Dr. Varsha Apte is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. She completed her M.Sc. from Pune University in 1989 and her Ph.D. from Duke University in 1994, both in Computer Science. After earning her Ph.D., she joined the Teletraffic Theory and Performance Analysis department at AT&T Bell Labs as a Member of the Technical Staff, which later became the Network Design and Performance Analysis department of AT&T Labs. She joined the faculty in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay in 2002. During the academic years 2009-2011, she was Visiting Faculty at the Computer Science and Automation Department of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. While in Bengaluru, she also worked at IBM Research Labs as a part-time Visiting Researcher from June 2009 to May 2010. From February 2016 to February 2019, she served as the Head of the Network and Computing Infrastructure department (known as the “Computer Centre”) at IIT Bombay. Since 2022, she has been serving as the Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at IIT Bombay. Her areas of interest include the performance analysis of computing systems and networks, and building applications for online programming education

Dr. Padmini Gopalakrishnan is the Sr. Director in the AI Group at AMD Hyderabad, where she leads a team dedicated to developing a high-performance AI stack for CPU servers. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, she has a distinguished background in building EDA tools for both ASICs and FPGAs. Dr. Gopalakrishnan’s technical expertise encompasses a wide array of areas including VLSI CAD algorithms and methodologies, optimization, AI and machine learning, computer vision, and computer architecture. Her academic credentials are equally impressive, holding a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.Tech from IIT Madras.

Dr. Indrani Medhi Thies is a design and technology researcher, author, public speaker and startup mentor. Until recently she was Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India in the Technology and Empowerment group (previously known as the Technology for Emerging Markets Group). She worked in this group for close to 18 years, joining just after its inception in 2005 and stepping away in 2023. Indrani has also spent some time working out of Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Indrani served for more than 10 years as a board member of Digital Green, a global development organization that works with small holder farmers. She has mentored startups like Navana Tech looking at technologies for the next billion users. These days Indrani freelances in various mentoring and consulting roles. Indrani’s honors include the ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award and the MIT TR35 award.

Dr. Bhavana Kanukurthi is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Her area of research is Cryptography.

Dr. Preeti Malakar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Before joining IIT Kanpur, she served as a postdoctoral researcher and later as an Assistant Computer Scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory, USA. Dr. Malakar also held the position of Visiting Affiliate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA. She completed her Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, where she was supervised by Prof. Vijay Natarajan and Prof. Sathish Vadhiyar. Her research interests span various domains within computer science and engineering, reflecting her extensive academic and professional background.

Mythreyee Ganapathy leads Customer Engagement for Ads and Consumer products in Hyderabad, India. Her team is responsible for building products that enable Google to intelligently engage with billions of customers and users, overseeing both the front-end customer engagement experience across Google’s products and the backend services that collect and analyze customer engagement data. Prior to her tenure at Google, Mythreyee worked at Microsoft, contributing to various product areas including Azure, Bing Search and Ads, Microsoft Research, and Visual Studio. Her extensive experience in managing and developing large-scale, customer-focused solutions has been instrumental in driving innovation and efficiency in her current role.

Sandhya Guntreddy is a Principal Group Engineering Manager at Microsoft, and is based out of Hyderabad, India . Her primary focus is modernizing the Commerce and Financial platform that processes Microsoft’s revenue. With over two decades of experience in the IT industry, her expertise spans across customer research, design, and development in numerous technologies. A staunch advocate for women in technology, Sandhya mentors young women through various mentoring programs including Microsoft’s WISE (Women In Science & Engineering) , LinkedIn and contributed significantly to the Grace Hopper Conference India as chair of Emerging Trends. She is on the board of Combined Social Ventures, an NGO that supports women in STEM and an advisor to the board of Women In Tech Global India Chapter. Her leadership and innovative work continue to influence the tech industry profoundly.

Gauri Das is an engineer turned HR professional with double Masters in Human Resources and Psychology. As a strategic HR leader with over 17 years of experience, she excels in crafting and aligning HR strategy with business goals. Gauri mentors students and young professionals and is associated with various institutions, including IIT Bombay, as a mentor. A passionate speaker, she has graced multiple national and international forums as a keynote speaker and panelist, including delivering two TEDx talks focused on creating a possibilitarian mindset and flux transcendence in HR. Gauri is also the co-author of the book “The Power of Connections.” She serves as the National President for the WICCI Future of Work Council and is dedicated to women empowerment, founding Lean In circles such as Leaders Lifting Leaders and Navi WOmbai Circle to help women achieve their professional goals. Her numerous awards and accolades include being named a top 5 women HR leader globally, among the top 200 global leadership voices, HR 100 under 40, Economic Times Young HR Leader, LinkedIn Person of the Year, and most followed HR professional on social media. Additionally, she is recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice. Passion with Compassion is her mantra.

Prapulla Vuppu completed her Master’s in Signal Processing from IIT Guwahati in 2004 and began her career as a DSP engineer in the semiconductor industry, developing algorithms for various audio use cases. She is currently leading the Audio Systems R&D team at Qualcomm, focusing on on-device AI models, low-power hardware AI accelerators, audio/voice generative models, and audio front-end processing features.

Archana Das is a Machine Learning Engineer in Customer Engagement for Ads and Consumer products at Google India in Hyderabad. She focuses on enhancing the customer support experience by applying machine learning techniques to back-end services that collect customer engagement data. After completing her B.Tech from IIT Bombay, she worked at several startups, Goldman Sachs, and HP in their technology and machine learning teams, before joining Google.