Debra Danielson is Senior Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at CA, Inc. (formerly Computer Associates) and is President of the CA Council for Technical Excellence (CTE).  The CTE is comprised of technical thought leaders and domain experts from across all organizations at CA and focuses on advising CA's executive leadership on technical issues of strategic importance to the business.  The president is the leader and advocate for CA's technical community as a whole, and the Council in particular. Previously she was vice president, development in CA's Center for Technology Architecture in the Office of the CTO. Debra joined the Office of the CTO to create a centralized UI and user experience team.  She was responsible for user interface architectures and standards and product user experience strategy at CA and continues to be an advocate and evangelist for usability and user-centered design. A member of CA's senior leadership team, Debra joined CA in 1988 with the Applied Data Research acquisition and brings more than 20 years of engineering and product development experience to her perspectives on usability. Debra holds a bachelor of arts in economics and applied mathematics from Boston University .

Kentaro Toyama is assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, in Bangalore, where he supports the daily operation and overall management of the lab. He additionally heads an interdisciplinary group that conducts research to identify applications of computing technology to international development and is currently also the acting manager for the digital geographics research group.  From 1997 to 2004, he was at Microsoft Research in Redmond , where he did research in computer vision and multimedia. In 2002, he took personal leave from Microsoft to teach mathematics at Ashesi University , a private liberal arts college in Ghana . He has consulted for ABB and DLR, the research arm of the German Aeronautics and Space Administration. Kentaro graduated from Harvard with a bachelors degree in physics and from Yale with a PhD in computer science. 

Sharad Sharma is the CEO of Yahoo! India R&D. He has over 21 years of experience in the enterprise software and wireless infrastructure sectors. Prior to joining Yahoo!, he was involved in buyout activities focused on taking mid-sized software product companies private. Previously, he was the India General Manager and corporate Vice President of Product Operations at Symantec (formerly VERITAS) and was responsible for the turnaround of the VERITAS operations in India. He was earlier a co-founder and CEO of Teltier Technologies, a New Jersey based wireless infrastructure start-up that became the leader in the Presence and Availability Management space and is now part of Cisco. Sharad has managed product development teams at Lucent Technologies both in US and in India. He also setup AT&T’s, and later Lucent’s, R&D operations in India in mid-90s. Sharad examines the transformation challenges facing the industry in his blog Orbit Change Conversations
(http://orbitchange.com/blog/)

Jan Blom is heading a multidisciplinary research group at Nokia Research Center (NRC), Bangalore. The team comprises social scientists, designers and computer scientists and its aim is to explore the rich and varied consumer landscape of today's India so as to identify novel business opportunities for Nokia in India and emerging markets in general. After pursuing his PhD around the topic of 'Psychological Implications of Personalised UIs', Jan joined NRC, Helsinki, in 2003, where he worked as Principal Scientist conducting user research in the area of social media. Later he moved to India to set up a satellite studio for Nokia Design and finally to establish the NRC research group.

Ganesh N. Prabhu is Professor of Strategy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. His areas of interest are product innovation, strategic management and entrepreneurship. He was earlier the Chair of the Post Graduate Program from 2006 to 2008 and the Chair of Placements from 2001 to 2004. He is on the international editorial board of the Journal of Management, on the governing board of the Strategic Management Forum of India and on the board of studies of the International Institute of Information Management. He received the AIMS Best Young Teacher Award in 2000 and jointly won the AIMS Best Research Paper Award in 2002. He has published in the Academy of Management Review, Research Policy, International Journal of Technology Management, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management and Technovation. He chaired the Product Development Management Association India Conference in 2007 and was its Co-Chair in 2006. He has a doctorate in strategy from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, where his dissertation won the PD Agarwal -TCI Award for Doctoral Research in Management in 1995. He also has a masters in rural management from the Institute of Rural Management Anand, a bachelors in physics from Bombay University and held executive positions for two years in the National Dairy Development Board.

