How IT became the third T and other stories

Teaching. Setting up institutes. Research. Writing. Authoring books. Consulting. Developing IT. Prof. S Sadagopan, Founding Director of IIIT Bangalore has had a rich, varied and meaningful life. Here he takes a trip down tech memory lane...

- By Sunil Rajguru

You studied at Purdue University in the 1970s and were associated with various prestigious institutions in the 1980s and 1990s. Can you speak a bit about that and your early days in your career?

Purdue University not only created the first Undergraduate Program in Computer Science but also ran a solid academic infrastructure PUCC Purdue University not only created the first Undergraduate Program in Computer Science but also ran a solid academic infrastructure PUCC (Purdue University Computer Center) that helped dozens of departments. I was very much influenced by it; I also contributed (thanks to my supervisor) towards the establishment of a campus-wide Optimization Library where I saw first-hand researchers from Engineering, Science, Agriculture and Pharmacy departments using large-scale optimization

I taught for 16 years at IIT Kanpur and 4 years at IIMB before joining IIITB in 1999. In the 1980s computing grew phenomenally—mini-computers and interactive computing at enterprise level and PCs at individual level—and got democratised (earlier it was available only to “rich” guys). The window of opportunity started for India in the 1980s.

I was a lucky academic to get associated with the key players—TCS, Wipro, HCL, Infosys, TVS Electronics, CMC—yes, there were both hardware & software players (though the country has forgotten the hardware players!).

I was also active with Dataquest, Computers Today & Computer Education for You!

Also, the seeds for large-scale computer applications—Railway Reservation System IMPRESS, Income Tax Computerization, LIC, Indian Airlines, SBI Automation—were sown. They were truly pioneers.

Academic Computing at IIT Kanpur, IIM Ahmedabad, TIFR, NCST was also maturing in the 1980s; computing was the academic infrastructure for exciting work in transportation, water resources, CAD/CAM, early Robotics, computational chemistry at IIT Kanpur.