National Knowledge Network Government of India Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Department of Electronics and Information Technology New Delhi Subject: Minutes of the 6th Meeting of the Model (Demonstration) Projects Evaluation Committee (MPEC) of NKN, held on 22th August, 2012 in the Conference Room, 3rd Floor, National Knowledge Network (NKN), Shastri Park, Delhi 1. The list of participants of the meeting is placed at Annexure I. 2. Agenda is placed at Annexure II. 3. The Member Secretary, MPEC, welcomed the participants to its 6th meeting and informed all the members that following members/principal Investigators had expressed their inability to attend the meeting due to their official/personal indispositions: a. Prof. Gautam Barua b. Mr. Neeraj Sinha c. Mr. D.K.Gupta d. Dr. Prasun Roy Then, he requested the Chairman, MPEC and Scientific Secretary, Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India (PSA s Office) Prof. S.V. Raghavan, to take the meeting further. Chairman MPEC, after welcoming the participants to its 6th meeting took-up the Agenda items one-by-one for discussion. 4. Agenda Item No. 3: Presentations by the s, for about 15 minutes each, on their respective project proposals: 1
S. Title of the Model Project Proposal No. 4.1 NTRO s High-Speed Low Latency network requirement Demo project by NTRO Mr. Muktesh Chander, NTRO 4.2 Multi-centric longitudinal study of cognitive decline in ageing in India by Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, IISc Bangaluru. Remarks of the MPEC Mr. Muktesh Chander mentioned that NTRO is planning a pilot project on NKN and develop the technologies required for Highbandwidth, Low latency usage for their internal purposes. Since, NTRO is sensitive to network security as an infrastructure and as a user, Chairman, MPEC, Prof Raghavan said that the outcome of NTRO s experiment is likely to be useful to many other institutes connected to and using NKN. Dr. Vijaylakshmi, participated through video-conferencing, informed that as required she has already submitted the revised proposal and the total budget of the project is 2 Crores. She further clarified that this project is entirely different from the ICMR project of vascular cognitive project and there is no overlap between these two projects. Dr. Vijayalakshmi requested that the project approval be expedited considering that advanced nations such as Canada, US etc. are already doing a lot of research in the field of dementia and have made considerable progress. Dr. Arvind Nath from ICMR was requested on behalf of ICMR to give his opinion. He mentioned that after going through the entire project proposal and comments from other colleagues from ICMR, he would submit a report for the same. (The project proposal and other related documents were 2
5. Agenda Item No. 4: Presentations by the Principal Investigators, for about 15 minutes each, on the present status of their respective sanctioned project proposal: S. Title of the Model Project Proposal No. 5.1 Creating the Virtual Medical Classroom Principal Investigator - Dr. Manoj K Singh Status and Remarks of the MPEC Prof. Raghavan expressed his deep appreciation to Dr. Manoj Singh and team for successfully establishing the project at AIIMS Dr. Manoj Singh informed that they demonstrated the lectures delivery on 09 August 2012 using NKN bandwidth to IT Secretary and received appreciating responses from both IT Secretary and users. An overwhelming majority of the students were happy with the new technology and felt comfortable with it. Dr Manoj Singh said that considering the large number of medical colleges in the country and with plans to establish more such colleges, NKN can be leveraged for dissemination of information to students on a large scale. MPEC committee suggested that as part of the project the medical community should introduce some basic infrastructure at the medical institutions to ensure that audio/video content generated by the sender institute is being received within some predefined SLAs. DG NIC, Dr Gairola said that the benefits of this project should reach to all students participating in the medical classroom program across 3
