PROF. K.R. SRIVATHSAN
Pro-Vice Chancellor

Prof. K.R. Srivathsan obtained his Bachelor degree from the Regional Engineering College (now NIT) Durgapur in West Bengal, M.Tech. from IIT Kanpur and Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Canada – all in Electrical Engineering. He was Professor and Head of the Electrical Engineering Department at the Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur.  Since Dec. 2000, Prof. K.R. Srivathsan took over as the first Director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala (see www.iiitmk.ac.in).

Prof. Srivathsan has been associated with India's developments in Networking, Internet and IT from mid 1980s. He was a founding member and coordinator of ERNET in the 80s and early 90s. He was a core team member that established the first campus-wide LAN in the country in the 80s. One of his significant work was the planning, installation, configuration and commissioning of a large multi-segment LAN and network services for the CAD/CAM and Computing team of Engineers and Scientists of the LCA Project under the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and associated organizations like the NAL and other aerospace organizations. Since then he has been a regular visitor to ADA and NAL, particularly the Varsha Atmospheric Sciences and NAL’s Computer Services Groups and helped mentor their networking and information systems related developments.  At IIT Kanpur, Prof. Srivathsan, besides regular courses and guiding Ph.D. scholars, built/modernized several labs and designed new lab courses and mentored several national level projects/programs, some of them in interdisciplinary areas.

As Director of IIITM-K, Prof. Srivathsan guided development and applications of several advanced network and e-learning services for technology enhanced education. Besides commencing postgraduate programs in IT, He conceptualized and guided the evolution of the Education Grid (www.edugrid.in), KISSAN (Karshaka Information Systems, Services and Networking: www.kissankerala.net), Computational Chemistry Portal, Open WebGIS systems and related projects. Several of these are now operational. His Education Grid team recently set up the Education Grid facilities packaged with NPTEL content in the Nagaland University. Over the last six years he has been actively pioneering and guiding several developments in the applications of IT in Education, Knowledge Management, Enterprise Applications Integration, Digital Libraries, Distributed Information Systems and Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching. Three of the projects that IIITM-K initiated under his guidance have won Manthan Awards from the Digital Empowerment Foundation and two of them citations of PC Quest in the category of best e-implementations.

Prof. Srivathsan's KISSAN team innovated the unique integrated multi-modal knowledge empowerment services in agriculture using combination of portal supported based interactions and information, weekly TV serial 'Krishideepam', telephone call centre and a network of agricultural scientists, officials and organizations to provide the services. This enables farmers anywhere in the state to get information and assistance on demand  on any issue concerning their agricultural needs within hours or by next working day. This is being further developed to support strategy-focused knowledge management services to agriculture extension services. Prof. Srivathsan is also guiding the developments of Open WebGIS framework for Community E-Governance applications. One outcome of this is the rich Kerala Weather forecast information portal (www.edugrid.ac.in/webgis → weather(Google)).

Prof. Srivathsan is an active member of both the National Programme Committee and the Programme Implementation committee of the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) that is funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development and jointly run by all the IITs and the Indian Institute of Science. He is now working with NPTEL to use IGNOU’s capabilities in ODL to launch refresher courses and professional diploma programs using NPTEL content.

In recent times, working with Prof. M.S. Gopinathan and Dr. T.K. Manoj Kumar, he assisted establishing the Computational Chemistry Portal for scholars and researchers in Chemistry. This is the first portal in the country that allows scholars open access to advanced cluster computing resources for their computational chemistry studies. Recently, he initiated establishing the Education Grid in Nagaland in the North East extreme of India and linked it to the IIITM-K in the southwest extreme of India through a 3,800 Km long broadband link over the Railway’s fiber network connecting them. It is the first of its kind and dedicated for cooperation in education and development between two distant states in the country.