Prakash Sayini is a seasoned telecom professional with 14 years of experience, who extensively worked in all domains of mobile telecommunications starting from R&D, Standardization, Pre-Sales, Business Development and Developer relations. He is currently leading Forum Nokia India activities where he is continuously innovating new
ways to engage and entice developer community to develop mobile applications and providing business opportunities. Prior to Nokia he spent 8 years with Siemens communications which is now part of Nokia Siemens Networks and 3 years with National University of Singapore (NUS) leading the 3G software development and standardization activities. He has solid e2e understanding of telecommunication systems mainly in the areas of IMS/FMC and Service Delivery Frameworks and Platforms. He has special liking working with Educational institutes and universities. He was a Guest lecture @ NUS (Institute for System Sciences) on Next Generation technologies and services. He is credited for introducing IMS and SIP technologies into ISS (NUS) master's program in partnership with Siemens Communications. He holds a Master's Degree from Queensland University of Technology - Australia  in Computers and Communication Engineer and lived in Singapore for 12 years before returning to India last september to take up the Forum Nokia India responsibility.

Dr. G Venkatesh started his research career at India's premier research institute TIFR, Bombay, then moved to the Computer Science department of IIT Bombay where he spent 8 years teaching and researching topics in the areas of temporal logic, functional/logic programming, and applications of logic and languages to VLSI design, which resulted in about 50 papers in international conferences and journals in these areas.  He made his transition to the industry when Sasken Communication Technologies Ltd was being formed in 1990, and moved full time to Sasken as Technology head in 1995. He has played various managerial roles at Sasken and is currently a board member and their Chief Technology and Strategy Officer. He also participates in teaching and research at IIM Bangalore, where his interests revolve around applying game theory to strategic thinking in the technology industry, specifically in IT outsourcing and in the telecom & semiconductor industries. Venkatesh is a graduate in Electronics from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Madras, a Ph.D in Computer Science from TIFR, Bombay, and is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers.

Deepa Bachu is a Group Manager at INTUIT Technologies, makers of intuitive products like Quicken, TurboTax and QuickBooks. Her responsibilities include Customer Driven Innovation - building solutions that enrich customers' lives by solving important and unmet needs. Deepa has 12 + years in User Experience, Innovation and Product Development. After working at the Intuit headquarters for 5 years Deepa moved to India where she guides innovation and strategy for version 1 products. Deepa is an innovation and design evangelist. She has presented at several conferences and is an active member of design and innovation organizations.

Thomas Fredengren is working as International Account Manager at Tobii Technology. Prior to this position he has 10+ years within the Swedish IT industry working with business development and channel management. Tobii Technology is the world leader in hardware and software solutions for eye tracking, enabling a computer to tell exactly where a person is looking and thereby offering new powerful ways to understand user behavoir. The company is based in Stockholm, Sweden, with branches in the US, Germany and Japan . Products are sold directly and through reseller s and partners worldwide. Visit www.tobii.com for more information.

He received his Master in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and Master of Design from IIT Bombay.  He also holds a Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering.  Before joining MIT, Pranav worked with Microsoft as a UX researcher.  He holds 13 patents and have published many research papers. Pranav's research interests include intelligent interactive systems, tangible interactions, social computing, collective intelligence and robotics.

Natesh heads emerging markets services initiatives at Nokia. He is based in Bangalore, India. Natesh, has been associated with Nokia since 2002 and has  held various positions under the functional areas of sales & product marketing both in India and APAC. Prior to Nokia, Natesh served in several capacities at HCL-HP, Wipro and Manipal Education. Natesh has served as a featured speaker at a number of industry business and technical events in Asia. Natesh has a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Engineering from RVCE, Bangalore. A Masters degree in Computer Aided Design from Mysore University, and a MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Rajeev Purnaiya is the founder-CEO of hooeey. hooeey, his second entrepreneurial venture was started to overcome drawbacks in the existing web information re-locating tools and services such as bookmarks, search engines, tagging and link management. From 1998 to 2004, Rajeev Purnaiya was the Founder and Managing Director of CyberBazaar, India’s first and largest conferencing company. He was responsible for strategically aligning the company to new technologies and analyzing future market trends in Indian industry. India’s first audio-conferencing start-up, CyberBazaar was a pioneer in its area, several years ahead of other large telecom companies. Even today, it is the most dominant player in India having more than 60% market share. After selling CyberBazaar to WebEx in 2004, Rajeev was the Managing Director of WebEx (India) until mid-2005. Rajeev has Bachelor of Science in Industrial & Systems Engineering from the University of Alabama and a Masters in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University. Rajeev Purnaiya is an avid reader with interests spanning across genres and enjoys his round of golf. He is a member of professional societies like the TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and CII-YI. He also mentors start-ups and serves on Advisory Boards apart from making angel investments.

