Name : Krishnaswamy Sundaram
Aliases: KrisS, KS, Sundaram

I have a Ph.D in physics from the University of Delhi, awarded 1968. I would like to describe myself as a research scientist with interest in applied biomedical/ engineering areas.

After formal training with specialization in theoretical physics, I joined the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a premier institution of advanced medical education and research in India, to conduct my Ph.D. research in the then emerging and esoteric field of quantum biophysics. I had the good fortune to spend a little over a year with a fellowship at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. The training I obtained at the Quantum Chemistry Institute under the directorship of Professor Per-Olov Lowdin, a towering personality in quantum chemistry and quantum biology, formed the strong foundation of my research career. After spending a couple of years as Research Associate and Research Instructor at the University of Tennessee, Medical Units in Memphis, I joined the AIIMS as a faculty. I moved over to the University of Madras as Professor of Biophysics in 1976. Was a Senior Resident Research Associate at NASA's Ames Research Center from 1979-81. Chaired the newly formed Department of Computer Science at the University of Madras from 1987 to 1994. From 1994-2000 I was Professor and Head (Chairman) of the Department of Crystallography and Biophysics of the University of Madras, during which span I was also Director of the Guindy Campus of the University for a period of 2 years. Since 2000 I have been Director of Computer Applications at the S.A. Engineering College, Chennai.

My research work has spanned several areas - quantum chemistry, quantum biology, quantum pharmacology, mathematical modeling and simulation, study of origins of life, computer graphics, information theory, VLSI design, design and fabrication of microprocessor based systems, sytems integration, computer networks and distributed processing. A unifying feature has been my interest in computer programming and algorithm design, from way back in 1963 till now. Currently, I am intensively involved in bioinformatics, especially developing software for modeling and predicting the structures of biological macromolecules.

'The Online Technology' has been my passion in recent years. As a part of the Global Research Institute (http://www.monmouth.com/~vnet) started by James Schoening, I executed a couple of software projects, which though small, demonstrated that real-life problems of a day-to-day nature can be solved through the networks and the geographical separation between the solution seeker and solution provider becomes insignificant.

Later on in the period 1996-2000, I served as the Administrator (LTSC Admin) of the Learning Technology Standards Committee of the IEEE, carrying out my work (including remote maintenance of a SUN Spark server with Root access) entirely through the Internet, accessing from half the way across the world.

My family consists of myself, my wife Chitra and two grown-up sons, Shyam, a computer scientist and bioinformatician (currently living in Virginia, USA), and Mohan, an optometrist (currently living in Singapore), who have started off well on their own professional careers after completing formal education. Chitra and myself enjoy traveling, especially, globetrotting. When that doesn't come by, we make do by relaxing at our home in suburban Madras in the compa ny of our pet dog, Kitty, and watching the world in cyberspace and through the cable TV channels.

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