“Hire smart people, cut them loose, make great things happen”: McW IIT Palakkad CoE inaugurated on a high note

The Multicoreware IIT Palakkad Centre of Excellence fostering research and development in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Compilers, Sensors, Video and Audio applications was inaugurated on 2nd June on the Ahalia Campus premises of IIT Palakkad by Shri Alangad Gangadharan Karunakaran, CEO McW.
Dr Satyajit Das, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, welcomed the gathering. Director IIT-PKD, Prof P.B. Sunil Kumar in his address described the occasion as a very happy one. He lauded the fact that, apart from facilitating interaction with other industries, research and innovation was receiving a fillip in this manner. He appreciated how Shri AGK Karunakaran‘s casual effort at connecting and interest in the working of IIT because Palakkad is his native town, came to something more. He also highlighted that the Multicoreware IIT Palakkad Centre of Excellence (CoE) was ‘many things in one’ – a cluster, CoE, a research-hub and that this different mode of operation was something new. Noting the McW had people working with the industry in India and the US, and was also starting operations from Coimbatore, he wished the centre well.
Introducing himself as a serial entrepreneur, Shri AGK Karunakaran spoke of the growing importance of Multicore architecture, and the need to make parallel programming easy. Sharing snippets of his own journey, he spoke of the shift from serial to parallel programming, his opportunity to be associated with a leading US university and with the first Professor to offer a course on GPU Computing, and McW’s presence first in USA and China, and since the last 10 years in India, during which time he also became part of Friends on IIT and Tech-in.
He emphasised that there was a lot of opportunity for entrepreneurship. Stating “Believe not in destination but the journey”, he said the goal was to hire smart people, cut them loose, and make great things happen. Calling for all Higher Educational institutions to look at Masters and PhD programs as being about ‘idea creation’, he observed that big names in tech like Yahoo, Google, and even HP, all started from universities. He expressed the hope that the new centre would be beneficial for multicoreware and ancillary ideas. He urged students to think not just about getting a degree and getting a job, but to be entrepreneurs. Stating that on an average, only 2% graduates go on to be entrepreneurs across academic institutions, he noted that some institutions exceed that average, and expressed the hope that IIT-PKD would be one of those. He summed up entrepreneurship as being about making the impossible possible, creating opportunity for those around, and in the process also creating shared wealth, thus making magic happen.
His address was followed by the partnership for the Multicoreware IIT Palakkad Centre of Excellence being formalised with the signing of the MoU and project contract by Shri AGK Karunakaran and Dr Santhakumar Mohan, Dean, Industry, Collaboration and Sponsored Research, IIT Palakkad. Dr Unnikrishnan Cheramangalath, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering proposed the vote of thanks.