Ashoka Reflections_JULY 2023
Welcome to interactive presentation, created with Publuu. Enjoy the reading!
ASHOKA
REFLECTIONS
A S H O K A U N I V E R S I T Y ' S M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R
J U L Y 2 0 2 3
Ashoka University Signs MoU with
Université Côte d’Azur to Collaborate
in the Franco-Indian Campus on
Health, and Beyond
BIG NEWS
Ashoka Reflections | Page 01
Ashoka University has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Université Côte d’Azur, France
to foster education and research collaboration in the field of health sciences. The MoU is under the
framework of the ‘Franco-Indian Campus on Health for the Indo-Pacific Region’, a joint initiative by the
French Ministry of European & Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Higher Education, Research & Innovation.
The initiative seeks to bring the French and Indian higher education institutes together, to work on various
basic and applied areas of health sciences. In this funded endeavour, Ashoka University has joined hands
with the University of Cote d’ Azur from France, along with the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (IISc)
and Indraprastha Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIIT-D) as part of the consortium from the Indian side.
The consortium of these four higher education research institutes will focus on health topics ranging from
understanding and treatment development for diseases like cancer, respiratory diseases, aging as well as
public health concerns of antimicrobial resistance.
Under this pilot-funded programme, the universities will engage in joint research and innovation projects;
develop a foundation for building joint/dual degree programmes; facilitate the exchange of faculty and
research scholars; and create channels to exchange knowledge and expertise.
A key focus area would be to focus on the intersection of health and computer sciences, as well as nurturing
innovation through entrepreneurship.
Speaking about the need for such collaborations, Somak Raychaudhury, Vice-Chancellor, Ashoka University
stated, “This partnership with Université Côte d’Azur seeks to create such a platform that would address
health problems of today through a multidisciplinary lens, as well as aims to nurture future leaders for
challenges of tomorrow. Ashoka will work with Université Côte d’Azur to make it a long-term program in a
sustainable way”.
“We are excited to be part of this consortium as it provides our faculty and research scholars with
opportunities to work with their global counterparts on pressing health-related issues. Additionally, it
creates a pathway for creating joint/dual advanced degree programmes benefiting students through the
combined strength of two partnering institutions. This partnership is a reflection of Ashoka’s rapidly
growing base in research-integrated education internationally”, said one of the academic coordinators of
the programme, Kasturi Mitra, Associate Professor of Biology and DBT-WellcomeTrust India Alliance Senior
Fellow, Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University.
"We are delighted to work with Ashoka University as one of our partners, a fast-growing higher education
institution, which addresses today's and tomorrow's challenges with a very agile and modular model of
research and education”, said one of the academic coordinators of the programme, Laurent Counillon,
Professor and Director, LIFE-Graduate School of Life and Health Sciences, Université Côte d’Azur.
Ashoka Reflections | Page 02
The MoU is under the framework of a joint initiative by the
French Ministry of European & Foreign Affairs and
Ministry of Higher Education, Research & Innovation
Ashoka Reflections | Page 03
In Focus: Department of Computer Science
The unique positioning of Ashoka University's Computer Science department in a liberal arts
environment in India engenders opportunities to apply computational thinking to the sciences
and the social sciences, as well as take advantage of the cross-pollination of ideas from other
disciplines to generate and define problems in CS. We are actively doing impactful research
towards disciplinary questions in CS as well as bringing CS methods into the natural and social
sciences.
In particular, the department is actively engaged in digitisation and data questions in health,
education and welfare; cryptography, privacy and security; data science and AI for the public
good; epidemiology and modelling; molecular and systems biology; quantum computing;
psychology; environment; elections and politics. The department has ambitious plans to develop
exciting multidisciplinary CS+X programmes, both for research and teaching.
C O V E R S T O R Y
Ashoka Reflections | Page 04
THE PROPOSED SCHOOL OF
ADVANCED COMPUTING AND THE
ROAD AHEAD FOR COMPUTER
SCIENCE AT ASHOKA UNIVERSITY
Ashoka University aims to be among the foremost academic institutions for
future-focused computer science (CS) research and teaching. Prof. Subhashis
Banerjee writes about the key developments that are all set to unravel over the
coming months
The Ashoka School of Advanced Computing (ASAC) will be situated in a liberal arts environment, and, as such,
will be distinct in character from other academic computer science establishments in the country. It will
endeavour to introduce the epistemological methods of computer science – algorithmic problem solving,
argumentative methods, logic, impossibility results, models of universal computation, process models,
systems and security frameworks, complexity analysis and the limits of computation and communication, AI
and data-driven models – into multidisciplinary research spanning the natural, social, and political sciences. It
will also build a unique programme that will expose Ashoka students to computational thinking with CS+X
courses at all levels, and train graduate leaders with strong humanistic and ethical perspectives in addition to
strengths in core computer science.
