Alumni Hall Of Fame

Ponani Gopalakrishnan

Graduation Year:

1986

Dissertation:

Parellel Approximate Algorithms for Combinatorialy Hard Problems

Dr. P. (Gopal) Gopalakrishnan is an experienced technology leader, startup founder, teacher, and mentor. He works with companies of various sizes to guide their strategy and technology directions. He is also a co-founder of a conversational AI startup company. He is an experienced teacher, having spent time as an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT. He has successfully led product innovations, research, and technology strategy over the course a distinguished career. He was formerly the Vice President, Corporate Technology, IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, where he was responsible for facilitating the development of strategic directions of technologies for the company. Prior to this role he led various research and development organizations within IBM as the Vice President of the IBM India Software Lab and Director of the IBM India Research Lab. He is an early pioneer of AI and machine learning, having started his research career in speech recognition, natural language and conversational systems. He has published in many peer-reviewed conferences and journals, has co-authored over twenty patents and earned several technical awards. Dr. Gopalakrishnan received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1986 where he has been inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame.