“We Empower Our Talent Pool to Stay Ahead through Continuous Learning.”

Of course, apart from what the Center offers, individual business units also conduct brief training sessions for engineers based on their specific project requirements.

A nice analogy we could use to understand how the Competency Center works collaboratively with the Product-development teams is in order here. In the exciting world of machine learning (ML), conventional ML works in two phases: a training phase (used to make the model learn as per a chosen algorithm) and an inference phase (using the trained model to perform its job). The former phase (training) can be said to be broadly analogous to the training imparted by the Competency Center while the latter phase (inference/deployment) is analogous to talent getting deployed in the product development teams. Interestingly, in the world of artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning, there is also a paradigm known as ‘continual learning’ which refers to the ability of a model to learn continually and adapt, such that the learning is not restricted to the training phase alone, but continues during deployment and on-the-job. Such continual learning paradigms have been very useful, for instance, in autonomous or self-driven vehicles. It is our vision that the same continual learning paradigm inspires both the Competency Center and product-development to function as inter-twined and continuous processes that strengthen each other, and enhance the eventual performance autonomously and organically.

Q2. Tell us more about the dynamic technology field Ittiam operates in that calls for a greater focus on continuous learning.

Ittiam has deep expertise in digital video that enables us to deliver stunning next-generation experiences.

In today’s world, digital video fits into the same paradigm as the classical Jevons paradox in economics – “The efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.”

Substitution of the word ‘resource’ with ‘digital video’ shows us how true this is of digital video.

On the one hand, video compression technologies have shown unprecedented developments in being able to compress high quality video into highly compact bitstreams. On the other hand, especially in today’s context, we see a massive increase in delivery and consumption of digital video for education, enterprise and entertainment.

We owe the success of the programme to subject matter experts at Ittiam who design the training content, evaluators who grade the exercises, ‘tech-buddies’ of the new recruits who form the window of interface into the BU, the HR team that manages the operational aspects seamlessly and the leaders of the organization who provide strategic guidance.

Q4. How do you enable experienced engineers to hone their skills and stay ahead in the game? Have you adapted your training programs for the new reality of working from home and remote collaboration?

Recently we launched a course on digital video for an experienced set of engineers with multi-disciplinary skills and proven expertise in their respective fields, but are expanding their horizons laterally into a new domain

Customizing the methodology helped. For instance, since the group was quite experienced in software development and engineering, we did not cover those aspects formally. However, we put greater emphasis on the theoretical and conceptual aspects of digital video fundamentals, especially pertaining to those aspects that were new for some of the engineers.

Post March 2020 lockdown, we administered this course online to a select set of engineers. The collective maturity of the group coupled with the intensity with which the group continuously connected to the theme, by actively interacting as well as asking questions, was very heartening. As the faculty, it was my endeavour to provide the right pacing of the course, laying emphasis on key topics as we progressed, so that everyone is on the same page and no one feels disconnected.

We have also been participating at the international level in standardization activities, for instance in the MPEG (JVET) meetings. Ittiam’s excellent reckoning was witnessed by me along with our other technologists, during our interactions with video coding experts from various parts of the world at the MPEG (JVET) Standards Committee meeting.

At one of such meetings, we were spontaneously encouraged by the chairs to demonstrate some of our relevant work to the entire gathering of video experts. This was very well received. All of these are due to the collective wisdom, vision and efforts of Team Ittiam that all of us are very proud of!

Q6. Based on your experience, could you please elaborate on the synergies between work in research, development and engineering on the one hand, and training on the other?

I feel fortunate to be born in a family which is deeply connected to academics and learning. My masters at IIT Kharagpur involved significant components in digital video, computer vision, pattern recognition and machine learning, wherein I feel blessed to have been awarded the ‘Dr Shanker Dayal Sharma’ gold medal for the best all-rounder post-graduate student.

I have also been fortunate to pursue a career which has woven these very technologies into it. In my earlier stints in the last two decades, I was fortunate to be involved in technologies relating to image and video compression and scalability. This led to opportunities to participate in Standards Committee meetings and related work (which continues at Ittiam as well). I also started getting invitations for delivering tutorials and invited talks in these technologies at prestigious international conferences.

This theme continued parallely with my regular work in design and productization in the realms of video, audio, media transcoding, content based retrieval and systems engineering aspects, collaborating with various advanced technology groups world-wide. All these areas synergized very well in my experience to yield many innovative solutions which also led to patents and publications.

For a number of years, I also taught Masters level courses in multimedia, data mining and machine learning for a very prestigious engineering institute. Apart from mainstream teaching, this also gave me exposure and experience in formulating course contents autonomously, setting question papers, grading and so on. Within my professional career, I was also invited to mentor people, to help them grow technically and professionally.

Q7. As we wind up, could you provide some examples of how your analytical bent of mind helps inform your other pursuits?