IIT Delhi alumnus Dr. Pankaj Gupta has signed an MoU with his alma mater to establish two chairs: “Nick McKeown Chair in Computer Science” and “Pankaj Gupta Chair in Privacy and Decentralization”.

Dr. Pankaj Gupta is a Senior Director of Engineering at Google Pay and leads its consumer efforts and teams in APAC. He joined Google in 2017 when his AI/ML startup, Halli Labs, was acquired by Google. He was an early employee at Twitter in San Francisco where he led the Personalization and Recommendations teams that were responsible for some of Twitter’s search, discovery, and relevance products.

Speaking of the Chairs, Dr. Gupta said, “I am humbled to have an opportunity to contribute to my alma-mater IIT Delhi and in the process express my gratitude to my Ph.D. advisor at Stanford University, Prof Nick McKeown, for all I have learned from him, as well as help advance research in some exciting cutting-edge areas of Computer Science.”

Elaborating on the research directions that the chairs would support, Prof Sanjiva Prasad, Head, Computer Science and Engineering said, “Large decentralized systems holding the data of millions of people are ubiquitous. I am glad that someone like Pankaj, with his experience at places like Twitter and Google, recognizes the importance of privacy in such contexts and has chosen to support research in this area.”

He added that Pankaj has been very supportive of the CSE department and has also endowed a fund to grant fellowships to young faculty joining the department.

Speaking on IITD-Alumni and their support to the Institution Prof V. Ramgopal Rao, Director IIT Delhi, said: “I am glad that our alumni are taking a proactive role in shaping the direction of research by endowing chairs in important and emerging areas. I welcome Pankaj’s contribution and look forward to working with him and other alumni in fully realizing IIT Delhi’s potential.”

IIT Delhi will be appointing Professors to these Chairs who would pursue research in the areas mandated. As for all other Chair positions, the appointment criteria will be excellence in teaching, and a strong record of research contributions to the field. Chairs endowed by alumni, philanthropic and corporate donations support the Institute’s ability to attract and retain high-quality academic talent.