Ganesh GOPAL

Education

2025 Library and Information Sciences,
Pondicherry Central University,
CGPA - 9.80

2017 Fractals & Scaling,
Santa Fe Institute,
Percentage – 84%.

2016 Introduction to Complexity,
Santa Fe Institute,
Percentage – 91%.

2009 – 2010 Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Automation System Design,
DOEACC, Formerly CEDTI,
Calicut,
Percentage – 92%.

2005 – 2009 Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics & Communication,
Pallavan College of Engineering, Anna University,
Kancheepuram,
Percentage – 80.15%.

2005 Higher Secondary School,
Infant Jesus Matriculation Higher Secondary School,
Kancheepuram,
Percentage – 83.66%.

2003 Secondary School,
Infant Jesus Matriculation Higher Secondary School,
Kancheepuram,
Percentage – 78.72%.

Technical Proficiency

Operating System: GNU/Linux.

Programming Languages: C, C++, HTML, CSS, LATEX

Sofrware Development: VSCodium, Builder, Android Studio, Processing,

Documentation, Interaction: Latexilla, Kile, GIMP, Inkscape, LibreOffice

Version Control: GIT

Prototyping Software Stacks for Building, Integration, Prototyping: Fritzing, Puredata, GNURadio, GRC, Pothosware

Design Computer Aided Design(Amateur): FreeCAD, Salome, KiCAD, Antimony, FontForge, Blender

Physical Physical Prototyping Platforms:Arduino - AVR, ARM,Beagle Bone Black - OMAP, Raspberry Pi Zero - BCM, NodeMCU - ESP8266

Geo Tools & Informatics: Open Street Maps, Humanatarian Mapping - HOT, JOSM, iD, GRASS, QGIS, Web Mapping Services, POSM

Statistics Data Analytics: Orange3, R

Experience

2005 – 2009 Training as Electronics & Communication Engineer,

• Most of my time in university have only focused on theoretical dimension and laboratory  interpretation of the same, that created a contradiction between the importance of theory and its application on day to day basis. Physical interpretation of the theories, mathematical models and concepts felt disconnected from reality and thus i passed out only with an broader set of abstract introduction of the field of engineering. 
• However, the disconnection have also pushed me to discuss the same among my friendsand classmates, through which i came to know about the existence of public science forums and technology communities through which i learned about the global free software movement.
• The training only made me feel more vulnerable because of several unanswered questions that came from the tensions of lack of reasonable explanations.

2010 – 2012 Assistant Engineer, DOEACC, Calicut

• Theoretical underpinnings behind the industrial applications of engineering with respect to industrial automation, made sense for the first time. Evolution of several controllers, control systems, mathematical modeling to identify from the observed characteristics of a system were done by directly interacting with factory floor setup which provide the instances of risks taken by human labour.
• Again the sophistication of using expensive instrumentation devices, controllers, and deploymnet of control system algorithms was neither affordable, not accessible for public. Question of democratization of any piece of technology in production engineering was not even addressed. Everything is tuned and optimized for efficiency within safety limits.
• I was trained as Industrial Automation Engineer at the institute and worked to teach the same for new candidates who were interested in learning industrial automation. I
  realized the level of learning and deployment of control system devices were largely correlated with the level of affordability rather than the transparency in knowledge.
  Given the labour availability in India, Automation is not not a default entrepreneurial requirement and the revenue always needs to mature beyond a certain threshold after
  ensuring the consumption volume - which opened me up to the political economy of automation and its relationship with labour, especially in the post recession period.
• Still, while completing my tenure, i am yet to understand the disconnection between knowledge generation and tool/utility production.

