Newly Paul and Eric Mankin
September 08, 2008 — Infosys Technologies Vice President Subrahmanyam "Subu" Goparaju and Viterbi School Dean Yannis C. Yortsos joined in a toast September 5 to launch a new software research and education center at USC, funded by the giant IT company where the now-ubiquitous concept of a "flat world" originated.
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Yortsos and Goparaju: Indian company is reaching out to broader agenda.
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The Center for research and education in Advanced Software Technologies (CAST) in the Viterbi School is first-ever supported outside of India by Bangalore-based Infosys, which now has more than 90,000 employees.
“Infosys is in the business of applying innovative technologies to businesses, and we think collaborative research, such as the kind we’re doing with USC, is a great way to fuel growth,” said Goparaju, head of the company's Software Engineering and Technology laboratories (SETLabs).
“We are proud,” Yortsos said, “that Infosys has chosen the Viterbi School as the location of its first research center not just in the U.S., but in the world outside of its home country.”
USC Professor Viktor Prasanna and Goparaju will be co-directors of CAST. “The program will be mutually beneficial,” Prasanna said. “Infosys works in IT application areas that can interest engineers at USC and Infosys can provide practical problems for which USC can find solutions.”
Though the company's Bangalore SETLabs have more than 500 researchers and computer scientists working on projects, Goparaju said he wants to reach out to a broader research agenda and solve problems which have business and academic value and are of interest to the computer science community at large.
CAST will conduct research in areas that are relevant to Infosys and are motivated by broad IT issues. Early priorities include virtualization (software testing and development) and multicore (enterprise applications and workflows).
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CAST co-director Viktor Prasanna: USC solutions for Infosys problems.
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The first project CAST project kicked off two months back under the guidance of Viterbi School computer science department faculty member Nenad Medvidovic, a specialist in architecture-level support for software development in highly distributed, mobile, resource constrained, and embedded computing environments.
Other potential research areas include software architecture, service-oriented architectures and information integration, intelligent systems and agents, mobile and wireless systems, sensor networks and CAD frameworks, and tools for hardware and software.
This program will include joint research, visits by researchers from India and the U.S., student internships and distance education, among other activities.
Goparaju said that the level of interest and passion showed by USC was the deciding factor in choosing the university as a partner. Infosys has been collaborating with faculty in other academic institutions in the US, through its InStep global internship program and its Campus Connect industry academia program, but the perseverance, initiative and excellent work that USC has done in the past persuaded the company to sign the agreement for CAST with USC.
Yortsos and Infosys CEO S. Kris Gopalakrishnan signed that agreement in Bangalore. A previous visitor to the Infoys campus there was author Thomas L. Friedman, who took the title of his influential 2005 book,
The World is Flat, from his conversations there with Gopalakrishnan's predecessor, Nandan Nilekani.
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About Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Infosys (NASDAQ: INFY - News) defines, designs and delivers IT-enabled business solutions that help Global 2000 companies win in a flat world. These solutions focus on providing strategic differentiation and operational superiority to clients. With Infosys, clients are assured of a transparent business partner, world-class processes, speed of execution and the power to stretch their IT budget by leveraging the Global Delivery Model that Infosys pioneered. Infosys has more than 90,000 employees in over 40 offices worldwide. Infosys is part of the NASDAQ-100 Index. For more information, visit
http://www.infosys.com.
