IEEEXtreme 6.0 Judging

Gowtham Prasad K N, IEEEXtreme 6.0 Project Lead, MGA SAC

Gowtham Prasad K N works as a Business Development Manager at Microsoft. By being responsible to drive top apps on the latest Microsoft platforms like Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Windows Azure, Gowtham plays a key role in nurturing the start-up ecosystem in India. Gowtham is a regular speaker at many Microsoft and IEEE forums globally.

As a member of IEEE for ten years, Gowtham has held many volunteer positions. Some positions include the GOLD Chairman for the Bangalore Section, Organizing Chairman for R10 GOLD Congress 2009, the founding member of his Student Branch, and currently the Organizing Chairman of IEEE All India Student Congress 2012. He was awarded the prestigious R10 GOLD Award in 2010. He is currently an EXECOM member of the IEEE Bangalore Section, and he introduced GINI to the Bangalore Section.

Gowtham enjoys meeting and interacting with new people across the globe, learning new cultures, public speaking, traveling, and listening to music. 

Sinan AlSheikh, IEEEXtreme 6.0 Technical Lead

Sinan AlSheikh is currently working as an IT Consultant with IBM. As an undergraduate student, he filed his first US patent. AlSheikh earned his M.S. in Informatics from the British University in Dubai and his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Sharjah. He is now looking forward to pursuing his Ph.D. AlSheikh's passion to innovation drives him for continuous studies and research, which is evident through his published papers in the area of human-computer interaction and natural language processing.

In addition to AlSheikh’s role in IEEEXtreme6.0, he has been an active volunteer for IEEE since 2004. With a record full of awards, he proudly speaks about his winning among 365 other inventors in a competition called "Made in Arab World." Bungee jumping, skydiving, motorcycle crossing and any other adrenaline-driven activities are his part-time passion. If you call him an adrenaline junkie, will you find him smiling and he will take it as a compliment. 

Srikanta Patanjali, IEEEXtreme 6.0 Technical Lead

Srikanta Patanjali is working at IBM as an application developer in Web services. He recently finished his post-graduate degree from IIIT-Bangalore, India, and has been an IEEE member for six years. He has played an active role in local IEEE activities from the days of his engineering studies and was also a co-developer for the Global Integrated Network of IEEE Members (GINI) Collaboration Tool.

Patanjali was a Sub-Region Student Representative for IEEE Region 10 in 2011. Presently, he is part of IEEE GOLD Bangalore and the IEEE Bangalore Section Executive Committee. He is also part of the core organizing committee of IEEE All India Student Congress 2012. Patanjali loves to travel and meet people from different cultures.

Dushyantsinh Jadeja, IEEEXtreme 6.0 Industry Lead

Dushyant Jadeja works as a Software Business Manager with Intel and is responsible for Partner and Developer Relations in APAC. In his previous experience working with Microsoft, he was instrumental in creating and leading ISV Partner strategy. His experience working with ISV Partners ranges from startups to large/global ISVs, managing relationships with influencers and technical communities, and designing outreach programs for student/developer audiences in India.

On the personal side, Jadeja enjoys meeting and networking with people, understanding different business models, exploring problem-solving techniques, horse riding, traveling, and tasting different cuisines and beverages across the world.

Judges are extremely important to the success of the IEEEXtreme 6.0 24-hour programming competition. Without these technical-expert volunteers, the competition simply wouldn’t happen. Please join IEEE in recognizing the esteemed judges:

Bob Binder, System Verification Associates, Chicago

Robert V. Binder is a serial entrepreneur and software technologist with extensive systems engineering experience.

As President of System Verification Associates, he has provided solutions for clients facing existential regulatory challenges. As CEO and founder of mVerify Corporation, he took a unique solution for mobile app testing to market. He led RBSC Corporation’s consulting practice in software process and advanced software testing, delivering expertise and solutions globally.

Binder has developed hundreds of application systems and advanced automated testing solutions, including two projects released as open source. He was awarded a US patent for model-based testing of mobile systems.

He is internationally recognized as the author of the definitive Testing Object-Oriented Systems: Models, Patterns, and Tools and two other books. His 58 articles in leading publications and peer-reviewed journals have been cited over 2,100 times. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Software Testing, Verification, and Review and served as member of Agitar Software’s advisory board.
 
He received an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a B.S. and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is an IEEE Senior member and holds the CSDP.

