While AI takes the world by storm, India has been able to make its presence felt in the ecosystem because of its vast pool of talented individuals who have been very consequential in shaping the industry with their varied contributions. From leading research and development for the big techs to running their own AI company, these are the individuals from India to watch out for in AI (in no particular order).

P Anandan

P. Anandan stands as a highly esteemed figure with an extensive career spanning over three decades across academia and industry. His expertise lies in the domains of computer vision and artificial intelligence. Anandan began his journey at Microsoft, where he held the position of principal researcher and headed the Interactive Visual Media Research group in Redmond, WA, back in 1997. His tenure there was marked by significant contributions before he took on the pioneering task of launching Microsoft Research India in December 2004. 

Anandan’s academic contributions are equally impressive, having been a professor of AI at Yale University and holding a distinguished alumni status at IIT Madras and the University of Massachusetts. His journey in academia showcases his commitment to advancing the field and nurturing the next generation of AI enthusiasts.

Transitioning to the industry, Anandan served as the Vice President for Research at Adobe Systems, bringing his wealth of experience to steer research initiatives. He also held the position as the CEO of the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a non-profit research institute focusing on leveraging AI for societal good. His dedication to this mission underscores his commitment to harnessing AI’s potential for positive social impact.

Anandan’s role as a member of the Board of Governors at IIT Madras further highlights his continued engagement and commitment to academic advancement and institutional development. His multifaceted journey in academia, research, and industry positions him as a trailblazer in the field of AI.

Kalika Bali

Kalika Bali, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India, defied conventional advice by dedicating her career to marginalised languages, driven by a vision of inclusive technology access. Her work focuses on ensuring AI development encompasses marginalised languages, notably through gender-intentional datasets for five Indian languages spoken by over a billion people with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She aims to eliminate gender biases in AI datasets, fostering unbiased technology engagement. 

Bali also explores code-mixing in multilingual communities, aiming to enhance AI tools for these diverse linguistic environments. Her Project Mélange delves into code-mixed language data, vital for natural Human-Computer interactions and speech technologies. Additionally, she delves into the impact of social and pragmatic factors on language use, seeking to create more socially aware AI. Bali’s passion lies in NLP and Speech technology for Indian languages, aiming to democratise access to technology for millions. 

Her involvement in government committees highlights her commitment to advancing Indian Language Technologies and NLP/Speech standards. Bali was also one of the few Indians on Time’s AI 100 list.

Dr Pushpak Bhattacharyya

Dr. Pushpak Bhattacharyya stands as a pioneering figure in Indian scientific research, serving as Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. Renowned for guiding over 300 research students, his impact extends beyond academia. He’s held visiting scholar and faculty roles at esteemed institutions like MIT, Stanford, UT Houston, and the University of Joseph Fourier.

Dr. Bhattacharyya’s contributions span ML, AI, and NLP, notably reflected in his influential textbook ‘Machine Translation.’ With a repertoire of over 350 research papers and three monographs on cutting-edge NLP areas like computational sarcasm and machine translation/transliteration, his work has earned widespread acclaim. His accolades include the Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation National Fellowship, the H.H. Mathur Research Excellence Award from IIT Bombay, and the VNMM Award by IIT Roorkee.

Dedicated to professional service, he chairs the AI Standardisation Committee for the Government of India and holds memberships in distinguished institutions. His deep commitment to NLP and ML is evident through his extensive involvement as Program Committee Chair and reviewer for major conferences in the field, further solidifying his influence and expertise in advancing these domains.

Pushmeet Kohli

Pushmeet Kohli, a principal scientist and VP of research at DeepMind, previously directed research at Microsoft’s Cognition group, holding diverse roles across Microsoft labs globally. His research spans Intelligent Systems and Computational Sciences, focusing on Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Information Retrieval, and Game Theory. Kohli’s research interests span 3D reconstruction, probabilistic programming, interpretable AI, and applications in Healthcare and Virtual/Augmented Reality. Kohli has received several awards, including recognition for his PhD thesis and numerous accolades for his papers presented at various conferences. 

