Timothy A. Gonsalves
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Timothy Aloysius Gonsalves (born 20 June 1954) is an Indian computer scientist and professor. During his academic career, he has been founder/co-founder of several institutions and companies. These include founder of Nilgiri Networks (P) Ltd, co-founder of NMSWorks Software (P) Ltd, co-founder of the TeNeT Group and RTBI at IIT Madras, and IIT Mandi Catalyst. Most notably, he was the founding Director of
IIT Mandi Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (or IIT Mandi) is a one of the eight new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) located in Kamand Valley, Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh, India. Established by the Ministry of Human Resource Developmen ...
in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh from Jan. 2010 to Jun. 2020. He is currently Professor Emeritus (Honorary) at
IIT Mandi Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (or IIT Mandi) is a one of the eight new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) located in Kamand Valley, Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh, India. Established by the Ministry of Human Resource Developmen ...
. His academic interests include education for engineers of the future, computer networks, distributed systems, telecom software and performance evaluation among others.


Early life and education

Gonsalves, was born into a
Mangalorean Catholic Mangalorean Catholics () are an ethno-religious community of Latin Christians from the Diocese of Mangalore and the erstwhile South Canara area; by the southern coast of present-day Karnataka, India. Contemporary Mangalorean Catholics descend ...
family on 20 June 1954, in
Ooty Ooty (; officially Udagamandalam (), Anglicisation, anglicized: Ootacamund , abbreviated as Udagai, ) is a town and municipality in the Nilgiris district of the Indian States and territories of India, state of Tamil Nadu. It is located north ...
, Nilgiris in
Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...
. He graduated from Breeks Memorial School, Ooty in 1969. He completed B.Tech. (Electronics),
IIT Madras The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras or IIT-M) is a public technical university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is one of the eight public Institutes of Eminence of India. As an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), ...
, 1976. He went to the US for graduate studies, receiving an M.S. (Electrical Engineering) from
Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...
,
Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...
in 1979 and Ph.D. from
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
in 1986.


Early career

After receiving his PhD, Gonsalves served as an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at WPI, Massachusetts from July 1986 to December 1988. He returned to India and joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
IIT Madras The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras or IIT-M) is a public technical university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is one of the eight public Institutes of Eminence of India. As an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), ...
as Assistant Professor in January 1989. During his PhD, Gonsalves had done early research on the then novel idea of transmitting voice over Ethernet. Besides simulation studies, he conducted measurements on an early Ethernet LAN at Xerox PARC that established the capability of this data network to also transmit voice. In the first decade of his academic career, he broadened his research on LANs to include the transport layer and operating systems.


Technology for society

In the early 1990s, Gonsalves with two colleagues
Ashok Jhunjhunwala Ashok Jhunjhunwala (born 22 June 1953) is an Indian academic and innovator. He received his B.Tech. (Electrical Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and PhD from the University of Maine. He has been a faculty member at ...
and
Bhaskar Ramamurthi Bhaskar Ramamurthi is an Indian academic who served as the director of Indian Institute of Technology Madras from 2011 to 2022. He succeeded M. S. Ananth and was succeeded by Prof. Kamakoti Veezhinathan. Career Bhaskar Ramamurthi obtained his B ...
decided to focus their research on technology for mass use in India. They founded the TeNeT Group with its motto “World-class technology at an affordable price”. Gonsalves worked on the software design of a number of telecom products. These include the corDECT Wireless in Local Loop system, a product of Midas Comm, the DIAS Direct Internet Access System, a product of Banyan Networks, with its patented soft-switching design among others. To deliver useful applications based on the Internet, he was a co-founder of n-Logue Communications and the IIT-M RTBI. In 1998-2000, on leave from IIT Madras, he founded Nilgiri Networks (P) Ltd. In the small town of
Ooty Ooty (; officially Udagamandalam (), Anglicisation, anglicized: Ootacamund , abbreviated as Udagai, ) is a town and municipality in the Nilgiris district of the Indian States and territories of India, state of Tamil Nadu. It is located north ...
. He trained local talent to develop telecom software for the TeNeT Group. This included Minnow, a Linux-based server for small ISPs, and BlueBill, a low-cost telecom billing package. Based on many years of research in network management systems he co-founded NMSWorks Software (P) Ltd and designed its flagship product, CygNet. (Best Paper Award) Working with several companies incubated by RTBI on Internet-based products for rural India, his research interests further broadened to include distributed systems. From about 2006 onwards, he worked on financial systems as a consultant to SBI and
SEBI The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is the regulatory body for securities and commodity market in India under the administrative domain of Ministry of Finance within the Government of India. It was established on 12 April 1988 a ...
. He led the development of the first standards for mobile payments in India as a member of the Mobile Payment Forum India (MPFI). During the decade following 2010, he started to apply
machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
and
data science Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, stru ...
to diverse fields such as computer networks and agriculture. He developed an interest in data-driven speculations on the future.


