The IISc Centenary Conference.... a lifetime experinece

Last 4 days at IISc we celebrated the completion of 100 years with "The IISc Centenary Conference" from 13-16th December. It was a wonderful event organized in a truly International way. The campus got into festive spirit right from the 12th evening. Alumni from all across the world and from various age groups (from 20s to 80s) came for attending the conference.

First day began with inauguration by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. The actual programs began from second day.

Second day onwards there were keynote talks by:

• Mr. S. Ramadorai (CEO, Tata Consultancy Services)
• Dr. Subra Suresh (Dean of Engineering, MIT, Cambridge USA)
• Mr. Nandan Nilekani (Founder and former CEO, Infosys Technologies)
• Dr. Martin Rees (President, Royal Society, London)
• Dr. Sydney Brenner (Nobel Laureate from Cambridge Univ., UK)
• Mr. Sam Pitroda (Chairman, Knowledge Commission, New Delhi)
• Dr. Eric S. Maskin (Nobel Laureate from Princeton Univ., USA)
  

These people talked on various topics related to their expertise like Mr. Nilekani talked on "Imagining India"; Dr. Rees talked about "Understanding our cosmos"; Dr. Eric talked about "Game theory"; Dr. Suresh talked about "Interdisciplinary Research in engineering"; Dr. Brener talked about "Reading human genome" etc. All the keynotes were overcrowded in an auditorium with capacity of 750.

Apart from these there were number of workshops carried by renowned experts and researchers from across the world.

Apart from keynotes and workshops there were cultural programs like Santoor recital by Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and a music program by IISc music group.

Another interesting thing to be mentioned about conference is "food". All the 4 days we enjoyed sumptuous food. There were innumerable varieties of Indian, Chinese and Italian dishes and sweets.

This Conference gave us an opportunity to listen to some of the great people in world in a short span of time and that too at a single location. Where else would I have got to listen to Ramadorai & Nilekani on same day?

The wonderful event came to an end with a speech by our Director Dr. P. Balaram. He stated a famous quote by Winston Churchill "...... this is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is the end of the beginning."