Kohli also heads two teams but shows particular enthusiasm for the AI for Science group. AlphaFold, their notable achievement, is used by over a million researchers. It swiftly predicts protein structures from amino-acid sequences, a process formerly taking months or years, revolutionising scientific research in this field. He was also featured on Time’s AI 100 list.

Sunita Sarawagi

Sunita Sarawagi, Professor In Charge of the Center of Machine Intelligence and Data Science at IIT Bombay, holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and boasts four patents. Her research spans sequence models for text and time series, domain adaptation, and enhancing human intervention in learning processes. Recognised with the Infosys Prize in 2019 for Engineering and Computer Science, she’s also an esteemed IIT Kharagpur distinguished Alumnus awardee. 

Her extensive publications include best paper awards at prestigious conferences like ACM SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDM, NIPS, and ICML. Sarawagi has contributed significantly to the field, serving on boards like ACM SIGKDD and VLDB foundation, chairing conferences such as ACM SIGKDD 2008 and co-chairing the research track for VLDB 2011. She’s been involved in program committees for SIGMOD, VLDB, SIGKDD, ICDE, and ICML conferences and served on editorial boards for ACM TODS and ACM TKDD journals. Her professional experience includes impactful roles at Google Research, CMU, and IBM Almaden Research Center.

Vishal Dhupar

Vishal Dhupar has served as NVIDIA’s managing director in South Asia since 2010, leading business operations for the company in the region. In this role, Vishal is responsible for the development and execution of NVIDIA’s strategic plans in the subcontinent. He is also focused on fostering key partnerships with the ecosystem to accelerate the growth and adoption of GPU technology. With more than 25 years in the Information Technology industry, Vishal brings extensive leadership and industry experience. 

Vishal joined NVIDIA from Symantec, where he held the position of Managing Director of SAARC. Previously, Vishal was Managing Director at Autodesk, before which, he was Director of Sales at Sun Microsystems India. Vishal began his career at DCM Data Products and followed it up with Sales positions in Digital Corporation and Silicon Graphics. Over the past two decades, Vishal has been the recipient of several performance awards all through his working career in various organisations.

Dr. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay

Dr. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, associated with the Machine Intelligence Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute, boasts an illustrious career. Starting with a PhD from the same institute, she ascended to become its director from 2015 to 2020. Her exceptional contributions have garnered prestigious awards such as the Bhatnagar Prize, Infosys Award, TWAS Prize, and DBT National Women Bioscientist Award (Young), among others.

Dr Bandyopadhyay is a member of the Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India (PM-STIAC), further reflecting her influence in shaping national policies. Her academic portfolio includes over 300 research papers and six edited books, showcasing her expertise in pattern recognition using machine learning, bioinformatics, data mining, and soft and evolutionary computation.

Dr Partha Talukdar

Dr Partha Talukdar is a staff research scientist at Google Research, focusing on graph-based learning algorithms using automated knowledge, temporal information harvesting from large data, and neuro-semantics. He has pursued his PhD and postdoctoral studies, after which he has worked with IISc and Microsoft. His interests lie in natural language processing, machine learning, and knowledge graphs. Dr Talukdar has co-written a book on Graph-based Semi-Supervised Learning, published several research papers, and presented them across India, Italy, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, the USA, Belgium, Australia, and more. The papers can be found here. 

Dr. Soumen Chakrabarti

Dr. Soumen Chakrabarti, with over 17 years as a faculty member in IIT Bombay’s Department of Computer Science, possesses a distinguished academic career. He obtained his PhD from UC Berkeley and gained valuable experience as a visiting scientist at Google for two years. His current research pursuits revolve around knowledge graphs, complex multi-modal question-answering, code-switch text analysis using natural language processing, and searching annotated web content with entities.

His impressive portfolio includes 13 US patents, over 200 research papers, and the authorship of one of the pioneering books on web search and mining. Dr. Chakrabarti’s expertise lies at the intersection of various domains, showcasing his impactful contributions to information retrieval, NLP, and knowledge representation.

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