Institution Building: Founding Director, IIT Mandi

Prof. Gonsalves took charge as the first full-time Director of IIT Mandi in January 2010. Under his leadership, IIT Mandi grew from an Institute with only 97 students in 2009 to one with 1655 students (2019–20) and has graduated over 1500 alumni. It has a vibrant research culture, with 125 faculty. As of 2020 they had brought in external research funding to the tune of Rs. 110 Cr. among others. From a green-field project initiated in 2009, IIT Mandi has 1.4 lakh sq. mt. constructed space with residential, academic and recreational facilities at par with the best higher education institutions in India. In the National Framework Institute Ranking of the Government of India (2019), IIT Mandi was ranked 20th among engineering colleges in India, and best Institute among all categories in Himachal Pradesh. In the ARIIA 2020 it was ranked 7th in a nationwide survey.  Within a decade of its establishment, IIT Mandi earned praise, including from the Indian Vice-President, and the Governor and Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, for establishing its unique identity in the education map of the country. Prof. Gonsalves was instrumental in setting up IIT Mandi Catalyst, the first technology business incubator in Himachal Pradesh, in 2016. He served as the Chairman of its Board of Governors. Catalyst has helped over 370 startups since 2017, and is changing both the industry profile and entrepreneurial mindset in Himachal Pradesh.  As of June 2020, Catalyst had secured external funding of Rs. 24 Cr from various funding agencies. In 2019, IIT Mandi became the first IIT to introduce a B. Tech. programme in Data Science.  Prof. Gonsalves has mentored other educational institutes in Himachal Pradesh by serving on their board. He has served as the Vice-Chairman of the State Higher Education Council, Himachal Pradesh (2014 – 2017), and as the Chairman, Board of Governors, Jawaharlal Nehru Government Engineering College, Sundernagar, Himachal Pradesh (2012 – 2017). Prof. Gonsalves was appointed the National Project Coordinator for FarmerZone, a project that harnesses artificial intelligence for crop management advisories to small and medium farmers, initially helping over 1000 potato farmers in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. This prestigious project was funded to the tune of Rs. 9.7 cr (2018-2021) by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.  Another example of IIT Mandi achieving national leadership during his tenure: in 2018 IIT Mandi was nominated as the nodal institution for Germany in the nationwide SPARC (international researchers’ mobility) programme of Ministry of Human Resource Development. In keeping with IIT Mandi’s vision to bridge the gap between academia and the local community, Prof. Gonsalves initiated ‘Prayas’, a citizen’s forum with residents and administrators in Mandi town, and served as its Chairman.


Initiative to increase female enrollment in the Indian Institutes of Technology

In 2017 he chaired the Joint Admissions Board (JAB) sub-committee for increasing female enrollment in B.Tech. in IITs. The committee recommended increase in female enrollment in IITs from 8% in 2016 to 14% in 2018-19, 17% in 2019-20 and 20% in 2020-21 by creating supernumerary seats. As a result of this effort, and additional efforts at IIT Mandi including scholarships for female students and the setting up of a help-desk, IIT Mandi admitted 20.22 percent female students to its B. Tech programme for the Academic Year 2019-20. That is, there were 53 female students among a total of 262 BTech students admitted that year. This is the highest proportion of female students in a BTech programme in any of the 23 IITs. This effort has been a national success as well: Female enrollment in BTech in all IITs more than doubled from 8% in 2016 to 18% in 2019.


