On August 29, 2014 in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, a Joint Innovation Center for Computer Science in Houston came closer to being realized with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and Tech Mahindra Ltd.
The MoU provides for a Governance Committee to oversee the activities of the Center. The committee includes an equal number of members from TEES and Tech Mahindra. They are Puneet Sahgal (associate vice president for energy and utilities at Tech Mahindra), Prateek Mohan (vice president and business unit head of oil and gas at Tech Mahindra), Arvind Malhotra (senior vice president of Tech Mahindra), Dilma Da Silva (head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering department at Texas A&M), and Riccardo Bettati and Andrew Jiang (both CSE professors).
The development of the Center will be supervised by Tech Mahindra, which will also provide research funds for designing and testing projects initially involving big data, analytics, cloud and mobile computing.
"We are excited to partner with Texas A&M University in building the Innovation Center and leveraging the local talent pool as they take a leadership role in the global computer science industry," said B.K. Mishra, senior vice president of Tech Mahindra. "Between the talent at Texas A&M and our strong commitment to state-of-the-art research and development, I strongly believe that this collaboration can help develop the next level of solution offerings for our customers, especially in the rapidly developing areas of big data, analytics, and cloud and mobile computing."
For the past two years, Dr. Rabi Mahapatra has directed the CSE department's Maymester in India program, which gives students an opportunity to visit IT companies in India. One of the companies they visited was Tech Mahindra which led to contacts that have facilitated this current partnership.
The partnership between TEES and Tech Mahindra will give more CSE students and other Texas A&M students an opportunity to become involved in world-wide innovative computer science research projects without leaving Texas.
"As a research-focused university, we are always looking for new research opportunities for our computer science students, especially in big data, analytics, and cloud and mobile computing," commented Dr. N.K. Anand, executive associate dean of the Dwight Look College of Engineering and associate director of TEES.
——
Photo: (l-r signing) N.K. Anand and B.K. Mishra
(l-r standing) Riccardo Bettati; Charles "Chip" Hill (assistant director, strategic research development, TEES Space Engineering Research Center); Puneet Sahgal, Prateek Mohan, Dilma M. Da Silva, Nancy M. Amato (CSE Unocal Professor, OSIS director); Anxiao "Andrew" Jiang