Chintan Vaishnav
Engineering Systems Division
Massachusetts Intitute of Technology

Office: 32-G806

77 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge MA 02139

Email: chintanv@mit.edu

  

Welcome! I am a doctoral student in Engineering Systems Division at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My research relates to the dynamics of technology, industry structure, regulatory policy and consumer preference in the communications sector.

Research and Action Statement

I decided to come to MIT in the fall of 2003 for a master’s degree in the Technology and Policy Program (TPP). I had come here after six years at Bell Labs and its subsequent incarnation, Avaya Labs, where I had worked at the forefront of Information Technology research. The disappointment that compelled me to leave behind purely engineering-focused corporate research to become a “penniless graduate student” of interdisciplinary studies was the observation that the plethora of technology we have produced has had a very marginal effect on people’s lives.

Having completed my M.S. in TPP, as I embark upon my Ph.D. in Engineering Systems, I am convinced that technology has an important role in bridging today’s stark social and economic gaps. My goal is to bring technology closer to people, especially those in emerging economies. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to obtain the knowledge and experience to become an objective evaluator of technology, policy, and the changing industry structure in the industrialized as well as the emerging economies.

Emerging economies are distant from technological revolution. They face a wider information gap and are often neglected in the incipient phase of technological development. I believe successful globalization can take place only with the active participation of developing nations in the global economy. To achieve this, it is important to close the information gap, to help developing countries and marginalized sectors of society to catch up with the new age.

My current research concerns understanding the information and communications systems from the perspective of complex systems. I am interested in the full spectrum of technology and development; as an engineer creating high-end to grassroots innovations, as an analyst observing the socio-economic impact and as a systems thinker interested in the policy implications and possible interventions. A parallel, and inextricable, interest I have is in developing ways to observe, measure and analyze complex, socio-technical systems.

The following are my recent involvements:
   
    Technology and Industry Structure
    I currently work as a research assistant with the Value Chain Dynamics Working Group, Communications Futures Program (CFP), MIT. The group is creating a framework and a toolkit for understanding value migration in voice, music and video communications value chains. The research group consists of researchers from MIT and industry partners worldwide.
   

Technology and Regulation
   

I spent the summer of 2004 at the Office of Strategic Planning (OSP), Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The work I did at the FCC has culminated in the following references:

  • Chintan Vaishnav . (2005). ‘Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP): The Dynamics of Technology and Regulation’ Technology and Policy Program. Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 166. [PDF]
  • Chintan Vaishnav . and C. H. Fine (2006). ‘A dynamic assessment of VoIP innovation, adoption and their interaction with CALEA regulation,’ Technology Policy Research Conference, Arlington, VA. [PDF]
    Technology and Socio-economic Development
   

I spent the summer of 2005 working on a project jointly commissioned by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and Microsoft Research on understanding the impact of information technology on the agricultural sector.

I carried out this work in collaboration with the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), India. Through this project I came across many grassroots innovators and have remained actively involved in this activity.

  • Chintan Vaishnav. (2004). ‘Information Flows in the Traditional Knowledge and the Grassroots Innovations Value Chains for Agriculture - A Report from Gujarat,’ To be published.
    Methods
   

I am interested building a strong tool kit that helps in sound quantitative and qualitative analysis. The following is a paper I recently wrote on modeling soft variables such as morale, pressure, etc. in an organizational setting.

  • Chintan Vaishnav, A. Khakifirooz, et al. (2006). ‘Punishing by Reward: When your Performance Bell-curve Stops Working for You’. International Conference of System Dynamics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. [PDF]
    Electrical and Computer Engineering
   

The following is my work on high-speed networking:

  • Chintan Vaishnav, Matt Nieberger, A. P. Jayasumana, and Jon Sauer, ‘Design and Performance of a Robust WDM Network,’ presented at SPIE's International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation 1996, Aug. 4-9, 1996.
  • S. A. Abd-Elmalak, C. Vaishnav and A. P. Jayasumana, `Performance of Robust WDM Fast Circuit-Switched Networks with Token Passing in Control Channel,' International Journal of Communication Systems, Vol. 15, pp.239-255, 2002. [PDF]  
  • S. A. Abd-Elmalak, C. Vaishnav and A. P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of a Symmetric Robust WDM Network when the Channel Access Pattern at Nodes is Known,’ Proc. 22nd IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, Oct. 1997. [PDF]
  • T. S. El-Bawab, C. Vaishnav, A. P. Jayasumana, H. Temkin, J. Sauer and H. Willebrand, ‘Medium Access Control Protocols for Robust Wavelength Division Multiplexed Local-Area Networks,’ Fiber and Integrated Optics, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp.237-260, 1997.
  • Tarek El-bawab, Chintan Vaishnav, Anura P. Jayasumana, Henryk Temkin, Jon R. Sauer, and Heinz A. Willebrand, ‘Medium Access Control Protocols for Robust Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) Local Area Networks,’ Proc. International Communications Conference (ICC)'96, v. 2, pp 1099-1106, June 23-27, 1996.
  • Samir A. Abd-Elmalak, Chintan Vaishnav, and Anura P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of a Symmetric Robust WDM Circuit-Switched Network with Token-Passing in Control Channel,’ to be presented at 5th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (IC3N'96), Oct 16-19, 1996. [PDF]
  • Samir A. Abd-Elmalak, Chintan Vaishnav, and Anura P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of a Robust WDM Network with Token-Passing and a Limited Number of Lasers per Station,’ to be presented at IEEE 21st Conference On Local Computer Networks, Oct 13-16, 1996.
  • Samir A. Abd-Elmalak, Chintan Vaishnav, and Anura P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of Packet Switched WDM Network with Dynamic Wavelength Selection,' Proc. IEEE 20th Conference On Local Computer Networks, pp 73-81, 1995. [PDF]
  • Samir A. Abd-Elmalak, Chintan Vaishnav, and Anura P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of a WDM Network with Dynamic Wavelength Selection for Packet Switching,’ Submitted to IEEE/ACM transactions on networking.