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Baskar Ceri has more than 2 decades of experience across various Industries (Aerospace, Defense, Research, Automotive, Railways, Software Services, etc.) playing various roles starting from Engineering, Sales, Business Development, Operations to General Management.

Baskar started his career at NI in Austin, USA and was part of the 2-member team that started NI operations in India growing the team and the revenue to multi million dollars in India.

After his initial corporate role, Baskar founded an Engineering Services Company to provide Deep-Tech Engineering Solutions to Indian Defense, Space & Automotive companies and later founded a Knowledge Engineering Products company, the first Indian company to build products & systems that improve Safety & Efficiency of Railway Assets. Baskar has also been involved in several acquisitions & divestments during his experience & currently serves on the board of several companies and has keen interest in mentoring & building world changing companies. Baskar holds an Electrical & Electronics Engineering degree from BITS-Pilani, India and a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, USA.

In his current role at NI, Baskar serves a dual role as Global Director of Business Development of ADG BU to build strategies and execute the business growth of the Aerospace & Defense Business across the globe with Regional Sales, and in India as Managing Director of NI-India, responsible for NI India growth and development.

As space and defence converge into a single, resource-constrained strategic domain, nations face an uncomfortable truth: technology superiority alone no longer guarantees security or mission success. Asymmetric threats, compressed innovation cycles, and the concurrent demands of national development are rewriting the rules of engagement: in orbit and on the ground.

Compounding this challenge is a structural paradox: the rate of technology evolution now consistently outpaces the speed of system design and realization, creating a widening gap where every fielded solution risks obsolescence before operational maturity: A progressive asymmetry that favors the nimble disruptor over the established power. Cyber-physical systems are responding to this pressure through a decisive architectural shift: from hardware-centric philosophy toward software-first agility, progressively becoming software-defined and ultimately software-dominated platforms where capability refresh, mission adaptation, and threat response are delivered through code rather than re-engineering.

This talk examines how Digital Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and autonomous systems can deliver meaningful capability gains without the unaffordable promise of a clean-slate restart. Through a pragmatist’s lens, anchored in India’s space and defence imperatives and informed by global experience, it proposes an Agility-First, Build-to-Last Architecture for navigating Zero-Margin-of-Error Missions in an era of abundant aspirations and finite resources.

Aniruddha Mukhopadhyay serves as the Lead Chief Technologist at Synopsys, Inc., headquartered in Sunnyvale, USA. In this capacity, he provides strategic counsel to senior executives across global enterprises on technologies pertaining to digital engineering initiatives. His domain of expertise encompasses model-based engineering, open collaborative ecosystems, software-defined systems, and AI/ML-driven analytical frameworks for data-informed decision-making. Holding a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and possessing several decades of distinguished professional experience, Aniruddha is recognized as a subject matter authority in the Automotive, Aerospace, Defense, and High-Technology sectors. His present responsibilities center on the formulation and execution of technology adoption strategies designed to accelerate product design and validation, thereby enabling continuous design iteration across global supply chains and R&D organizations. In addition, Aniruddha leads a dedicated R&D team based in Pune, India, focused on the automated synthesis of cyber-physical systems and mission architectures, virtualization, IT-OT integration frameworks, and the deployment of embedded digital twins at the edge.