A career in research and innovation
Dr. Vijay Chandru is an academic and an entrepreneur. A technology pioneer of the World Economic Forum since 2006, Chandru was recognized among the 50 pioneers of change by the India Today magazine in 2008. Additionally, Chandru has mentored numerous entrepreneurs and early stage ventures in the realms of education, technology and life sciences.
Dr. Vijay Chandru is an academic and an entrepreneur. A technology pioneer of the World Economic Forum since 2006, Chandru was recognized among the 50 pioneers of change by the India Today magazine in 2008. Additionally, Chandru has mentored numerous entrepreneurs and early stage ventures in the realms of education, technology and life sciences.
His academic career in decision sciences spanned over four decades at MIT, Purdue University and at the Indian Institute of Science. His training in electrical engineering at BITS (Pilani) and operational research at UCLA and MIT led him to explore academic research at the interface of computational mathematics with geometry, logic, machine learning, biology and heritage art. A fellow of both academies of science and engineering in India, he was a national distinguished technologist of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, an adjunct professor in BioSystems Science and Engineering and Executive Advisor to the new ART Park (AI and Robotics Tech Park) at the Indian Institute of Science.
Dr. Chandru serves on the councils of Karnataka State Council of science and technology (KSCST) and RGUKT in Andhra Pradesh. He chairs the governing council of the Digital University of Kerala. He is a member of the vision groups for biotechnology (VGBT) as well as science and technology (VGST) in Karnataka. As an author of the Atal Innovation Mission report in August 2015, and served briefly on the mission high level committee of AIM as convened by the Prime Minister’s Office at NITI Aayog.
At Strand Life Sciences, India’s first example of academic entrepreneurship, Professor Chandru served as founder executive chairman from inception in 2000 till 2018. The evolution of Strand from data science to precision medicine reflected the progress in the field of molecular biology in the two decades following the human genome project. Biospectrum Magazine named Professor Chandru the Biotech Entrepreneur of 2007 in India. The Association of Biotech led Enterprises (ABLE), the apex body of the biotech industry in India, elected Chandru as Honorary President for a three year term 2009-2012.
Chandru also co-founded the Simputer Trust which designed and manufactured India’s first indigenous handheld computers at the start of the millennium. Professor Chandru has also been actively engaged in digital humanities since 2009 and is a founder trustee of the boutique International Institute for Art, Culture and Democracy. His work at IIACD on digital capture and archiving of tangible and intangible heritage artifacts has been largely funded by the Department at Science and Technology, Government of India under the research program in Indian Digital Heritage.
Professor Chandru is deeply engaged with the idea of technology levers for bringing universal health care to India. This manifests in his work as a Commissioner with the Lancet Citizens Commission for reimagining India’s health systems. Universal Health Care when extended to the seriously underserved population of citizens afflicted with orphan and rare diseases has been a focus of his attention for close to a decade now. The mission for “NO DISEASE ORPHAN” by 2030 has been actioned through his founder engagements with the Centre for Health and Education Technologies (CHET) at IIACD as well as in haemotological disorders with the open platform for orphan diseases at OPFORD Foundation.
2000 - present
My Personal Deep Tech Innovation Ecosytem
Mr Ratan Tata opened a door for us – at his first address to the Court of IISc in 1999, he asked why IISc did not have a visible spinoff culture of private companies. Almost immediately Manohar sent a note to the Director Goverdhan Mehta to ask what the process would be for us to launch companies. Prof Khincha and Prof Mehta helped us move forward and in a little over a year with guidance from a bright young lawyer out of the National Law School – Rahul Matthan – we were off to the races. It was October 2000 and we had permission to launch Strand Genomics and PicoPeta Simputers. Strand had the resources (consulting projects) to launch right away.
I joked with my wife that I was 47 years old and my response to a midlife crisis was Strand.
In 1998, as a consequence of our focus on ICT for development, we had the concept design of the “Simputer”, a unique handheld computer that would put India on the global technology map for innovation.
1998 - 2000
The Audacious Foursome
By the mid-90’s, I was increasingly concerned that my work at IISc continued to be quite abstract and unrelated to the society I lived in. I may as well have done all this in the US. I needed to look beyond the usual academic conquests (by 1996 I was a full professor and a fellow of the academy of sciences). It was my great fortune that I discovered a few younger colleagues who felt likewise and were willing to think outside the ivory tower. So Swami Manohar, Vinay Vishwanathan, Ramesh Hariharan and I began our journey by first convening an applications lab at IISc, we called it the “Perceptual Computing Laboratory” (PerCoLat) and began building relevant technologies for pursuing interests in ICT for development and some practical aspects of bioinformatics. In 1996, PerCoLat started off with several funded consulting projects with Indian IT companies and international clients. High performance volume graphics, XML languages, NLP, the Simputer and bioinformatics for Genomics Collaborative Inc. were some of the audacious projects that we took up in the lab. It was a perfect springboard for faculty entrepreneurship.
