Microsoft Research India has instituted an annual research symposium, TechVista, which brings together the best minds from the scientific and academic worlds onto a common platform. TechVista provides an opportunity for the research community, government and students to interact and exchange ideas on research and its future directions. TechVista 2008 will be held in Chennai on October 1, 2008.
TechVista Bangalore 2007, held on January 23, 2007 in Bangalore at the JN Tata Auditorium, Indian Institute of Science, was attended by more than 800 students, faculty and industry representatives. The speakers at TechVista 2007 included:
- Prof. Ken Perlin, Media Research Laboratory, Dept. of Computer Science, New York University and Academy award winner
- Prof. Mriganka Sur, Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience, and Head, Dept of Brain and Cognitive Science, MIT
- Prof. Jeannette Wing, President's Professor of Computer Science, Computer Science Department Head, CMU
- Prof. N Balakrishnan, Associate Director, IISc
- Dr. Rick Rashid, Senior VP, Microsoft Research
- Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research
The inaugural session of TechVista 2007 was themed "Making India a Powerhouse in Research". The symposium also featured a panel discussion chaired by Dr. Dan Ling, corporate vice president, Microsoft Research, on the same theme. The other panelists were:
- Prof. Jitendra Malik, UC Berkeley
- Prof. Krithi Ramamritham, IIT Bombay
- Prof. Rajeev Sangal, IIIT Hyderabad
Some of the speakers from previous editions of TechVista include:
- Dr. Butler Lampson, Microsoft Research and Turing award winner
- Prof. Raj Reddy, Carnegie Mellon University and Turing award winner
- Sir Tony Hoare, Microsoft Research Cambridge and Turing award winner
- Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, IIT Chennai
- Prof. Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon University
- Prof. Maria Klawe, Princeton University
- Dr. Dan Ling, Microsoft Research
- Dr. Rick Rashid, Microsoft Research
- Prof. Andrew Zisserman, University of Oxford
