IACS student gives his perspective on changing the world

Pramod Ganapathi wants to bring online learning to remote villages in India

Pramod Ganapathi IACS Computer Science PhD student "... in computer science, I fell in love with algorithms, which are the step-by-step procedures to solve any problem. I call myself an algoholic.”

Computer Science student Pramod Ganapathi describes coming to this country to pursue his PhD as transformational: “Coming to the US was a life-changing experience for me. Here I learned about courage, positive thinking, passion and chasing dreams.” And the dream that has evolved for Pramod is to provide educational resources to remote villages in India using computers.

Pramod was born in the small southern village of Oortota in Karnataka, India. “My father, a banker, was transferred every four years and so my family was constantly moving.” It wasn’t until Pramod was in the 6^th grade that the family made the decision to settle down in Bangalore. “It was in high school in Bangalore that I became interested in mathematics, puzzle solving, and philosophy. I chose computer science for my bachelor’s degree as I thought mathematics was the core of computer science. Then in computer science, I fell in love with algorithms, which are the step-by-step procedures to solve any problem. I call myself an algoholic.”

Pramod completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science at Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering. After college, “I worked in IBM India Software Labs for two years as a software tester, but I grew restless because I felt there was no research being done in industry; no deep thinking.” So he left his “very decent job” to pursue his PhD.

He arrived at Stony Brook University in the fall of 2011 and now works in the Computer Science Department under the supervision of Assistant Professor Rezaul Chowdhury on making programming easy for ordinary programmers and computational scientists. “Programming is hard. Developing and implementing superfast energy-efficient portable parallel algorithms that run on different machine architectures from tiny smartphones to a single node of a supercomputer is extremely complicated. It requires expertise in several fields such as algorithms, data structures, programming, parallel programming, machine architecture, and so on. To this end, a system that can automatically discover and implement blazing fast algorithms for different problems would immensely benefit ordinary programmers and computational scientists without any formal training in computer science. We aim to design and build such an automated system for the benefit of all.

 “It was when I was in my first year of my PhD, though, that I firmly decided what I wanted to do in my life. My big dream is to create an online education company in India to bring online learning to every corner of the nation. When I was an undergrad I faced a problem. I had an excellent teacher for mathematics but not a good one for software engineering. A student in some other university might have an awesome teacher for software engineering but again, a bad instructor for mathematics. Is it possible for all students to learn from the best teachers in every subject? After a lot of thinking I discovered that an education is the panacea for all problems in the world, and online education (i.e., learning through the Internet) is the best method to achieve my goal.”

His online education company will have two aims: (1) Record the videos of the best teachers teaching from the best books in every subject and post them online; and (2) Through online video calls connect the most knowledgeable people with every student in every village. Pramod readily admits, however, that the second plan might take several decades to reach all corners of the nation. “I realize there are several challenges I will have to tackle to implement the idea as most villages might not have basic electricity, telephones, schools, computers, Internet, and projectors. The second major problem is in getting funds. However, I believe that dreams do come true because beliefs turn thoughts to things.”

For more information about Pramod’s work or if you want to contribute ideas for his non-profit organization, you can visit http://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~pganapathi/.

The Institute for Advanced Computational Science engages faculty, students and postdocs from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, all of whom have research interests that involve the use of high-performance and data-intensive computing. To find out more about IACS and the schedule of events, see iacs.stonybrook.edu.