5.2 Network Enabled Medical Diagnosis and Education in Skeletal Imaging using X-Rays the country. Dr. Manoj Singh also presented possible future directions of this model project which includes National Medical Education Portal, NPTETMED, Virtual Skill Laboratory, Skill training for ANM, nurses, technicians etc. Dr Manoj Singh requested for no cost extension of this project for a period of next 6 months with a permission to utilize the funds, lying at NICSI for the equipment purchase for Kolkata site (which could not join the project), for payment of salaries of the hired animation team for the next 6 months. Upon this, Prof. Dhekne pointed out that re-appropriation of funds from Equipment head to Salary head would have to be done and asked Dr. Manoj Singh to formally put a request for the same. MPEC agreed to the extension in principle and directed Member Secretary, MPEC to do the needful in this regard. MPEC further suggested to Dr. Manoj Singh to high-light a few points on how the skills training can be useful to medical community, so that MPEC can consider an extended version for Pilot filed study at district hospital level, using NKN wherever feasible. The application name resulting from the model project is finalized as CollabDDS (Digital Diagnosis System) 4
Principal Investigator - Dr. Savita Davar 5.3 International Model Project for Indian integration with Global Imaging System via McGill linkage: A multi-zone Study using Neuroinformatics and Telemedicine Principal Investigator Dr. P. Roy The first version of CollabDDS has been released on July 04, 2012. MPEC suggested that CollabDDS build the logs on an on-going basis so that, future regulatory and legal compliance is potentially simplified. The project is in two phases. First phase As a proof of concept, it will enable the transfer of Digital information from 3D X Rays/Scan data into the application, integrate the Reverse Engineering Software Libraries and create test suites and provide a common platform for visualizing 3D/2D medical images for Diagnosis & Treatment. The cost of the first phase is Rs. 261.70 Lakhs Second phase - The experts from the AIIMS will start interacting with the experts from the CSIO Chandigarh and the IIT Bombay to work on the standardization of X-Ray Process. Dr. Savita Davar has requested for a no cost six month extension which was granted by MPEC committee. Dr. P. Roy could not be present due to personal loss in the family. Chairman clarified that last week he attended a meeting in which Dr. P. Roy gave a talk/demonstration about the development of the project. He apprised the committee that the project is heading in the right direction. This view was endorsed by Shri Ramakrishnan, Member, MPEC 5
5.4 Network Enabled Online Casting Simulation System (E- Foundry) Principal Investigator Dr. B. Ravi 5.5 NKN a Gateway to a Global Classroom by Amrita University and Former Director General, CDAC. Prof. B. Ravi reported that two of the four project deliverables are nearly complete i.e. 1) the casting simulation algorithm called Gradient Vector Method, and 2) a beta version of the E-Foundry implemented at http://efoundry.iitb.ac.in. There are about 50 video lessons, abstracts of over 500 technical papers, 20 design exercises, and other learning resources. A compact experimental casting facility with data acquisition is currently being developed to validate the simulation algorithm. This will be implemented in the online casting simulation lab, and planned to be demonstrated shortly. The work has been published in two international journal papers, two conference papers and three industry magazine articles. The work has also been recognized by a Gold Medal by the DST- Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programme, 2012. It was suggested by the Chairman that the utility and benefits of the system be clearly demonstrated. Dr Venkat Rangan in course of his presentation focused on merging local classroom with global classroom. He stated that equipment like cameras would need to be moving to capture the teacher who would be taking lectures along with the subject matter. Prof Dekhne expressed the opinion 6
that software based solution to the stitching problem could be resource intensive and hence may result in significant (and perceptible) time overheads, rendering the solution meaningless in the extreme. Dr Venkat Rangan requested for NKN connectivity for their campus at Kerala instead of Coimbatore. It was clarified by MPEC that NKN connectivity exists in Amrita institution in Coimbatore, which was established, as per records, as a transfer from NMEICT program of MHRD. The same may be used for this project. 5. The meeting then ended with a Vote of Thanks to the Chair, and to all the Members and s present, by the Member-Secretary and the Member-Convener. 6. The next MPEC meeting will be on November 21, 2012 at 11 AM at Shastri Park, Delhi. 7
