ViCe PResiDeNt (7/1/12 – 6/30/14)

MATHAI JOSEPH advisor, tata consultancy Services Pune, india

Biography

Mathai Joseph is an Advisor to Tata Consultancy Services. He has been a Member-at-Large of the ACM Council since 2008 and Treasurer of the ACM India Council, which he helped to found, since 2009. He received an ACM Presidential Award in 2010.

He was Executive Director, Tata Research Development & Design Centre from 1997–2007. Earlier, he held a Chair in Computer Science at the University of Warwick from 1985–1997 and was Senior Research Scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. He has been a Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Warwick, and University of York.

Joseph is a founder of international conference series such as FST&TCS (Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science) in 1981, F TR TFT (Formal Techniques in Real- Time and Fault- Tolerant Systems) in 1988 and SEAFOOD (Software Engineering Approaches to Outsourced and Offshore Development). He set up the workshop series TECS Week in 2003 to promote computer science research in India. He established and managed research collaborations with universities such as University of California Riverside, Columbia University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Powai, King’s College London, Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, and University of York.

His main research interests have been in real-time and fault-tolerant computing, with emphasis on formal specification and timing analysis. He has written and edited a number of books and conference and journal papers in these areas. He has worked on software systems for many years and wrote an early book on the design of a multiprocessor operating system.

Joseph has a Master’s degree in Physics from Bombay University and a Ph.D. from the Mathematical Laboratory, University of Cambridge, U.K. He has worked in several countries and now lives in Pune, India. He has been investigating early work in computing in India and is now investigating new courseware for teaching computer science at engineering colleges in India.

statement

ACM is renowned for representing the best of computer science in its conferences, publications, and awards. Until recently, most ACM activities took place in the Western world but there are now new ACM Regional Councils in China, Europe, and India. Within these regions, participation in ACM activities is growing but outside them there are many countries where computing professionals work in relative isolation.

I was closely involved with the creation of the ACM India Council in 2009 and have been active in its operation since that time. There are now significant ACM events at the national and chapter level and tours by visiting lecturers. A number of new chapters have been formed and membership has doubled in this period. Compared to the number of computing professionals, the size of the Indian software industry and the needs of the academic institutions, the influence of ACM in India is still small but it is growing to play a major role in computer science education and research.

As in India, I believe that in many other regions ACM should be active in growing professional activities and creating links between their education and research communities and the best in computer science. Wider distribution of ACM publications and conferences will not only allow them to be more effective in growing professional activities and promoting high quality research, it will enable them to be more representative of all such work being done across the world.

A great deal of my professional work has been to create forums for the exchange of ideas, new research, and people among industry and educational institutions in India and outside. I would like to work with ACM to grow its activities, within the main regions of ACM activities and beyond them to areas where it is as yet underrepresented. In this, I see a major opportunity for initiatives for the better acceptance of computer science as a core scientific discipline, for improving the quality of education and research and for increasing the understanding of computing as a global manufacturing industry.