Prof. V. S. Ramamurthy

Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies

He is a well-known Indian nuclear scientist with a broad range of contributions from basic research to science administration. Prof. Ramamurthy started his career in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai in the year 1963. He has made important research contributions, both experimental and theoretical, in many areas of nuclear fission and heavy ion reaction mechanisms, statistical and thermodynamic properties of nuclei, physics of atomic and molecular clusters and low energy accelerator applications. During the period 1995-2006, Prof. Ramamurthy was fully involved in science promotion in India as Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Science & Technology (DST), New Delhi.

He was also the Chairman of the IAEA Standing Advisory Group on Nuclear Applications for nearly a decade, Chairman, Board of Governors, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Chairman, Recruitment & Assessment Board, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Member, National Security Advisory Board. After retirement from government service, Prof. Ramamurthy, in addition to continuing research in Nuclear Physics in the Inter-University Accelerator Centre, New Delhi, has also been actively involved in human resource development in all aspects of nuclear research and applications.

He is currently the Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, Chairman, Board of Governors, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur and Chairman, Board of Governors, Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar. In recognition of his services to the growth of Science and Technology in the country, Prof. Ramamurthy was awarded one of the top civilian awards of the country, the Padma Bhushan, by the Government of India in 2005.

Srivibhavan (Vibhav) Balaram

Founder & CEO of CloudByte Inc

Srivibhavan (Vibhav) Balaram is a seasoned General Manager and Entrepreneur with an exceptional technology background. He started his career as a software engineer specializing in a wide range of areas - networking protocols and network management, telecommunications and network switches. Most of his technical work was done in the US at Bell Labs (now Lucent), IBM and HP where he was deputed as an on-site consultant through TCS. Later, in his career, Vibhav led over 100 product releases at Companies like Novell, HP and Business Objects. Vibhav has also mentored several technology people across his professional career. mentees occupy key positions at Novell, HP, Citrix, NetApp, SAP, Oracle and EMC at their Bangalore development centers and world-wide.

Vibhav was a key member of the Novell India start-up team. He provided leadership and direction to the networking protocols team which led to Novell making a decision to make the India engineering centre the focus for all networking protocols activity world-wide. At HP, Vibhav was Lab Director and VP of Engineering for the HP-UX networking and I/O sub-systems leading an engineering organization of over 300 people. Vibhav was also a very key member of the HP-Compaq integration team at the divisional level. Vibhav led acquiring of an outsourced operation for Business Objects and built an engineering centre from scratch. The team under his leadership was tasked with building several new features and the first patent was filed within two years of starting the centre. Vibhav, then tool up the business responsibility to build a new product targeted at the mid-market – Business Objects EDGE series. This product generated a run rate of 150m$ per annum in a matter of a year and six months.

Vibhav started his entrepreneurial journey with CloudByte – a storage start up. He led the bootstrapping of the Company and master minded the seed funding, Series A and Series B fund raising. He also ran the operations of the Company in APJ and EMEA. Vibhav held the positions of Founder & CEO, and Founder & COO at CloudByte Inc. Currently, Vibhav advises several start-ups in the enterprise infrastructure space (since October 2013). Vibhav holds a B.E. degree in Electronics and Communications from the National Institute of Engineering, University of Mysore. He has also spent a year working on his Ph.d. at IIT Delhi in the area of theoretical modeling and validation of multi-threaded software systems. He has also attended several management programs at IIM Bangalore and ISB Hyderabad.

Mr Thomas Wacinski

Entrepreneur and Technology Strategy Advisor

He brings over 10 years of business and technology experiences through various leadership roles in companies in Switzerland, Canada and the UAE. He's been responsible for the development of innovative information technology businesses in various verticals, such as healthcare, life-sciences, finance and internet. Mr.Wacinski has also an extensive experience in building, managing and leading multicultural and multidisciplinary teams and was involved in structuring company's operations from client relations back through marketing, operations and R&D departments.

In the last years, he has been working with emerging markets where he setup a development center in Chennai, India, which has become an awarded centre of excellence for Healthcare technologies, mobile services, obtained product certifications from IBM Industry frameworks, and conformance with regulating bodies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He is currently in the management of a large advisory and professional services firm in Dubai. Mr. Wacinski graduated with the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in Computer Science with a specialization in data mining algorithms. His academic record includes a position as an MBA lecturer at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne (EPFL) and several publications and patents.