Science at the Sabha 2023

Parameswaran Ajith

International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru

Black holes through different windows

Made entirely of curved spacetime, black holes are among the most enigmatic objects in the Universe. Although early theoretical ideas on objects like black holes go back to the eighteenth century, the first rigorous mathematical formulation of a black hole was made by Karl Schwarzschild in 1915, based on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. A variety of astronomical observations made in the last century confirmed that black holes are not just theoretical constructs — the Universe is littered with them. Aided by a host of new technologies, astronomical observations have now started probing the detailed nature of black holes. This talk will provide a summary of this exciting journey.

Ajith Parameswaran is an astrophysicist at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bangalore. His research spans various aspects of gravitational-wave physics and astronomy. He has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since 2004. Ajith has been a Ramanujan Fellow, a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar and the head of the Max Planck Partner Group on Astrophysical Relativity at ICTS. As a member of the team that discovered gravitational waves, he is the recipient of the 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and the 2016 Gruber Cosmology Prize.

Mitali Mukerji

Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur

Ayurveda and modern medicine: the beginning of a molecular conversation

We are witnessing a paradigm shift from reactive to a more proactive, holistic and precision approach in health management. This approach is in Ayurveda practice for thousands of years and is practiced in one form or the other in many Indian households. However, the decision to avail Ayurveda as a/an additional medical option is primarily made by the patient with limited understanding and evidence. This is because there is a limited crosstalk between the practitioners of Ayurveda and modern medicine. A scenario where the practitioners from the two diverse streams sit across a table, seamlessly converse, exchange notes and cross-refer to co- evolve a health management regime is the need of the hour. My talk would highlight how the science of Ayurgenomics has made the beginnings of a molecular conversation between the streams. This has a potential for providing objectivity and evidence based solutions in integrative medicine settings.

Mitali Mukerji is a Professor and head of the Department of Bioscience and Bioengineering at IIT Jodhpur. She has a PhD in molecular genetics from Indian Institute of Science Bangalore (1997) and was earlier a chief scientist at the CSIR- Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. Her research is in the broad area of understanding human genome structure and variation for its application in the discovery of biomarkers for predicting susceptibility to diseases, understanding human phenotypes and environmental adaptations and mapping mutational histories. She had been the convenor of the Indian Genome Variation Consortium project which provided the first comprehensive genetic landscape of the Indian populations. She has been involved in developing a new area of research “Ayurgenomics” which aims to integrate Ayurveda with modern medicine through genomics and was the program director of CSIR’s Ayurgenomics Unit TRISUTRA. At IIT Jodhpur she is presently involved in developing a Centre of Excellence in AYUR-Tech (supported by the Ministry of AYUSH) that combines Electronics, Digital health and AI and multi-omics approaches for realizing “Evidence based Ayurveda” solutions in a transdisciplinary framework. Mitali Mukerji is also coordinating a project in the Jodhpur City Knowledge innovation cluster called Thar DESIGNS (Desert Ecosystem Innovation Guided by Nature and Selection) that aims to carry out an Integrated study of the desert ecosystem to propel discoveries, inventions and innovation for addressing health challenges in arid regions. Mitali Mukerji has over 100 publications in International peer-reviewed journals. She has been recipient of a number of national awards, the CSIR Young Scientist’s Award (2001), DBT young woman scientist award (2008) Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award (2010), Vasvik Award (2016) and is a fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Sciences. She is also the board member of International Consortium on Human Phenomics.

Siddhartha Gadgil

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

The Quest for Automating Mathematics

Starting with just the rules of chess, it took four hours of playing against itself for AlphaZero, a computer program, to become the strongest chess player on the planet, playing with a "dynamic, open style" and preferring moves that are "risky and aggressive". With a couple of days of self-play, AlphaZero discovered the best standard openings, and even discarded a few of them. Artificial intelligence systems can today write computer programs and create art poetry. Could a future computer program discover the mysteries of the primes?

We discuss the many recent developments that point to such a future. These range from the phenomenal advances in Artificial Intelligence, to large scale digitization of mathematics in the Lean Mathematical library, to mathematical proofs making trains safer.

Siddhartha Gadgil is a Professor of Mathematics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He has a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology and a B. Stat. degree from Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta. Before joining I.I.Sc., he was a postdoc at Stony Brook University and on the faculty of Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore.
Siddhartha began his research career in Topology and has worked for many years in this and related fields such as Geometric group theory and Riemannian geometry. He has also applied topology to study Molecular Biology. In recent years the main focus of his work has been Automated Theorem Proving, i.e., mathematics generated by computers.

Hema A Murthy

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Carnatic Music Processing: A Culture Specific Approach

Indian art music is based on the "gayaki" style which means that even instruments try to reproduce the vocal style. The singing voice affords tremendous flexibility, and thus leads to significant ornamentation. Carnatic music is centred around the composition or "kriti" where the melody, lyrics and rhythm play an important role.

In this talk, I will present our efforts on "computational analysis" of Carnatic music. The computational analysis, ranging from "sruti" detection, melodic analysis, concert and kriti segmentation, to "typical phrase determination," leading to "raga recognition," will be presented. The talk will also cover a critical analysis of the relationship between “janaka” and “janya” ragas as also an attempt to augment the prescriptive notation with an “automatic descriptive notation,” that enables reproduction of the melody. The percussion accompaniment in Indian music is also replete with improvisation. I also discuss our efforts on an analysis of the mridangam strokes. Many of the aspects are also relevant for Hindustani Music. Wherever possible, we also draw examples from Hindustani Music.

Hema A. Murthy received a bachelor's degree from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India, in 1980, a master's degree from McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, in 1986, and a PhD degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai, India, in 1992. She is currently a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras. Her research interests include speech processing, music information retrieval, computational brain research, where her primary goal is to use machine learning and signal processing in tandem. She is a Fellow of ISCA (International Speech Communication Association), 2022 and a Fellow of INAE (Indian National Academy of Engineering), 2017. She received the IBM faculty award in 2006 for work on speech synthesis in Indian languages. She has been involved in various projects funded by the Government of India (GoI). She was the Chief Investigator of a consortium project to build text-to-speech (TTS) systems in 13 Indian languages. She is currently leading the Speech Technology effort for the Natural Language Translation Mission funded by GoI.