“UTN.BA’s academic level is excellent”

Parag Chatterjee is a researcher and faculty member from India who, since 2016 has been participating in the School’s PHD program and performing education and research tasks. He was born in Calcutta 24 years ago. He holds a Master’s degree in Computing Sciences from the University of Calcutta and, less than a year ago, he started his teaching and research career at UTNBA.

Today, Chatterjee is pursuing a PhD in Engineering with a Specialization in “Signal and Image Processing”, with PhD Ricardo Armentano and PhD Leandro Cymberknop as thesis director and co-director, respectively. “My plan of thesis has recently been accepted, and currently I am performing research, education and scientific dissemination tasks in the UTN.BA’s Science, Technology and Productive Innovation Office (SECTIP) together with the GIBIO (Bioengineering I&D Group). Presently, I’m working on the Internet of Things (IoT) field applied to healthcare. The main objective of my PhD thesis is to design a smart model and a supporting system for decision making applied to the monitoring of cardio-metabolic diseases, a core discipline under GIBIO’s focus in the last few years.” explained the researcher, who also works as a teacher of Software Engineering at UTN.BA’s Graduate School in the Master’s degree in Information Systems Engineering.

Chatterjee mentioned that his trip to Argentina “had never been in my plans. It started when I met Armentano in an IEEE Congress in Patiala, India, in December 2014. I was going to present a scientific work, related to the Master’s degree I was studying. We started a very good professional relationship and we shared our visions regarding research and the application to biomedical technologies. I was inspired by his vision of thinking globally, acting locally,” the young researcher said.

After a series of online collaboration tasks, Armentano invited him to join the UTN.BA’s PhD Program (through the Doctorate program) and he accepted without a second thought: “I’ve always been interested in the possibility of exploring the world beyond the frontiers of my country in order to specialize and this offering was the perfect runway to take off.”

The researcher confirmed that “UTN Buenos Aires’s academic level is without any doubt excellent. When I interact with my Master program students, I’m impressed by their interest and analytical thinking, –he stressed-. In GIBIO, I experienced the high standards of interdisciplinary research here on a par with renowned universities in the world. In addition, in the area of science and technology, UTNBA is permanently making an effort to promote research activities, providing various supporting resources.”

In that sense, Chatterjee considered that “one of the key important factors is the disclosing of results of our activities both at a national and international level, thus generating an exchange with other research groups. With my directors, we have been working on this objective, whereby we could create collaborative actions with other institutions. Thanks to that, I had the opportunity to attend events with renowned professionals from Italy and France, among others, both at UTN Buenos Aires and at universities abroad,” he added and stressed the importance of the human factor: “I appreciate the great support and encouragement I received from PhD Miriam Capelari, Graduate Studies and Research Office undersecretary, and from Lic. Patricia Cibeira, UTN.BA’s Science, Technology and Productive Innovation Office secretary.”

Since his arrival, Chatterjee has attended a series of extracurricular events held at the School. In 2016, the GIBIO organized a complete one-day event about The Internet of Things in the Graduate School. Together with other speakers from Argentina and Chile, he gave an introductory talk on IoT. Parallelly, he took a seminar on Research Methodology and attended Spanish and French lessons in the School.

“Among other essential tasks was the reduction of my thesis plan following the advice of my tutors, Armentano and Cymberknop, so as to be accepted as a PhD student at UTN.BA. In the process, our first findings within my field of study were published in Health & Technology, Springer’s international renowned journal. In addition, I am co-editor of a book entitled Internet of Things: Foundation for Smart Cities, eHealth and Ubiquitous Computing which will be published by CRC Press (Taylor & Francis) in August this year. We also wrote a chapter in that book where authors from 15 countries participated,” he added. In May 2017, he started to teach Software Engineering in the Graduate School for the Master’s degree in Information Systems Engineering. He also visited Rome, invited by the University of Rome Tor Vergata, to moderate in a special session on “Decision support Systems” in the 1st Scientific International Conference on CBRNe – 2017. After that, he traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, to attend the IoT Week 2017, where he was in charge of the IoT in Medical Sciences and Healthcare workshop. “I also visited the International Union of Telecommunications venue (IUT) in Geneva. This visit in Europe created a series of interesting opportunities for the group I belong to. The University of Rome Tor Vergata offered an official cooperation and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the School. In addition, UTN, which is an IUT academic member, generated a possibility to actively participate in the IoT Study Groups,” he explained.

Finally, and as part of the scientific activities on IoT at UTN.BA, he gave a speech on “IoT and healthcare” in the event organized by the IEEE Student Branch, EMBS and GIBIO in July this year.

“I think that good things take time and, from the research perspective, to develop something of high impact requires care, effort and commitment among other factors. UTN.BA provides a perfect platform in the field of Internet of Things and its various lines of application,” said Chatterjee, and concluded: “my experience at UTN.BA has proven fantastic. I got total support by the institution to continue my studies here. Therefore, I am looking to the future in order to take the maximum out of this opportunity, to transfer the knowledge acquired in the School.”