Investors feel today's CInvestors feel today's CEOs not fit to handle tomorrow's tasks: StudyEOs not fit to handle tomorrow's tasks

Two-thirds of investors believe today’s private-sector leadership is unfit to handle future challenges. That sobering statistic comes from a survey done by consulting firm Korn Ferry as part of a larger study on whether leaders have qualities that will allow them to handle challenges in coming years and decades.

“A majority of leaders can’t make decisions, take smart actions quickly enough, motivate people effectively, or build trust — all of which is needed to ensure their organization’s survival into the future,” Korn Ferry said in a statement on release of the report.

According to the survey, 67 per cent of investors believe the current leadership stock isn’t fit for the future. At the country level, the figures were 82 per cent in China, 70 per cent in the US, with Singapore coming in at 51 per cent. “Investors are looking at, ‘Who can tell me the growth story I want to believe?’” Dennis Baltzley, Korn Ferry’s global solution leader for leadership development, said in an interview from the US on Wednesday. 

ALSO READ: Corporate leadership ill-prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow: Study

“They care about the talent and the bench” of upcoming leaders, he said. The survey had 795 investor and analyst participants from 18 markets globally, and included people from firms with at least $1 billion in assets under management. About two-thirds of the top 400 money managers by assets took part in the research, Korn Ferry said.

What can corporations do to make sure their executive maintain investor confidence and are prepared to handle future challenges? “We have to be a little more disruptive,” Baltzley said. “Energise, manage information flow. Let people have a place to be heard. There’s a theme of care, positivity and optimism that these leaders bring when they’re doing it right.”

Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/management/investors-feel-today-s-ceos-not-fit-to-handle-tomorrow-s-tasks-study-119031401180_1.html (Accessed on 16 March, 2019)

IISc engineers take fetch to a whole new level

India's first commercial walking robot Stoch uses machine learning to move around


The robot is the size of a small dog with four legs and a thick but flexible spine. When connected to a battery, it starts walking on slender, articulated limbs, like a canine. 

It even has a 'face' that looks vaguely like that of a pug. The developers at the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-physical Systems at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) are calling it 'Stoch' and they say it's on target to become the country's first commercial "walking" robot.

Stoch has been under development since January last year. The first version was displayed a month ago at Aero India - it was heavy-footed and clumsy. A sleeker second version was developed just two weeks ago and a third will be ready in three months. A commercial variant is about a year away. 

The robot uses machine learning to figure out how to walk by itself. Specifically, it uses reinforcement learning, where the machine learns over time to take the best possible action in return for the best reward. 

After several million attempts - performed in computer simulation - ؙthe robot learns to walk. Some Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and IISc have been working on such devices in the past few years. There aren't any commercial versions in the market and no institution other than IISc has a prototype that uses reinforcement learning to teach the robot to walk.

The IISc project started when a student, Shounak Bhattacharya, did a master's project in the department of mechanical engineering. After the project, the Bosch Centre at IISc took over development by bringing together professors from other departments. 

It also hired engineers and put together a development team. "We wanted to explore the field of data-driven robotics," said Bharadwaj Amrutur, professor of electrical engineering at IISc and chairman of the Robert Bosch Centre.

Data-driven robotics is a set of technologies that use data to get a robot to learn by itself. As the IISc project got off the ground, it was joined by Shishir Kolathaya from Georgia Tech University. Kolathaya, who has been working with walking robots since the undergraduate level, studied legged robots for his PhD.

When he joined, the Bosch Centre had a non-working prototype. The first real prototype - Stoch 1 - didn't carry batteries. Stoch 2 was twice as powerful, was designed to carry batteries and could walk for 15 minutes without being plugged into an electrical outlet. The third version will improve on looks and be even more powerful. The commercial prototype, when ready, will be bundled with an applica tion.

The Bosch team is mulling several applications - climbing coconut trees, doing surveys in difficult terrain, inspecting construction sites and so on. The project now has five engineers, apart from some faculty members. "We are planning to put a software development kit for people to programme," says Dhaivat Dholakiya, who is technical associate of the project.

Source: https://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/technology/iisc-engineers-take-fetch-to-a-whole-new-level/68418892 (Accessed on 16 March, 2019)

India lags behind global peers in future job skills, report says

India is lagging behind its global peers when it comes to being prepared for the jobs revolution, despite the country’s inherent favourable demographic dividend.

To read the full article, please visit:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/india-lags-behind-global-peers-in-future-job-skills-report-says/articleshow/68412872.cms (Accessed on March 15, 2019)

IIT Kharagpur to design Desi Supercomputer

C-DAC already makes the PARAM series of supercomputers for strategic requirements

KOLKATA: IIT Kharagpur is building a supercomputer of a speed of 1.3 Petaflops, all the parts of which will be manufactured indigenously.

A Petaflops is a unit of computing speed equal to 1,000 million million (1015) floating-point operations per second. In three months, the institute will be ready to pull the veil off this genius, promised the computer wizards at the institute.

The supercomputer is being built at the high-performance computing (HPC) facility and data centre ecosystem that has come up at the institute under the National Super Computing Mission, which aims at building the fastest and most powerful computers in the country.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which is an autonomous scientific society of the ministry of electronics and information technology, scouted all the IITs before agreeing to set up the HPC at IIT Kharagpur, where the marvel is being built. An MoU between the institute and C-DAC was signed on March 12 for the project.

The department of science and technology (DST), along with experts from Niti Ayog, DRDO and IISc, will help IIT Kharagpur develop this supercomputer.

As the new computing system would revolutionise output and efficiency in complicated calculations, researches on cryptography, chemistry, molecular dynamics, drug discovery, data sciences would directly benefit, said director of IIT Kharagpur Partha Pratim Chakraborty

“Some other fields that will benefit from the project are healthcare, smart cities, geo-sciences and new materials,” he added.

The computer will be built in three phases and no imported part will be used anywhere. The first phase will involve assembling, the second will focus on assembling and manufacturing and the third phase will perfect the design and manufacturing details with all major parts and accessories to be indigenously designed and manufactured, as is C-DAC’s mandate.

After the new supercomputer is built, the HPC will be continuously building improved versions. Students will also use the facility for academic programmes at the institute, like M.Tech, doctoral programmes as well as micro-specialisations.

Source: http://www.indiandefensenews.in/2019/03/iit-kharagpur-to-design-desi.html

Vacancy in St. Francis Institute of Technology for Professor, Associate Professor and Assistant Professor

Source: Maharashtra Times dated 14 March, 2019

The next chartbuster by an artist called AI?

To read the full article, visit:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/the-next-chartbuster-by-an-artist-called-ai/articleshow/68384987.cms

Kashaf Shaikh: the budding superlative entrepreneur in India

Kashaf Shaikh is one of the most renowned entrepreneurs in the country and all across the globe. With her innovative set of skills, mindfulness, and determination, she founded one of the most famous websites in the country which is called Dealivore. It is an authentic website which is full of various kinds of coupons which are valid and real and can be used across a lot of stores all over the country. Also, if you are a purchaser of online products from various e-commerce websites then you have to check her website because all the coupons, she puts on the website are pure deals which will surely make your experience on the shopping portals better and fascinating.

However, she is a computer engineer basically. She completed her graduation......

To read the full article, visit:

https://www.inventiva.co.in/2019/03/12/kashaf-shaikh-the-budding-superlative-entrepreneur-in-india/ (Accessed on 13 March, 2019)