In addition to the department of computer science – which will engage in core disciplinary CS research and
teaching – the ASAC will initially be composed of three centres with focussed research themes.
C O V E R S T O R Y
Ashoka Reflections | Page 05
The first of these is the Centre for Data Science and Analytics (CDA). It envisages providing a common data
infrastructure platform for all data initiatives at Ashoka University. Apart from well-established research
centres like the Centre for Economic Data Analysis (CEDA) and the Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TCPD), it
will also host repositories for a variety of other types of data, ranging from clinical, health and epidemiological,
to satellite, GIS, and remote sensing, to data related to agriculture, food and nutrition, ecology, astronomy and
even humanities, languages, and history.
Apart from common data and computing infrastructure, it will also share various standard tools and
techniques for data cleaning, analysis, and visualisation with various research verticals across Ashoka.
Moreover, it will organise these disparate components of data – to the extent possible – into a common
knowledge graph with a rich metadata structure to enable new research questions using this multidimensional
data. We are hopeful that such a rich data repository and organisation will attract new researchers to Ashoka,
and generate new research questions even for core computer science and AI.
The second centre, which is already operational as a limited project in collaboration with the Trivedi School of
Biosciences (TSB), is the Centre for Health Analytics, Research, and Trends (CHART). The Centre is already
engaging with data-driven health analytics questions using clinical data – including radiology and pathology
images and reports, laboratory reports and prescriptions – towards improved diagnosis and understanding of
diseases like breast cancer, and lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension.
C O V E R S T O R Y
Ashoka Reflections | Page 06
The Centre will also focus on the epidemiology of both infectious and non-infectious diseases and has
already done impactful work on understanding the spread of Covid. The Centre has further plans to initiate
research into the socio-economic and environmental determinants of health, by trying to correlate – at the
individual level – food and nutrition, lifestyle and environmental exposure, to disease burden. One-health
will be a major focus of the centre at a later stage. CHART may later merge with a Centre for Digital Health
(CDH) which is also being planned at Ashoka.
The third proposed centre will focus on digitalisation and society. The scale and scope of digitalisation, and
the use of AI in public life in India, are unmatched in the world, especially in large public service applications.
The use of such technologies is not only restricted to the Government but is also growing rapidly in the
private sector. This provides a unique opportunity to generate new research questions around safe and
secure design, and ethical deployment of such technologies at scale. Computer science at Ashoka – situated
in a liberal arts environment among strong departments of economics, sociology, political science and
philosophy – is ideally poised to undertake such research.
We envisage that these centres will not only provide new and original research contexts, but will also help
build partnerships with government and private entities, inform public policy, and promote
entrepreneurship. We hope to formally announce the ASAC sometime soon.
C O V E R S T O R Y
Ashoka Reflections | Page 07
(Prof. Subhashis Banerjee was formerly the HoD for Computer Science. He plans to join back the Department
of Computer Science at Ashoka University in September 2023.)
DEVELOPING CRYPTOGRAPHIC
SYSTEMS THAT CAN RESIST
ATTACKS FROM POWERFUL
QUANTUM COMPUTERS
Once confined to military, diplomatic, and governmental spheres,
cryptography has now emerged as the pivotal cornerstone in realizing security
within our interconnected world. Prof. Mahavir Jhawar writes about his
ongoing projects that are supported by external grants from various labs of the
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the premier R&D
organization of the country, as well as industry labs such as Mphasis F1
Foundation
Ashoka Reflections | Page 08
“Three decades ago, three promising technologies emerged: AI, cryptography, and quantum computing. While
AI has exceeded expectations, cryptography has played a pivotal role in securing the internet. Quantum
computing, on the other hand, holds the promise of revolutionizing computing and delivering remarkable
benefits for humanity. The future presents an exciting duel between cryptography and the realization of
powerful quantum computers.”
Ashoka Reflections | Page 09
In order for the Internet to fully unleash its potential as a platform for information sharing, diverse e-commerce
endeavours, and remote private interactions, the public must have confidence that their transactions will be
confidential and protected. Whether accessing personal data in online public databases, making a credit card
purchase or holding online voting, the public must trust that the Internet is a secure place to do business. The
bedrock of public trust is established on a science that has been employed for centuries - cryptography. Once
confined to military, diplomatic, and governmental spheres, cryptography has now emerged as the pivotal
cornerstone in realizing security within our interconnected world.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67