new delhi two silicon valleybased alumni of iitmadras have donated 1 million to fund guest faculty in computer science and engineering to lead research projectsthe contribution by anand rajaraman and venky harinarayanan was announced at the 42nd international conference on very large data bases in new delhi on wednesdaythe idea is to enhance teaching and research efforts in this area and help attract outstanding young faculty students research scholars and postdocs to the cse department at indian institutes of technology madrasthose chosen for the venky harinarayan and anand rajaraman visiting chair program will have demonstrated thought leadership in his her chosen field and are expected to have significant impact at iit madras on research thrusts in allied areasin order to ensure that the guest faculty are of high quality an advisory committee consisting of rajaraman professor jeff ullman from stanford and professor randy katz from ucberkeley has been constituted to help the cse department in screening and selection of the chair professor as well as in the ongoing review and assessment processrajaraman announced the initiative in his keynote address at the conference where he and harinarayanan said datadriven approaches are transforming the world we live in the impact of data and algorithms is being felt in every field of human endeavor industry sciences humanities and governmentit gives us great pleasure to enable iit madras to contribute to the research work in this field and join the ranks of the select few institutions that are inventing the future harinarayan said bhaskar ramamurthi director of iitmadras said the venky harinarayan and anand rajaraman visiting chairs program in cse will have a force multiplier effect in our ug pg and research programmes in cse the constant flow of the leading lights in emerging areas of cse from academia and industry will expose our students to the latest thinking in these fastmoving fields it will also provide opportunities for our faculty research scholars and students to collaborate with the visiting chairs and encourage a strong twoway flow of scholars