Avaneesh Dubey

Sajeer Fazil, Qualcomm India Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad, India

Sajeer Fazil is currently working as an engineer in the OpenDSP team of Qualcomm. He is interested in exploring various technologies related to Signal Processing and Multimedia systems. Most of the projects he has worked on fall into the multimedia domain. He completed his B.S. in Electrical and Electrical Engineering from NIT Calicut in 2010. While in college, his activities spanned from robotics and embedded projects to mathematical analysis of systems. He coordinated the robotics activities on the campus. He was also the coordinator of the Free and Open Source Software conference on the campus.

Later during college, Fazil's interest in mathematics led him to projects related to non-linear systems. He has a conference paper on "SEPIC DC-DC converter" and a journal paper on "Heart Rate variability Analyzer" (Journal of Medical Systems). Fazil is an active volunteer with the IEEE Teacher in Service Program. His lesson plan "Solving a Simple Maze" was recognized by IEEE for publishing in their upcoming Web site trycomputing.org. He spends his leisure time mainly cooking. Interests also include photography and traveling.

Jugunu George, Processors Systems India Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore

Jugunu George is currently working as Associate Senior Engineer in embedded applications at Processor Systems India Pvt Ltd. He has served IEEE as Student Representative and member of the Student Activities Board for the Kerala Section. He participated in the 2009 Region 10 Student Congress, held in Singapore. George holds a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from Federal Institute of Science and Technology (FISAT), and he has been a team member in the development of the High Performance Computing Cluster christened Dhakshina Cluster Series 1 at the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), FISAT.

Oliver Hach, DLR-German Aerospace Center, Germany

Oliver Hach received a degree in computer engineering from the Technical University of Berlin in 2004 and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bremen in 2009. While his research activities were focused on mobile robotics (design, planning, and control) for several years, he is now with the DLR (German Aerospace Center), working as a scientist in the aeroelastic simulation department.

Dimitrios Lyras, Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany

Dr. Dimitrios Lyras was born in Kozani, Greece, and received his diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering (field of expertise: Electric Power Systems) and his Ph.D. in Data Mining and Deductive Logic Reasoning from the University of Patras (Greece) in 2006 and 2010, respectively. He is presently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany, in the field of Statistical Multiple Sequence Alignment.

His fields of interest include Machine Learning, Data Mining, Language Modeling, and Statistical Methods. He has published 12 articles and has participated in numerous European research projects on ICT technologies. Dr. Lyras speaks fluent English, French, Spanish, and Greek, is a qualified programmer, and was a judge for IEEEXtreme 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0.

Dr. Oded Margalit, IBM, Israel

Dr. Oded Margalit earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University in 1993 under the supervision of Professor Zvi Galil. He has been serving as a judge since 2008, and he was awarded the IEEE MGA Achievement Award in 2009. A scientist at IBM's Research Lab in Haifa, Israel, Margalit is currently working on formal verification technologies and is author of IBM’s Ponder-This monthly challenge site. An avid riddle and puzzle maven, Margalit has been known to focus this passion on setting up contests and challenges for coding, puzzle-solving, and mathematical challenges.

Anoop Thomas Mathew

George Michael

George Michael is an M.Sc. student in the Computer Science department at the University of Cyprus. Currently, he works as a Special Scientist at the DDMGroup, and he has been actively involved with the organization of the Pancyprian Student Programming Olympiad since 2006. He has never missed an IEEEXtreme competition!

Sandeep Pokkunuri

Sandeep Pokkunuri has a B.S. from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, and an M.S. from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. An ex-Googler, Pokkunuri now works for Amazon in Seattle. By being passionate about problem solving and programming, Pokkunuri has been involved with programming contests since his days in BITS, Pilani. This is his second year at IEEEXtreme and is already looking forward to the next edition.

Charalampos Tsimpouris, University of Patras, Patras, Greece

Charalampos Tsimpouris was born in 1985 and graduated in June of 2008 from the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at University of Patras. Since October 2008, Tsimpouris has been accepted as a Ph.D. student at the Wire Communication's Laboratory at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the same University, under Professor’s Sgarbas expertise. He has participated in the following programming contests: 2001 - 13th panhellenic programming contest held by PDP; 2002 - 14th panhellenic programming contest held by PDP; 2002 - 10th Balkan Olympiad in Informatics, held in Belgrade; and 2002 - 14th International Olympiad in Informatics, held in Yong-In, South Korea.

Adarsh J

Adarsh is an entrepreneur running his firm, Arnium Technologies Pvt Ltd., leading the technical front as CTO of the company. He has completed his M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK). With an M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK), Adarsh is an avid computer programmer who tries to solve his day-to-day problems using his programming abilities. The free time available is spent in mentoring students for their hobby projects and also organizing community events focused toward developers.