Governing Board
Dr. Vijay Kumar Saraswat
Chairperson
Dr Saraswat is the Co-Chair for the PMSTIAC ( Prime Minister’s Science Technology and Innovation Advisory Committee) . He is Member Niti Aayog, Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Chairperson, Governing Board of Quantum Ecosystems and Technology Council of India.
Dr. Vijay Kumar Saraswat is an eminent Scientist who retired as Secretary, DRDO, after more than four decades of Government service. He is ME from IISc Bangalore and Phd from Osmania University and a gifted scientist with vast experience in defence research in both basic and applied sciences.
He is a recipient of many awards and most notable among them being Padma Shri (1998), Padma Bhushan (2013). He has been conferred Honorary Doctorate by more than 25 Universities the latest among them being Jamia Hamdard (2018).
Mr. Jayesh Ranjan
IAS
Principal Secretary to Government of Telangana,
Industries & Commerce (I&C) Department, & Information Technology,
Electronics and Communications (ITE&C) Department
Reena Dayal
Founder , Board Member and Chief Executive Officer
Reena Dayal Yadav is a Technology Leader and an Innovation Management Expert. She is known for her work in Establishing and Scaling up Innovation Functions within Organization and Incubating new Tech Oriented Businesses. She is the Founder and CEO for the Quantum Ecosystems and Technology Council of India ( QETCI) , and the CEO and Partner for Benzaiten Advisors. She is on the Steering Committee of the IEEE Quantum Initiative , Chair for the IEEE Quantum Special Interest Group in India and on the Consultative Committee for Quantum for the Government of Telangana. She is the Ex-Chairperson for SNIA in India. She is also on the Governing Board and Executive Committee of The Cloud Computing Innovation Council of India.
She is an Author – her Book “Innovation Magic” is a guide to creating and managing Innovation Management functions within Organizations. Her report on “Innovation Governance: Board Imperatives” has been published and referred to by many organizations.
She is a mindfulness practitioner and believes in Mindful and Compassionate Leadership.
She has an Engineering degree from IIT Roorkee. She is a Chevening Fellow for Science and Innovation Leadership Program from The Said Business School, University of Oxford.
Prof. P J Narayanan
P J Narayanan is the Director of IIIT, Hyderabad and a researcher in the areas of 3D vision, computational cameras, and parallel computing. He built the Virtualized Reality system in mid 1990s at the Carnegie Mellon University to capture 3D geometry and appearance of dynamic events. He also was an early adopter of GPUs for several Computer Vision and general computing tasks. He got his Bachelors (1984) from IIT Kharagpur, Masters and PhD (1992) from the University of Maryland, all in Computer Science. He was a research faculty member at the Robotics Institute of CMU from 1992 to 1996 and headed the Vision and Virtual Reality groups of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bangalore from 1996 to 2000. He has been with IIIT Hyderabad from 2000 and has been its PG Coordinator, Dean of Research, and, from 2013, the Director. He was the President of ACM India from 2009 to 2014 and has involved with various activities of ACM such as Awards, Technology Policy, etc.
Urbasi Sinha
Professor
Urbasi Sinha is a Professor at the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, India. She is heading the Quantum Information and Computing (QuIC) laboratory at RRI. Prof. Sinha is a Simons Emmy
Noether Fellow at the Perimeter Institute, Canada as well as an associate faculty member at the
Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), University of Waterloo, Canada, and the Centre for
Quantum Information and Quantum Control, University of Toronto, Canada. She completed her
PhD at Cambridge University, UK, on experiments in high temperature Superconductivity. She
completed her M.Sc in Physics (Natural Sciences Tripos) also from Cambridge. She has been a
Gates Cambridge scholar during her Ph.D and a Nehru-Chevening scholar during her masters. She
was a post-doctoral research associate in the Cavendish labs, Cambridge as well as at IQC Canada.
Her lab at RRI specializes in experiments on photonic quantum information processing including
quantum computing and quantum communication, primarily using single and entangled photons.
She is heading India’s first project on satellite based secure quantum communications.
Prof. Sinha has been awarded several extramural grants from national agencies like the
Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology,
Govt. of India and the Indian Space Research Organization as well as international agencies like
the John Templeton Foundation USA as well as the India Trento Programme for Advanced
research. Her scientific recognitions include the Homi Bhabha Fellowship in the year 2017, the
2018 ICTP-ICO Gallieno Denardo Award in Optics, being recognised as one of Asia’s Top 100
scientists by the Asian Scientist for the year 2019 as well as the Simon’s Emmy Noether
Fellowship at the Perimeter Institute, Canada. In August 2020, she led the two-member
winning team as a mentor, at the World Skills International Competition in Quantum
Technology at the BRICS Future Skills Challenge, organised by the Russian Quantum Centre in
Moscow, Russia with competitors from several countries worldwide. She won the ASSOCHAM
Women in Cyber: Making a Difference award in the category “Cyber – Leading from the front” in
2021. Recently, she has been awarded the prestigious 26th SIES Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi
National Eminence award for the year 2023 in the domain of science and technology.