President, Clarice Technologies

Shashank has been crafting the customer experience of interactive systems, with a unique combination of business understanding, technical acumen, creative talent and strategic insight for more than 15 years. Prior to joining Clarice, Shashank managed a multi-location team of 140 usability consultants involved in Product Design, User-Interface Design & Usability evaluation for Human Factors International – world’s largest usability consulting company. Shashank had built User-Centered Design(UCD) function & set up a high performing team at Symantec that has heavily contributed towards usability evolution of its product portfolio. Shashank institutionalized usability as a function in Symantec (then Veritas) and grew it about 25 usability professionals contributing to over 15+ products in data center & security domains. Shashank moved UCD value proposition from GUI design to Conceptual design to Product design. Shashank has demonstrated key strengths in end-to-end product design & conceptualization based on market insights & design innovation. Shashank has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Industrial Design from National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad.

Sandeep Datar is the Director of User Experience Design and User Research at Yahoo! India R&D. He has over 14 years of experience in applying user centric design and innovation to hardware and software products. Prior to joining Yahoo he was heading the User Centered Design team at Symantec (formerly VERITAS). Earlier to that he worked as an automotive designer with Bajaj Auto. His current areas of interest include Ethnography, process driven product innovation, designing for the emerging markets and exploring the role of Art Direction in software products. Sandeep leverages his experience in the automotive and IT segments, in enterprise and consumer domains to compare, evolve and refine the End to end User Experience design process.

Ishwar Jha has over 14 years of experience in diversified industry verticals and has implemented many projects including infrastructure deployment, ERP, enterprise applications and initiatives that have made the organization achieve excellence in the respective business field. Ishwar Jha has focused on the applications and user interface design in such a manner that its user friendly and simplified for the ease of use. Ishwar Jha has over 16 years of experience in diversified industry verticals from services to manufacturing to entertainment. During his over four years stint with Essel Group, Ishwar has been instrumental for launching the mobile platform 7575, Play TV (India's first live and interactive gaming TV channel), Digital Asset Management System (Essel Group is the first organization in the Asia Pacific region to have successfully implemented the same) among other projects which have helped the organization earn significant revenue and reduce operating costs. In his current role, Ishwar is responsible for setting up business operations to capture the growing digital entertainment and convergence business market and sustain the group's leadership position. His efforts have helped in launching India's first commercially deployed mobile TV service (ISEE) in partnership with BSNL. DMCL has also ventured into launching Internet products in the spheres of entertainment, social networking and e-commerce. He has also conceptualized and worked extensively for developing www.mypopkorn.com – global entertainment platform for Asian audience which is emerging as preferred destination for professional content entertainment for Indian and non resident Indian across the globe.

Global AS Delivery Competency Area Leader, Learning Content Development, IBM India

Anita has rich experience in Media and IT Services, spanning a broad range of general management responsibilities including Business Development, Strategy & Planning, Marketing and Delivery. Before joining IBM about 8 yrs ago she has held senior positions in top notch media companies like Times Of India Grp , STAR TV and MTV. Currently she is the Asia Pacific Leader for LCD ( Learning Content Devt) & Service Area Leader for IBM Interactive. She has Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing Management from Mysore University and has done her Executive General Management at the Indian Institute Of Management, Bangalore.

