TCS promotes science, technology among school kids

Washington: Tata Sons' chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran has said the Indian IT major is committed to encourage millions of children across the globe to pursue careers in subjects related to science and technology.

"TCS fully recognises the importance of what we call a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) here in the US. Our effort in this country and around the world, for the last several years has been to promote talent, skill development, whether in math or computer science or any related discipline at schools, colleges and also at an advanced level," Chandrasekaran told PTI.

STEM has been a big priority area for the US for the past few years now. "We are working with a large number of schools to promote STEM. It is our keen interest to join forces with like-minded people and companies to create millions of kids to pursue their careers in STEM.

We are pursuing this in different parts of the world," the new chairman of Tata Sons said in response to a question. Before being appointed as Tata Sons chairman, Chandrasekaran headed TCS, in which capacity he was instrumental in USD 35 million grant to Carnegie Mellon University to research and promote "pioneering work in technologies so that we are able to create a better future, a better world for the humanity".

"What I'm excited is that it (TCS-CMU partnership) is going to do very cutting edge work in future technology areas, including industrial 4.0 vision learning," he said. "All of this are very close to us. Day in and day out we are engaged with customers globally, around the world.

In doing, binary work and all these areas, everyone wants to embrace these technologies to be able to develop the future," he added. The new centre will be ready by next year and it will help in promoting advanced research in all these technologies and more, he said. "So it will be a very meaningful contribution.

It will also enhance this as a pioneer of innovative solutions, which we will develop for our customers," he said. Chandrasekaran said Tata Group wants to be associated with making contributions to advancement of technologies in every way that it can help.

Underscoring that CMU is one of the most pioneering institutions in computer science and other related sciences, he said that partnering with it also enables TCS to forward scholarships for future students to take advantage of its financial grant.

"Both developing skills as well as talent that will innovate the future is going to be extremely critical for all of us irrespective of where we come from," Chandrasekaran said.