Website: Urbasi Sinha Webpage
Kanishka Agiwal
Head – Service Lines, India/South Asia, WWPS
Amazon Internet Services Private Limited
Kanishka Agiwal heads AWS’ Service Lines, India/South Asia, with focus on Digital Innovation and Deep Tech such as AI/ML, Analytics, Quantum Computing, HPC, IoT as well as AWS service offerings such as databases, storage, edge, hybrid cloud and security. At AWS, he works with the public sector, central/state governments, education and health care sector, not-for-profit, travel & transportation, and PSUs to drive AI at scale for citizen impact. He has worked extensively across global markets with significant stints in all geographies and major countries.
In his previous stint, he led IBM’s Cognitive Solutions, Watson, for the Travel & Transportation industry globally. He has held key positions around strategy, business development, solutions and offerings and oversee the conception, development and take to market of industry solutions.
Kanishka speaks regularly at industry conferences and trade bodies on areas of artificial intelligence, healthcare, travel, and transportation. He is an adjunct faculty at various b-schools in the areas of consulting, strategy and communications. In addition, he also serves on the board of advisors for startups in the areas of financial services and healthcare.
Mr. Agiwal has a Masters in Business Administration from SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, India as well as a Bachelors in Engineering (Computer Science) from MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, India.
Arun Pati
Professor
Arun Pati is a Professor of Quantum Information and Computation Group, at the Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. He is also an adjunct Professor at IISER Mohali and IIIT, Hyderabad. He has been working in the area of Quantum Science, Quantum computing and Quantum information over the last 30 years. He is the National Coordinator of Quantum Enabled Science and Technology (QuEST) Program that is initiated by DST, India.
Prof. Pati has made many pioneering contributions in the area of Quantum Information. His research papers have been featured in Nature, Science, Scientific American and Nature Asia. For his original and creative contributions he has received many awards. This include the Indian Physical Society Award for Young Scientists, Kolkota (1996), Indian Physics Association Award for Young Physicist of the Year, Mumbai (2000),the Samanta Chandra Sekhar Award for the year 2009 from the Orissa Science Academy, India and the Distinguished Alumni award from the Berhampur University Odisha. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore and also Fellow of the National Academy of Science, Allahabad. He has received J C Bose National Fellowship from the Department ofScience and Technology India in 2019. He ranks in top 2% Scientists in the world recently conducted by Stanford University.
Rameshchandra Ketharaju
Ramesh is an engineer and a prolific inventor in the area of emerging and disruptive technologies. He has close to 30 issued patents and over 45 patents pending. His areas of interest include Quantum Technology, Cyber Security, Communications, Autonomous Vehicles, Payment Technology, Data, AI related and inspired technologies. He is a TRIZ practitioner.
He got his Engineering degree from Osmania University and an alumnus from Chaitanya Bharati Institute of Technology Hyderabad in the year 1995, he also got a post graduate diploma in business administration from Institute of Public Enterprises, Hyderabad in 1997.
He is an active IEEE senior member and office bearer in various societies and initiatives of IEEE.
Sameer Mehta
Sameer Mehta is Senior Vice President with Jio Platform Limited. He has spent over a decade with Jio in various business, product, and technology roles. He has been recognised as Technology Leader by the Indian Leadership Academy. He brings diverse product and technical experience in various industries, including Telecom and BFSI. He has a keen interest in disruptive technologies, especially Quantum Computing. In a previous stint, he was heading IT for Hitachi Payment Services Pvt. Ltd. He holds Masters’s and Bachelors’s engineering degrees from IIT Kharagpur.
Dr. Durga Prakash
Dr Durga Prakash ( or DP as he is more popularly known) is Staff Vice President Technology and Member of SLT Innovation, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Platforms at Carelon.
Legato (the earlier name for Carelon) is GCC for US$130Billion Fortune 23 from the US, which is into Health Insurance. Dr. Durga Prakash(DP) has a Doctoral degree and Master’s degree in Information Technology with experience over 25 years in, software and global delivery operations covering both Software development & support businesses, mainly in the areas of Artificial Intelligence,
Machine Learning, Digital, Data Engineering, and Advanced Analytics. Headed large India-based offshore delivery teams of Software, data, AI, Cyber Security, and support functional business units.
Durga has won several awards including the prestigious Mahatma Gandhi International leadership award from both houses of Parliament for his contributions to the global healthcare industry specifically in the Artificial Intelligence area of expertise. He has been an active speaker and contributor to global AI events like AI World and Open AI.
