Speakers

Profile of Speakers

	A.K. Bhargava is a Telecom Engineer with more than 35 yrs of experience in various fields of Telecommunication, Installation, Operation, Maintenance, Software and Management. Prior to joining BBNL as Director (Operations), he was working as Executive Director (Wireless Services) with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) Delhi.
	Ananth Guruswamy is the director of Amnesty International India. Previouly, he was the Programme Director at Greenpeace. Ananth joined Greenpeace India in 2001 at its very beginning and played a key role in moulding Greenpeace India into one of the leading stakeholders in the NGO sector in India.
	Archana Gulati is an Indian Civil Service Officer and has worked as a Universal Service Policy Expert with respect to Access to ICTs for Persons with Disabilities for the International Telecommunications Union. She also successfully pioneered the e-government system in her previous posting as Joint Controller Communication Accounts, Department of Telecommunications (DoT). At present she is posted as the Financial Advisor with the National Disaster Management Authority of India.

	Bernadette Längle holds a degree in social and cultural anthropology, philosophy and computer science. She is also a so-called hacktivist as an active member of one of the oldest hacker associations in the world: The Chaos Computer Club, that has nowadays also a lot influence in German politics.
	Chakshu Roy heads technology initiatives at PRS Legislative Research (PRS), New Delhi. PRS is a unique initiative that provides non-partisan analysis to all Members of Parliament in India. Chakshu is developing a comprehensive technology strategy to engage large sections of the population in the policy process. He has conceptualised and developed India’s only online database of all state laws. Chakshu has conducted capacity-building workshops for over 1000 journalists on tracking the work of legislators.

	Elonnai Hickok works as a Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society. Her main areas of work are Privacy and Data Security.
	Gaurab Raj Upadhaya has a long record of volunteerism and commitment to the Asia Pacific Internet Community. Gaurab is one of the 14 global Trusted Community Representatives who cryptographically sign the root of the domain name system in ICANN Root DNSSEC Key ceremonies. In 2001, he was the founder of the Nepal Internet Exchange (NPIX), the first IX in the South-Asian region.
	Helani Galpaya is the Chief Executive Officer at LIRNEasia. She holds a Masters in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College, USA.
	Michael Ginguld is the Chief Executive Officer at AirJaldi. He has more than 15 years of experience working with ICT, community and rural development projects in India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Nepal, and Israel.
	Dr. Nadeem Akhtar is currently working as the Principal Research Engineer at the Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT) in Chennai. He has been associated with CEWiT since January 2008. Dr. Akhtar’s current research focusses on LTE technology, particularly in the area of radio resource management. He represents CEWiT at 3GPP standardisation meetings. Dr. Akhtar is an active member of the Development Organization of Standards for Telecommunications in India (DOSTI). He is also involved in various initiatives towards enhanced support for Indic language in mobile devices.
	Nandini C. is a Research Associate with IT for Change (www.itforchange.net), and is part of a team that is engaged in research studies in the area of gender and ICTs, democratic governance and ICTs, and the political economy of the information society. She holds a Masters in Urban and Rural Community Development from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
	Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan is a Policy Director at the Centre for Internet and Society and works on policy research and advocacy related to IP reform and technology access for persons with disabilities.
	Dr. Nishant Shah is the Director-Research at CIS. He is a recipient of the Asia Scholarship Foundation's fellowship for comparative research at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China. Nishant is a regular columnist with the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, GQ India and DML Central. He has authored/co-authored many peer-reviewed articles in several journals.
	Parminder Jeet Singh is the Executive Director of IT for Change. He was recently appointed as a member of Task Force set up by the Indian government on implementation of proactive disclosures provisions of the Right to Information Act. He was also associated with Department of IT's Sub-group on e-governance for the 12th Five Year Plan. He recently authored a report on 'Community Knowledge Centers' for the Karnataka Knowledge Commission.
	Pranesh Prakash is a Policy Director at CIS and works on policy research and advocacy around intersections of technology and law focusing on access to knowledge (primarily copyright reforms), promoting 'openness' (including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software), freedom of expression, privacy, and internet governance.
	Ravikiran Annaswamy is an entrepreneur learning to create the next big business. He is very excited about the opportunities at the cusp of social media, mobile Internet and Big Data. Currently, he is nurturing a unique concept called Teritree, which brings social shopping into mainstream business.He has vast experience of making successful telecom solutions for global markets, mainly in the area of Online Billing and Charging, OSS, Innovative 3G/4G applications, Media and Security Solutions.
	Dr. Ravina Aggarwal works on media issues in India from the Ford Foundation's New Delhi office. Her grant making advances issues of democratic expression and media access among marginalized communities. She holds the position of Programme Officer at the Ford Foundation, India.
	Satyen Gupta is a veteran in the field of telecommunications, drawing from his vast experience in telecom regulation as well as industry. Among other accomplishments, he was a member of the NGN Regulation review group of ITU and also worked as advisor with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India at the level of Additional Secretary and is heading the Converged Network Division dealing with regulatory, technical and economic aspects of Data Networks and Services.
	Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam is a distinguished fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society. Improving information access both for scientists and for the rural poor; scientometrics, ICT-enabled development and open access are among his current research interests.
	Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate.
	Tulika Pandey is an Electronics and Telecommunications Engineer. She has been with the Government of India since 1992 and is currently Director with the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India. She is involved in implementation strategy and action plan formulations for wider reach of ICT facilitated benefits; Integration of appropriate technology interfaces between human and cyber world; Steering of Research and Development projects for development of contextual ICT technology, tool, applications and content.
	Vir Kamal Chopra is currently the Sr. General Manager (QA) with BSNL at New Delhi. He started his career in teaching. He has played a vital role in providing telecommunication facilities and shaping BSNL and is also responsible for finalization of high value products which are purchased at the central level of BSNL. He is credited with introducing e-tendering for the first time at BSNL.
	Vishnu Vardhan T is the Programme Director, Access to Knowledge (A2K) at CIS and works for the creation and growth of free digital public knowledge infrastructures in Indian languages. A2K is funded by Wikimedia Foundation to work as an anchor team to catalyze the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. His work primarily includes virtual volunteer community building on Indic Wikipedias and qualitative and quantitative development of Indian languages Wikipedias.

See the speakers schedule here