In 1998, as a consequence of our focus on ICT for development, we had the concept design of the “Simputer”, a unique handheld computer that would put India on the global technology map for innovation. Instead of getting into a lot of details, let me point the interested reader to www.simputer.org and the citation we received in 2001 from the New York Times as the ICT innovation of the year http://nyti.ms/1e5f0pP . The Simputer project rolled into a dynamic startup called PicoPeta Simputers which brought out a commercial Amida Simputer in 2004. Picopeta was eventually merged into Geodesic, a public company based out of Mumbai and the Simputer has now morphed into the Geo Amida.
The transition from convening an applied lab PerCoLat to starting companies was a big step for a group of professors at IISc. It had never been done before and so we were pioneers in the launch of academic entrepreneurship of this kind in India. The dream that drove us was to create world beating technology innovation companies from India. We felt that while the ICT sector in India had made great strides in services business, there would be an important niche for innovators who could help the sector add value through research and translation of intellectual property. If this group of smart technologists from IISc could show the way, our dream would be realized.
1992 - 1998
Perceptual Computing Laboratory, IISc
I was soon ensconced at the Department of Computer Science and Automation at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Centre for AI and Robotics in Defence Research, I was on the prowl again for a new research experience. The students from Molecular Biophysics Unit came over to ask me to teach them combinatorial computational geometry to use in exploring functional structural properties of proteins in biology. I got excited with the optimization models associated with minimum energy conformations also called the protein folding problem – the so called holy grail of structural biology. The more I looked at biology, the more excited I became about possibilities for data science and decision sciences in the life and health sciences. We began with a small academic effort in computational biology seminars and workshops at IISc but after a sabbatical at University of Pennsylvania in 1999-2000, I was ready to plunge headlong into computational biology.
By the mid-90’s, I was increasingly concerned that my work at IISc continued to be quite abstract and unrelated to the society I lived in. I may as well have done all this in the US. I needed to look beyond the usual academic conquests (by 1996 I was a full professor and a fellow of the academy of sciences). It was my great fortune that I discovered a few younger colleagues who felt likewise and were willing to think outside the ivory tower. So Swami Manohar, Vinay Vishwanathan, Ramesh Hariharan and I began our journey by first convening an applications lab at IISc, we called it the “Perceptual Computing Laboratory” (PerCoLat) and began building relevant technologies for pursuing interests in ICT for development and some practical aspects of bioinformatics. In 1996, PerCoLat started off with several funded consulting projects with Indian IT companies and international clients.
1982 - 1992
Mathematical Engineering at Purdue University
As a professor of engineering in Purdue University, I started looking at computational geometry in the mid-80s and together with a few graduate students and colleagues we worked on many aspects of optimization problems posed on planar and 3D geometries. I also became a part-time student again and studied algebraic geometry with (late) Shreeram Abhyankar – a colleague and a great mathematician at Purdue. I had a lot of fun working in geometry because it brought back many high school math skills in ruler and compass constructions, conic sections and high school algebra. Two of my students from these geometry days stood out – Debasish Dutta who is currently a chaired professor and dean of graduate school at University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign and Ravi Venkatesan who just stepped down as the Chairman of Microsoft in India.
In the mid-80s another important influence in my research ideas came from the late Bob Jeroslow at the ARIDAM workshops at Rutgers. Bob asked integer programmers to look more closely at the interface of integer programming and logic. John Hooker of CMU and I responded to his call. My book with Hooker called “Optimization Methods for Logical Inference” published by Wiley Interscience was the culmination of a decade of joint work that the remarks of Jeroslow had triggered.
Between 1989 and 1992, I tested the idea of returning to India to teach at IISc, Bangalore. After almost two decades in the US, this was clearly an adventurous move. I was at the top of my academic career, a high flying tenured professor of engineering at Purdue University. But I was in my late 30s and knew deep down that it was time to go home and make a difference. When I landed in Bangalore, a stanza from a poem by Sir Walter Scott, from childhood memories kept coming to me
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned.