ANNEXURE-I TO THE MINUTES OF THE 6 th MEETING OF THE MODEL (DEMONSTRATION) PROJECTS EVALUATION COMMITTEE. Date : 22 th August, 2012 Time : 1100 hrs Venue : Conference Room, 3 rd Floor, National Knowledge Network, Shastri Park, Delhi List of Participants S. No. Name and Address Status 01. Dr. S.V. Raghavan, Scientific Secretary to the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, 324 A Vigyan Bhawan Annexe, Maulana Azad Road, New Delhi 110 011. 02 Dr. B.K. Gairola, Director General, National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, 3 rd Floor, A Block, C.G.O. Complex, Lodi Road, New Delhi 110 003. 03. Shri S. Ramakrishnan, Former Director General, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, E-1, Akash Bharati Apartments, 24, IP Extension, Patparganj, Delhi 110 092. 04. Shri P.S. Dhekne, Scientific Consultant (Super Computing and Grid Computing), Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India and Raja Ramanna Fellow, Computer Division, Modular Laboratories, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai 400 085. 05. Shri N. Mohan Ram, DG, ERNET India, Jeevan Prakash Building, 10 th Floor, KG Marg, New Delhi 110 001. 06. Dr. Yoginder Talwar, Scientist D, National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, A1B3, A-Block, CGO Complex, Lodi Road, New Delhi 110 003. 07. Dr. Manoj K Singh, Professor, Department of Pathology, Virtual Teaching Lab, Room No. 1051, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110 029. 08. Dr. Savita Dawar, Scientist F, National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, A- Block, 3rd Floor, C.G.O. Complex, Lodi Road, New Delhi - 110 003. 09. Prof. B. Ravi, Mechanical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400 076. 10. Dr.Venkat Rangan, Vice Chancellor, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Ettimadai P.O., Coimbatore 641 105 Chairman Member Member Member Member Member- Secretary 11. Mr. Muktesh Chander, Central Director, CCDIA, NTRO 12. Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, Chairperson, Centre for Neurosciences, 8
Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore (through video conferencing) 13. Dr. Sudheer Arava, Assistant Professor, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110 029. 14. Dr. A.K. Dhinda, Professor, Department of Pathology, Room No. 1051, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110 029. 15. Dr. Arvind Nath, ICMR, New Delhi 16. Shri G. Prasad, Scientist E, Collab CAD Division, National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, A- Block, 3rd Floor, C.G.O. Complex, Lodi Road, New Delhi - 110 003. 17. Dr. H. K. Sardana, Chief Scientist, Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO), Chandigarh. 18. Dr. O.P.Kharbanda, CDER, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110 029. 19. Dr. Raju Sharma, Professor, Department of Radiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110 029. 20. Dr. Durgesh Joshi, Associate Professor, SGSITS, Indore 21. Prof. Balaji Hariharan, Professor, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Ettimadai P.O., Coimbatore 641 105 22. Dr. Rekha Jain, Executive Chair, Professor, IIM Ahmedabad, Gujarat. ********** 9
ANNEXURE-II TO THE MINUTES OF THE 6 th MEETING OF THE MODEL (DEMONSTRATION) PROJECTS EVALUATION COMMITTEE. AGENDA OF THE 6 TH MEETING OF THE MODEL (DEMONSTRATION) PROJECTS EVALUATION COMMITTEE (MPEC) i) Welcome address by the Member-Secretary Date : 22 nd August, 2012 Time : 1100 hr onwards Venue : National Knowledge Network 3rd Floor, Block III, Delhi IT Park, Shastri Park, Delhi 110 053. AGENDA ii) iii) Opening remarks by the Chairman A discussion/ presentation (for about 10 minutes) on each of the following Model Project Proposals, that have been/to be presented to the MPEC and are awaiting a recommendation: a) A multi-centric longitudinal study of cognitive decline in ageing in India. b) A model project demonstrating the utility of NKN by NTRO iv) Presentations, for about 10 minutes each, on the following already sanctioned Model Projects by the lead investigators of each of them, bringing-out the current project status and the issues (if any) that need advice/intervention by the MPEC: a) Model project on Creating the Virtual Medical Classroom. - A comprehensive technical and financial report is desired b) Model project on Network Enabled Medical Diagnosis and Education in Skeletal Imaging using X-Rays. - A comprehensive technical and financial report is desired c) Model project on Indian integration with Global Imaging System via McGill linkage: A multi-zone Study using Neuroinformatics and Telemedicine. - A comprehensive technical and financial report is desired d) Model project on Network-Enabled Online Casting Simulation System (E-Foundry). - A comprehensive technical and financial report is desired e) Model project proposal on NKN-a Gateway to a Global Classroom. - A detailed presentation by the Chief Investigator in person along with a comprehensive report (as asked for in the 5th meeting) is desired. v) Any other item with the permission of the Chair vi) vii) Summing-up by the Chairman Vote of Thanks by the Member-Secretary 10
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