News : Research in Germany: First Indian scientific director at a Max Planck Institute

Research in Germany: Rupak Majumdar is the first Indian to be appointed scientific director at a Max Planck Institute

Research in Germany: First Indian scientific director at a Max Planck Institute

August 26, 2009

Computer scientist Rupak Majumdar joins the faculty of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) as scientific director in June, 2010. Majumdar is the first Indian to be appointed scientific director at a Max Planck Institute.

The MPI-SWS, located in Saarbrücken and Kaiserslautern, western Germany, conducts high-risk, high-impact research related to the design, analysis, modelling, implementation and evaluation of complex software systems. It is one of eighty institutes run by the Max Planck Society (MPS), which is world-renowned for its basic research in medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, technology and the humanities.

Both in Germany and abroad, Max Planck Institutes are considered particularly attractive research establishments that offer ideal working conditions for performing cutting-edge research. The Max Planck Society maintains its high standards by appointing internationally renowned scientists and researchers as Scientific Members, who then assume the responsibility for running the well-equipped research institutes.

Rupak Majumdar is the first Indian scientific director at a Max Planck Institute

Rupak Majumdar is the first Indian scientific director at a Max Planck Institute

The Senate of the Max Planck Society appoints the Members and Directors in a rigorous selection procedure involving leading experts from the MPS and other organisations. Explaining his shift from the University of California, Los Angeles to MPI-SWS, Dr. Majumdar told the German Information Centre, “The Max Planck Institute funding model lets you work on longer-term and more ambitious projects. This was the primary motivation. The excellent group of people at the MPI for software systems helped a lot.”

The MPS currently has 266 Members and Directors at its 80 scientific institutes. Out of this, 82 are foreigners from 24 countries, including 17 from the USA, 11 from the UK, six from Austria, seven from Switzerland and now one from India. The MPS builds on its excellent reputation by attracting the brightest scientific brains from around the world, including India. In 2008 MPS had 557 Indians as international visiting researchers. The Max Planck Institute for Computer Science (MPII) is also setting up the Indo-Max Planck Centre for Computer Science (IMPECS) – a joint research centre with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

Rupak Majumdar is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur and received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. His research deals with the spectrum of formal verification techniques, ranging from theoretical foundations of logic and automata theory to practical software engineering tools that systematically analyse thousands of lines of code for programmer errors.

Along with Ranjit Jhala, Majumdar wrote the the model checker Blast, which is able to analyse over 100,000 lines of code for complex temporal properties. This achievement was a major milestone and proof of feasibility in the field of software verification, and led to a flurry of academic and industrial activity in the area.

Talking about the opportunities for young Indian researchers in India, Majumdar said, “From an MPI perspective, we would like very much that bright young researchers come to Germany and the MPI for their doctoral or postdoctoral studies, as well as consider Germany when looking for academic careers. I think the language barrier has prevented Indian students to look at European universities. However, many places in Europe have switched to English, have built up excellent international graduate programmes, and I believe are very well poised to attract good students from India, China, and so on.”