2013 – 2016 Research Intern/Engineer, CSIR, Chennai

• Continuing my work towards actual scientific research, CSIR provided space to further apply my Instrumentation skills and learned experience in FOSS(H).
  { I was tasked with design and development of ergonomic embedded system that controls and measures flow of photons. The software controlled electronic system controls the refractice index of the material by modulating its crystalline structure to select a particular wavelength - an acousto-optic tunable filter. This essentially a shift in work for me from orchestrating factory floor automation and making production recepies to narrowing down to create a particular instrument which is potentially to be used in Space Exploration or as Public utility in Food & Pharmaceutical domain.
• The task was completed using FOSS(H) tools wherever possible with publicly available circuit and software design. However, i have also witnessed how technology developed with public fund can become a libaility because of social stratification within the research environment, knowledge hierarchy, Intellectual Properly Rights and Patents.
• One central limiting caveat of scientific production is largely based on valuing the knowledge based on secrecy by applying legal instruments like Intellectual Property
  Rights, and Patents over the technology made my interns and engineers. Moreover, evaluation values scientific communication through monotoned impact factor based
  publication process that was very well aligned with the IPR and publication process was usually reviewed for complexity, and opaqueness instead of simplicity, proof of
  work, repetability and transparency.
• Gained experience on the paper publication process, usage of Code repositories to publish proof of work using GIT, and published a paper about FOSS & Internet based
  hierarchial business systems thorugh Open Access system and tools of publication - Arxiv, for the first time.

2017 – now Volunteering, FSHM, Puducherry

• With rise of Peer production culture which is closely related to the global FOSS(H) movements, there was an emergence of Citizzen Science communities, forums and
  online forums trying to address wide range of problems from Biodiversity, Ecology, Climate Change, Open Hardware for Open Science, etc... which shooted me to
  Puducherry to learn the local FOSS(H) community, FSHM - to learn and share skills and my experience with industrial and scientific instrumentation. Already community
  had a good practice of sourcing materials from local flea markets (Sunday street market), to bring the affordability for hardware and FOSS software tools integrating
  global design and local availability bringing both knowledge commons and affordability. Eventhough the pattern is widely adapted in developing countries, it is a very valuable exercise to be part of it, while also sharing my knowledge that i learned from public insttutions.
• This is also the time when Government of India pushed Unique Identification based on biometrics, fastly coercing the working population to identify them before a public
  service authority to just access what they are promised through Public distribution system. I was working with digital activists and legal scholars who have been opposing
  the very databasing of its citizens that transforms everyone into objects of financialization, subjugating further for all kinds of surveillance, etc... Apart from participating in
  public discussions, i have also written a web document explaining the chronology of events that lead to the current state of Identity black market, function creeping, and
  even challenging the fundamental meaning of Right to Privacy in Indian Constitution. 
• This is also a fortunately placed location for me, as i get to know about how commons based peer production and collaboration at a large scale is not at all new, where
  physical work and knowledge production were not bifurcated, instead inseperable. While witnessing peer production in the urban side, i also experienced how fisher folks
  build and sail their own Commercial Carriers for centuries in one of the nearing township Cuddalore, where the practice is still preserved and thriving. This has essentially made me realize that scarcity in historical knowledge all through my text book and work place learning made me blind to the relationship between knowledge creation and its ownership.
• Identification of lack of historical contingency, made me connected more with local culture, artisanal labour process, and their current livelihood. This time again i have
  used my Digital Cartography and Mapping skill with the nearby coastal village to map out their village ameneties, places of production, administration, care, leisure, ritual,
  cremation, etc... so that it shall be recognized by the State as a legally recognized map made by the people living based on the available ecological services for eons. This has been widely been effective against Industrial enclosure happening along the coast threatening both the ecology and the social fabric.

