centre is established as one 
of
the activities of the Integrated Long Term Programme (ILTP) of
Cooperation in Science and Technology between India and Russia.
C-DAC is the collaborating institution from the Indian side for
the establishment of the Centre. A Joint Committee will oversee
the activities of the Centre, while its day-to-day activities
will be managed by ICAD. Shri R K Arora, Executive Director, C-DAC
and Academician O M Belotserkovskii, Director, ICAD will be the
respective coordinators for this programme. The Russian Minister
for Science and Technology, Mr Kripechenkov expressed satisfaction
on the ongoing collaboration between the two countries. Prof V
S Ramamurthy, Secretary to the Indian Government, Department of
Science and Technology stressed on the importance of advanced
computing in which developments were taking place at a breath
taking pace. 
