IEEE Bombay Section Signature Conference – IBSSC 2020, was held in virtual mode from 4th to 6th December, 2020. While the theme of this Conference was “Frontiers of Technologies: Fuelling Prosperity of the Planet and People”, the tracks were Industry 4.0, Blockchain, Electronics Surveillance and Education Technology. The conference received an overwhelming response with 97 submissions from industries, academia, and research institutions out of which 48 were accepted for oral presentations. The conference had keynote addresses on all 3 days. Day 1 of the conference commenced with a keynote address by Mr. Ramanan Ramanathan – Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission & Additional Secretary at NITI Aayog. Day 2 of the conference commenced with a keynote address by Dr. Tessy Thomas of Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO), India. Day 3 of the conference commenced with a keynote address by Mr. Ramesh Menon – Chief Architect, US Federal CTO at IBM. In addition to the keynotes, there were 7 talks by experts from both industry and academia. The details of the expert speakers are as follows:
- Industrial 4.0 Standard by Dr. Mangesh Chansarkar, SirF Technology, USA,
- Educational Technology by Mr.Franxan Stanley, Aye Learning Labs, India & Prof. Sridhar Iyer, IIT Bombay
- Blockchain by Prof. Vidy Potdar, Curtin University, Perth, Australia & Ms. Debajani Mohanty, Consultant and Author, India
- Tactical Missile System by Mr. Ajit B Chaudhary, Project Director Akash, DRDL Hyderabad
- Beam Control Technology for Laser System by Dr. Jagannath Nayek, Director, CHESS, DRDO
The conference highlight was a panel discussion on Impact of Industry 4.0 with panelists which included Mr. Abhay Phansikar, Dr. Bheesette Satyanarayana, Mr. Anand Gharpure and other invited speakers. The conference was attended by 136 participants. Four categories of awards including Promising Paper, Promising Work, Best Paper Award and Best Research Group were presented to researchers. The presenters were also awarded with prize money from each track after a thorough review process.