2018 – now Research Engineer, ETH - Zurich, IFP - Puducherry

• An interdisciplinary research environment with broad range of works spanning from design, development to historiography and archaeology.
• The project work aims to derive a Social History of Mathematical Practices in South India, which required a lot of Digital Organizing from data collection, curation, storage,
  visualize archeological, historical, (manuscripts, inscripts) data.
• I have been offered space to use, experiment FOSS tools and frameworks for the above tasks while working with historians and archaeologists have taken make back in time and place to visit the places where different dimensions of interpretation converge to give a completely different story based on the archaeological and historical evidences that we observe together. Since this is the first time for me to work with humanities to such extent, it took some inertia in understanding the necessities and political intricacies within Digital Humanities itself through which i was trying to help organize the curated information.
• Along with my Information Technology colleagues, we have created an interactive Thematic-Spatio-Temporal framework where anyone can explore the curated information without going through conventional cataloguing experience in an archive.
• Complete FOSS based workflow is forged to meet the needs of the project from Field survey to Archiving.
• The work facilitated me to learn a lot : on history of metrology in the Indian context, how Standards, Scales and other mathematical practices have mediated between labouring people and the establishment of State. Relationship between social stratification, mathematical manipulation, and Fairness, Justice is no more a correlation. Some of the visits to artisanal workshops, made me understand the hierarchical relationship between the aesthetics and ergonomics in the artisanal production. Most of the texts that were assumed to be the source of such artisanal practices in India were caring so much on mathematical (geometrical) properties that directly relate to the aesthetics which are stereotypically defined, but the longevity of such produce were completely dependent on the dexterity of the practitioner in the workshop who mostly cares about the ergonomics, i.e, the functionality and longevity of the produce. Although complex to learn, it just only made me more reponsible towards how the information that was helpful for me would be easier for someone who is visiting the Atlas/Archive website.
• It also evoked a strong sense of tool making and dexterity at various levels. I have used this opportunity of tool making for social sciences research practice. Design and Development of Echoes and its archival counter part helped me learn the flow of information from evidence to records and interactive objects in various forms. The current archive and atlas which i have helped at the architectural level can be seen here
  • Archive: Echoes: Archive
  • Atlas: Echoes: Atlas a module that works with the Archive
• Further observation from the tool making perspective, its labourious coordination and collaboration effort have created opportunities to make primary sources into various forms from various grounded research expertise

2018 – now Volunteering, ROSA, Puducherry

• Being engaged with FSHM and my work with Social History of Mathematical Practices, have also networked me with more scholars and other volunteers through which i
  reached ROSA - a social science collective in puducherry that actively works to address socio-economic, cultural and ecological problems along the Coromandel coast.
• From the villagers, artisanal fisher folk, social science scholars, i have also learned how there is a fundamental difference in the way a cartographer approaches a region versus how a fisher man visualizes the environment - during my coastal commons mapping exercise. This greatly kindled me in exploring the role of standardized methods of measurement etc.. which essentially reduced the participation of the community in the map making process itself, and instead uses a language that neither make sense with the community nor with how they understand their environment. This language imposition is always being single sided, thus posing a strong critque against what is being observed when a method is being narrated as open.
• My understanding on how computationally automated and optimized algorithms in influencing the human behaviour, have been helpful in volunteering some of the ground
  works with ROSA. One of such works is to study and understand the role of Credit in Working womens lives. With rise of Microfinance as the credit model there has been a massive financial engineering sector that couple well and tightly with the Information, Mathematics and Algorithm development that will mediate between the Debtors and the Creditors. However, nobody realized its fragile nature until COVID19 struck. Most of the credit that has been supplied were dependent upon the Microcredit sectors trust on Women’s social situation. With most employment activity freezed on one hand, and rising need for money for daily expenses - micro credit dependency became way more pronounced which was profitable to the privatized microcredit sector, which in turn result isolation of women from each other in their neighbourhood, because of the unfair treatment of the loan agencies to collect the interest.
• Several field works along the coast made me realize the situation is actually contradictory to the women empowerment narrative widely advertised and published by the Finance sector in the country. In addition it also paved way for us to understand how Debt is being used as an instrument of oppression against oppressed and marginalized both within the house and in the neighbourhood, that essentially suits in sustaining the social stratification conditions in India. Algorithms in this situation, which have been designed to optimally to mediate between creditor and debtor, are now only favouring the creditors, by financially profiling the debtors through UIDAI and having a ’highmark’ ranking scheme that addresses the "risks" taken by the creditors. However the risks taken by the women for their daily needs if they don’t repay for some reason which are beyond their control are never addressed with any informational services run by the FinTech companies both within India and globally. Legal moratorium have not helped much as it only increased delay in collecting the interest repayment. Algorithm getting biased is one thing, but designing it completely blind to the extraordinary situation and using its "fairness" argument were only the proof how automated optimiazation is only advantageous to profit making strategy. This essentially pushed several women both within their homes and in workplace have only into a recursive financial debt.