ACCS-CDAC FOUNDATION AWARD WINNERS FOR 2014

ACCS, the Advanced Computing and Communications Society, today announced the names of Dr. Manindra Agrawal of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and Prof. Yadati Narahari of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as the winners of the prestigious ACCS-CDAC Foundation award for 2014. The Award recognizes their outstanding contributions to the body of knowledge in Computational Sciences and Information Theory.

Santanu Chaudhury
Padma Shri Dr. Manindra Agrawal is a Professor of Computer Science at IIT Kanpur. He currently the N Rama Rao Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Dr. Agrawal is well known for his path breaking work in designing the first deterministic polynomial-time test for primality of numbers and defining the bounds on the arithmetic complexity of polynomials which is one of the central open problems in complexity theory.

Starting from his doctoral research, Dr. Agrawal was interested in the class of NP-complete sets and the conjecture that all NP-complete sets are polynomial-time isomorphism to each other. He worked on this conjecture and proved it for a large subclass of NP-complete sets. At this time he also got interested in the problem of primality testing. Working with Professor Biswas he designed a new randomized algorithm for the problem and then working with two of his students, in 2002, he designed the first deterministic polynomial-time test for primality. Since then, he is working on the problem of checking if a Polynomial, given as an arithmetic circuit, is non-zero. He has shown that solving this problem in a restricted setting will result in a strong lower bound on the arithmetic complexity of certain polynomials — one of the central open problems in complexity theory. Professor Agrawal designed private-key encryption algorithms for Indian Navy and Air Force which are used today by the armed forces to secure their communications. He is the recipient of some of the most prestigious awards and recognitions such as the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (2003), Meghnad Saha Award (2003), Godel Prize (2006), the Fulkerson Prize (2006), JC Bose fellowship (2007), the first Infosys Prize for Mathematics (2008), Birla Prize (2009), TWAS Prize (2010), Humboldt Prize (2011), and Firodia Award (2011). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, the National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad, and Indian National Academy of Engineering.
Government of India honored him with a Padma Shri in 2013.

vinod-sharma
Prof. Yadati Narahari is a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
The focus of his research in the last decade has been to explore problems at the interface of computer science and economics. In particular, he is interested in applications of game theory and mechanism design to design of auctions and electronic markets, and social network research. He has recently completed a textbook entitled Game Theory and Mechanism Design brought out by the IISc Press and the World Scientific Publishing Company. He has been an active scientific collaborator with global R & D companies and research labs including General Motors R & D, IBM Research, Infosys Technologies, Intel, Xerox Research, and Adobe Research Labs. He received the IISc Alumni Award for Research Excellence in Engineering for 2010 at the Indian Institute of Science. He is currently a J.C. Bose