Arunava Sinha is specialise in building interactive online products and services from scratch, and getting user engagement on them. He have been involved in building a complete suite of Web 2.0 products at ibibo.com. Earlier, he built new content streams at indiatimes.com, including broadband, blogging, online talk radio, live stockmarket coverage and more. He have 8 years' experience in managing and packaging online content from multiple sources, and another 8 years in journalism prior to that. His goal is to keep building innovative online products.

Dr.S.Ghosal is currently the Acting Dean of NID's R&D Campus at Bangalore. He joined the National Institute of Design in 1987 in the Faculty of Industrial Design. His parent subject being Ergonomics / Human Factors, he has worked in almost all areas of design. He has been teaching Human Factors and UID both for the UG and PG Courses at NID India since 1987 and was instrumental in developing NID's two PG Programmes in Software and User Interface Design and Information and Digital Design, which were offered during the period 2001-2007. He has guided more than 75 projects (students' projects, research and consultancy projects) in UID and Interaction Design including innovative ones. In his Administrative positions, Dr. Ghosal was in charge of NID's training activities (as Vice-Chairman of the Activity) during the period 1996 – 2000. During the period 2000 – 2002, he was in charge of NID's Outreach Activities (As Chairman of the Activity). As academic and research accolades, till date, he has been the recipient of a number of international scholarships from the World Health Organisation, British Council, International Council of Societies of Industrial Design etc. Dr. Ghosal holds a Ph.D (with specialization in Ergonomics) from the University of Calcutta, a Post Graduate Diploma in Management of Technology and he has about 20 publications, nationally and internationally. Dr. Ghosal's areas of interest in education research and consultancy range from User Interface Design, Management of R&D and Product Innovation, Strategic intervention of design in new business developments and systems development and integration.

Prabhas heads the India Service Management Product Management team (torchbearers of Service Desk, CMDB, Support Automation, Service Catalog, Asset Management, Client Management range of enterprise products) and is also a virtual lead for the Product Management initiative at CA India Technology Centre. He has over 11 years of experience working with IT Services companies, start-ups and large product development organizations – primarily involved in the R&D and Product Management roles. As a Product Management professional, he has been a strong UI/Usability evangelist on every product he had been associated with – be it an application for Slaughter Houses or IT Governance products. Almost all of this experience relates to Enterprise space and his area of interest includes IT Governance, Enterprise IT Management, Application Development Lifecycle and Enterprise Mobility. Prabhas is an alumnus of London Business School, North Carolina State University and National Institute of Technology, Jaipur.

Presently, Dinesh Katre is Group-head of National Multimedia Resource Centre at C-DAC, Pune. This centre was established under his leadership and with the sponsorship of Dept. of Information Technology, Govt. of India in 1998. Recently, he has envisioned the R&D charter for Human Computer Interaction Design activity at C-DAC. He has Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) from BITS, Pilani and M.Des. in Visual Communication from IIT, Mumbai. His Ph.D. research was fully sponsored and hosted by C-DAC. During past 15 years at C-DAC, he has conceptualized and implemented many R&D projects that deal with Digital Library, e-Learning, Game Design, Museum Informatics, Multimedia Authoring and Content Creation. He is the principle designer of many software, content and training products. He has published around 25 research papers in international conferences and journals. He has received many accolades for innovative design and research.

Amit has 8 years of international experience in design strategy, user experience and product development. Amit has worked in user experience senior management and consulting roles with Oracle, PeopleSoft, SupportSoft, HP, CKS Consulting and India’s first rural e-governance project. Formerly, Amit also worked as a research specialist at the Decision Support Systems Lab at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA. Amit is also co-founder of Usability Professionals Association, Bangalore (http://upabangalore.org) and has conducted several events in India including Doors of Perception conferences, World Usability Day, and design conferences (Dcamp). Amit holds an MS in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and a Bachelors degree in Engineering from the Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (formerly MNREC), India. As visiting faculty, Amit has also conducted design courses and workshops at the National Institute of Design and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur campuses. Amit’s professional interests span design, technology and business innovation.