University of Southern California USC-Infosys Center for Advanced Software Technologies (CAST) The USC Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering USC

 About
CAST is a USC-Infosys Center of Excellence for Research and Academic Training on Advanced Software Technologies. Established in September 2008, the Center includes participating research scientists from various departments in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California and from Infosys. Expertise of participating USC faculty includes Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Industrial and Systems Engineering. Initial research areas include:

Software Engineering
Collaborative Software Development
Virtualization and Infrastructure Management
Multi-core Programming Environments
Semantic Web Technologies
 
In addition to its research program, the Center will also offer advanced degree programs to Infosys engineers
 
Sponsors
 
Kris Gopalakrishnan is an Indian industrialist, software engineer and one of the 7 founders of Infosys Technologies, a global consulting and IT services company based in India. Kris obtained M.Sc. (Physics) in 1977 and M. Tech. (Computer Science) in 1979, both from IIT, Madras. He started his career with Patni Computer Systems (PCS), Mumbai as a Software Engineer in 1979 and quickly rose to become an Assistant Project Manager by 1981. His seminal contribution during his stint at PCS was the development of a distributed process control system for controlling the LD converters at Rourkela Steel Plant. 

In 1981, Kris, along with N. R. Narayana Murthy and five others, founded Infosys Technologies Limited. The initial years of his responsibility at Infosys included management of design, development, implementation and support of information systems for clients in the consumer products industry in the US. During 1987-1994 he headed the technical operations of KSA/Infosys (a joint venture between Infosys and KSA at Atlanta, USA) as Vice President (Technical).

On June 22, 2007, Kris took over from Nandan Nilekani as the CEO and Managing Director of Infosys Technologies Limited. Kris previously served as Chief Operating Officer (since April 2002), and as the President and Joint Managing Director (since August 2006). His responsibilities included Customer Services, Technology, Investments and Acquisitions.

Recently, he was fined Rs 5 lakh by the Infosys board for a technical violation of its insider trading rules. He is alleged to have inherited 12,800 equity shares from his mother on December 24, 2007 but had inadvertently failed to notify the company within one business day after the change in his shareholding, which constituted a violation of the company's insider trading rules. The fine money has been donated to a charitable organization.
C. L. Max Nikias, a nationally recognized leader in multimedia and Internet technologies, was appointed the Provost of University of Southern California in July 2005. Prior to that he served as the Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Before becoming dean in 2001, he was the founding director of the school's Integrated Media Systems Center the sole National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for multimedia and Internet research.

As a result of his research achievements in digital signal processing, which lies at the core of multimedia technologies, he was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1991, when he was 38. His research interests also include biomedical engineering, digital communications and military radar and sonar. He holds eight patents, has published more than 100 academic articles, 180 conference papers and three textbooks. He also has a security clearance and continues to serve as a defense consultant.

Nikias joined USC in 1991 as a professor of electrical engineering, and served as associate dean from 1992 to 2001. He previously held academic appointments at Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Connecticut in Storrs. He graduated from the National Technical University of Athens in 1977 with a degree in electrical and mechanical engineering. He earned his M.A. and his Ph.D., in 1982, in electrical engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo.