Enduring Themes in Voice and Data Communications for Enterprises

	IT Eminent Lecture Series
	Enduring Themes in Voice and Data Communications for Enterprises
	Ravi Sethi, Avaya Labs
	President
	Coates Hall 145 June 09, 2009 - 01:30 pm
Abstract: Technologies change, markets change, but research and development in voice and data communications endures, motivated by the need for worker productivity, business efficiency, and superior customer service. The communications environment is evolving rapidly, with new user interfaces, social software, and communication analytics. Yet, one of the lessons from the recent symposium (Computing Research that Changed the World: Reflections and Perspectives, March 25, 2009) is that it "consistently takes 10 or 15 years from 'research breakthrough' to 'billion dollar sector'." In this talk we consider some current applications of voice and data communication that are likely to find their way into practice over the next few years. In each case, we outline the key enabling technologies.

Speaker's Bio: Ravi Sethi, President, Avaya Labs, joined Avaya to launch a research program aimed at the future of enterprise communication when Avaya Labs was formed from Bell Labs. He outlined the technical areas, attracted leaders from Bell Labs, and worked with them to build up a thriving organization that conducts leading-edge research and works with real-world customer scenarios to accelerate product innovation and mitigate technical risk. The areas of research include collaborative applications, multimedia technologies, IP communications, networked systems, data analysis, and software technologies. At Bell Labs, he was senior vice president for communications sciences research, and before that, computing and mathematical sciences research. At the time, these two organizations were responsible for basic research at Bell Labs outside the physical sciences. Concurrently, he served as vice president of product innovation for Lucent’s Communications Software Group. For his technical contributions to compilers and programming languages, Sethi was nominated a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1996. He is a co-author of the textbook, “Compiler: Principles, Techniques, and Tools,” popularly known as the dragon book (2nd Edition, 2007). He is the author of the textbook “Programming Languages: Concepts and Constructs” and of over 60 technical publications. Ravi Sethi has served on the Board of Directors of Avaya GlobalConnect, a public company in India. He has also served on advisory councils for the National Science Foundation, Princeton University, the University of California at Riverside, Penn State, and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. Dr. Sethi has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, specializing in computer science, from Princeton University (1973) and a bachelor of technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur (1968). He was a professor at Penn State (1972-1976) and the University of Arizona (1979-1980). He joined Bell Labs in 1976 and came to Avaya in May 2000. He was appointed president of Avaya Labs in October 2000.

Refreshments will be served.
This lecture has a reception.

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