In this episode Dr. Neeta Trivedi, a former senior scientist with the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and an entrepreneur, is in conversation with Sivaguru. Neeta shares her experiences on

• Her modest family background from a small town with modest dreams
• Even without access to information sources, wanting to do something different, something big
• Being fortunate to have passionate teachers right from primary school, who were invested in building good persons overall, and nt just limiting themselves to teaching the curriculum
• Getting into a new program launched by DRDO, to develop computer scientists
• Starting her career with computer land war game systems
• Using the 2167-A methodology for software development
• Getting opportunities to attend conferences including once where she got to meet Prof. Watts Humphrey
• {understanding that developing software systems is more than writing some lines of code}
• About meeting her husband to be and later shifting to Bangalore after marriage
• Working on cockpit display systems for the Light Combat Aircraft
• Getting her first opportunity to see what is ‘inside the box’ of a computer and did not have an option of opting out.
• And how that have her a very good experience to understand various dynamics in a large program
• How the nuclear blast at Pokhran and subsequent Y2k meant a lot of constraints to be faced by the scientists
• Having the rigor of 100% test coverage, 0% dead code etc
• An interesting situation while integrating subsystems that took many months to resolve and the learning from that experience
• Nuances in hardware design that influence or constrain software to be developed or deployed
• Moving to work on UAVs and adopting structured systems development methodologies (standard 498)
• How she likes to use a metaphor of a divided two way street and 2167A, her experience with 2207, that is more flexible
• About using beetles to reach inaccessible spaces in times of disaster, where UAVs cannot & interesting experiences convening a group on micro air vehicles
• About taking a voluntary retirement and starting a company
• Handling Functional and non functional requirements
• The importance and need for systems thinking

Neeta did MSc Computer Science from Devi Ahilya University, Indore, through a DRDO sponsored programme, and joined DRDO in 1989. She later pursued academics while on the job, to obtain MSc (engineering) and PhD from Indian Institute of Science in the areas of Wireless Sensor Networks and Information Fusion.

Neeta worked for DRDO for 28 years before voluntarily retiring as Scientist ‘G’. She had a brief stint as Subject Matter Expert in Tata Advanced Systems Ltd after that, and is presently focusing on her startup venture Inferigence Quotient LLP.

During her initial years in ISSA-DRDO, Delhi, she was a team member for Computerised Land Wargames for the Indian Army. From 1996 to 2007 at ADE-DRDO, Bangalore, she led the software design and development team for Cockpit Display Systems for the Indian Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas. The display computer hardware and software were designed and developed completely within India at a time when indegenious capabilities in these areas were at a nascent stage, and private industry was still evolving. The display system successfully flew many hundreds of times, providing a platform for proving other avionics subsystems as well. From 2007 to 2017 at ADE she headed the UAV Payload Data Processing group, contributing to the ground image exploitation systems of various UAV programmes including micro, mini, tactical and MALE UAVs.

At TASL she contributed to Mission Systems, Ground Operating Systems and Ground Support Systems for aerial surveillance platforms, and to group autonomy for aerial robots.

Her startup venture is about building intelligent systems using computer vision and machine learning.

She has been part of many other technical and techno-managerial activities. She was expert member and convener of the Aeronautics R&D Board panel SIGMA (Special Interest Group on MAVs) for over 5 years, expert panel member of National Programme on MAVs, a joint initiative by DRDO and DST, contributed to white paper on homeland security for Govt of India. She has over 20 technical papers in national and international journals and conferences, and has also been on review panels herself.

Neeta is a senior member of IEEE and of Computer Society of India. She has received various awards including Young Engineer Award from Indian National Academy of Engineers, Young Scientist Awards from DRDO and from ADE, and Technology Award from DRDO. Her professional interests include Multisensor Data Fusion, Computer Vision, AI, Mission Systems for Aerial Surveillance Platforms, Ground Operating and Support Systems for UAVs, Payload Data Processing, Avionics and Cockpit Displays, Autonomous Single- and Multi-agent Robot Systems including Hybrid Navigation, Software and Systems Engineering.

Contact: [email protected]

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