Madhavan Mukund
CMI, Chennai
Madhavan Mukund is presently Professor and Dean of Studies at the Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI). He studied at IIT Bombay (B.Tech) and Aarhus University (PhD) before joining the faculty of CMI in 1992. He is also Director of the Indo-French Research Lab in Computer Science (ReLaX) set up in CMI by the French National Centre for Research in Computer Science (CNRS) and is President of the ACM India Council. He has been the National Coordinator of the Indian Computing Olympiad since 2002 and has taught several courses in the MOOC initiatives of Microsoft Research and the National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) project of MHRD. He has served as President of the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science. His main research area is formal verification. He was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Session 2C – Symposium on “Blockchains and Cryptocurrency”
: R L Karandikar, CMI, Chennai
Introduction to blockchains
A blockchain is a list of records or blocks that grows continuously. Blockchains can be used to implement distributed ledgers that maintain a permanent and verifiable transaction history. Blockchains are typically managed by a peer-to-peer network with decentralized updates. Distributed consensus protocols are used to maintain coherence. Integrity against tampering is ensured through cryptography. The speaker will explain the theory and technology behind blockchains as well as the implications for applications of features such as cryptography and decentralized control.