Five Week Induction Programme for BTech Students

Since 2016, under Prof. Gonsalves' leadership, IIT Mandi had organized a unique, fully faculty-mentored induction or orientation programme for its new BTech students. The aim of this five-week programme was to provide training to the new students and help them in the transition from school to college, to improve their respective skills and proficiency, and to help them to appreciate the significance of engineering’s societal connect.


Retirement from IIT Mandi

After over 10 years of his contribution as founding Director of IIT Mandi, he stepped down on 30 June 2020, leaving IIT Mandi with a strong foundation.  Thereafter, Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi, Director of
IIT Roorkee The Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT- Roorkee or IIT-R) is a technical university located in Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India. It is the oldest engineering institution in India. It was founded as the College of Civil Engineering in 1847 d ...
, took additional charge as Director of IIT Mandi temporarily. Prof. Gonsalves continues his association with IIT Mandi as Professor Emeritus (Honorary) since 1 July 2020. In February 2021, IIT Mandi published a book ''Scaling the Heights: IIT Mandi's First Decade'' chronicling the growth of the institution from inception until 2019 under his leadership.


Career after retirement

After his retirement as Director, IIT Mandi in June 2020, Prof. Gonsalves has been active in improving education in engineering colleges in India. He founded the LEAP (Learning Engineering by Activity with Products) programme in 2021. LEAP brings project-based learning to students in the first and second year of their BTech programme. He is a founding member of the Steering Committee of the CSEDU programme aimed at improving the effectiveness of teaching of computer science subjects in colleges. He leads the team on Effective Teaching of Computer Networks. In 2022, Prof. Gonsalves was named
AICTE The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is a statutory body, and a national-level council for technical education, under the Department of Higher Education (India), Department of Higher Education. Established in November 1945 firs ...
Distinguished Chair Professor. In this capacity, he visits engineering colleges in different parts of India to deliver expert lectures and to mentor faculty and students. His first visit, in November 2022, was to the G. Narayanamma Institute of Technology and Science (for women), Hyderabad.


Personal life

Gonsalves is married to Priscilla Tapley Gonsalves and has two daughters, Danica Gonsalves and
Kartiki Gonsalves Kartiki Gonsalves (born 2 November 1986) is an Indian director and producer. In 2023, she won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film, Best Documentary Short Subject at the 95th Academy Awards for ''The Elephant Whisperers''. She is a ...
. The documentary ''
The Elephant Whisperers ''The Elephant Whisperers'' is a 2022 Indian documentary film directed by Kartiki Gonsalves. The documentary is about the bond that develops between a couple and an orphaned baby elephant, Raghu, who was entrusted to their care. The film is pr ...
'' directed by Kartiki Gonsalves and story written by Priscilla Gonsalves, has won the Academy Award 2022 for Best Documentary Short Film. After retirement as IIT Mandi Director, he has been leading the IIT Mandi Wikimedians, a group of Wiki editors/contributors from IIT Mandi. They contribute photos and articles on
Himachal Himachal Pradesh (; Sanskrit: ''himācāl prādes;'' "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a States and union territories of India, state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen Indian Himalayan ...
to
Commons The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons ...
and
Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
. He is an avid photographer and several of his images have been featured on
Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based Digital library, media repository of Open content, free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used ...
, and selected as Picture of the Day on Commons and Bengali Wikipedia.


Selected research publications (P)


References


External links

*
IIT Mandi Director (2010-2020) homepage

IEEE Research and publications

T. A. Gonsalves; D. Sethi. (2018). "''A Unique Pedagogical Experiment: The 5-Week Induction Programme (5WIP) at IIT Mandi''". IEEE India Info. 13. 44-46
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gonsalves, Timothy A. Living people IIT Mandi Indian Institute of Technology directors People from Nilgiris district Indian computer scientists Rice University alumni Stanford University alumni Scientists from Himachal Pradesh 1954 births People from Ooty Indian Wikimedians Wikimedia image contributors