1975 - 1982
Entry into Computational Mathematics
My training in systems science began in 1975 when I was a Master’s student in Engineering at UCLA tutored by Jacobsen, Leondes, Arunkumar, Erlenkotter, etc. I moved to MIT for my PhD and my big influences there were Jerry Shapiro, Tom Magnanti, Ravi Kannan, Sanjoy Mitter, Richard Larson, Dmitri Bertsekas, Christos Papadimitriou and Jim Orlin. I wrote a thesis on computational complexity of super group methods in integer programming bringing together the exposure to theoretical computer science (Kannan) and Gomory constructions for integer programs (Shapiro). I could not have asked for better teachers.
My Guru and friend Jeremy F Shapiro, who sadly passed away in 2012, was a special man. Jerry taught me more than anyone else how to be courageous in research. He was never one to be unduly impressed by “reigning paradigms” – mutual admiration clubs trapped in cul-de-sacs of specialization. If my career has taken on such a variety of experiences, it is because of Jerry’s encouragement to seek them.
I wrote a thesis on computational complexity of super group methods in integer programming bringing together the exposure to theoretical computer science (Kannan) and Gomory constructions for integer programs (Shapiro).
In 1970 I made the transition from the incredibly nurturing nest of my grandparents’ home to the somewhat rough and tough dormitory life in the magnificent oasis of Jhunjhunu District.
Pilani gave us an outstanding 5 year undergraduate education in engineering sciences and I ended up enjoying every aspect of campus life to the extreme.
1970 - 1975
The Oasis in Jhunjhunu District
A couple of my older cousins who had grown up in Delhi went to study mechanical engineering in BITS Pilani in the late 60s (BITS had been established in 1964) and I was keen to follow their lead. So in 1970 I made the transition from the incredibly nurturing nest of my grandparents’ home to the somewhat rough and tough dormitory life in the magnificent oasis of Jhunjhunu District. Pilani gave us an outstanding 5 year undergraduate education in engineering sciences and I ended up enjoying every aspect of campus life to the extreme. I captained the cricket team, acted and directed in plays, played water polo and student politics. My academic performance was above average and I learnt to get by with a regular habit of a couple of hours in the library in the evenings after cricket practice. My abilities to multi-task and manage my time to fit in a large number of activities at BITS would serve me well all through my professional life.
My branch of choice was Electrical Engineering and I enjoyed working with hardware – I was into DIY electronics and had built my own audio amplifiers and a small medium wave radio transmitter in my room in Ashok Bhavan. I would transmit a “castor” music session late on Saturday nights – Doors, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Deep Purple, etc. While building gadgets was more like a hobby, what really fascinated me intellectually was the mathematical complexity of signals, systems and control. In our final year, the director of BITS, the enigmatic Dr CR Mitra, had invited Dr Stafford Beer to visit him in Pilani and give a few lectures about Operational Research and his adventures in Chile as a technical advisor to Salvador Allende. I was enthralled by Beer’s descriptions of the field of “cybernetics” and its application to real world systems. I had found my academic passion – my segue into a career in research.
1953 - 1970
A privileged childhood
I was born into a prominent family in Bangalore in 1953, the year that Mount Everest was officially scaled and the double-helical structure of DNA was officially solved. My father, Dr.H.G.V. Reddy was a lecturer in zoology at Bangalore University who had switched to the national civil services (IAS) out of a sense of duty to participate in nation building. He hailed from a family of lawyers dedicated to politics and public service. My mother was the only child of B.N. Reddi, a pioneer producer-director of Telugu films in Madras (now Chennai). Due to a combination of circumstances, my sisters and I were raised by my maternal grandparents in Chennai with my father playing a larger role after I had reached the age of eight.
I was a sickly child who had to be home schooled in 3rd grade because of ill health. My health improved considerably after my father, a skilled sportsman, moved to Chennai and took charge of my lungs and limbs. I swam and played cricket and tennis almost every day and my lungs settled. My father’s interest in science was infectious although I was also fascinated by films and saw an average of 3 feature films a week in our private studios.
I was gifted in mathematics and Don Bosco’s Matriculation School in Egmore had fabulous math instructors who gave me a lot of challenge problems to solve beyond the regular curriculum. My mind was made up to be an engineer when I interacted with my Dad’s brother who was a chemical engineering PhD trained at the Imperial College in London. He had returned to be a technical director of the Shell Petroleum Company. I had an engineering drafting set and a slide rule by the time I hit my teens!
I was born into a prominent family in Bangalore in 1953, the year that Mount Everest was officially scaled and the double-helical structure of DNA was officially solved.
My mind was made up to be an engineer when I interacted with my Dad’s brother who was a chemical engineering PhD trained at the Imperial College in London.