Scholar Network

Aaditya Gambhir

aadityagambhir@gmail.com University of Oxford Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL)

Aaditya was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) at the University of Oxford, where he also went on to pursue an MPhil in Law. He holds a B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) from National Law University, Delhi. He is currently a pupil at Fountain Court Chambers, London.

Aahana Jain

jainaahana01@gmail.com Imperial College London MSc in Pure Mathematics

Aahana is a Mathematics graduate from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal and is currently pursuing Masters in Pure Mathematics at Imperial College London. She interned with Prof. Pinsker and the FB1 Algebra Group at TU Wien, Austria, where she explored topics in universal algebra and model theory. A passionate mathematician, she aspires to pursue a PhD, with the goal of building a career in academia. Apart from academics, Aahana is a creative writer and composes music. She plays the piano and guitar, and has even authored a trilogy.

Abhijeet Mishra

abhijeet1994@gmail.com Columbia University MS in Mechanical Engineering

Abhijeet completed his BE in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pune and his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University with a specialization in robotics. He has previously interned at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and subsequently at Godrej & Boyce Pvt Ltd in 2018. Currently, he is a Robotics Software Engineer at Realtime Robotics, Inc. In the past, he worked at a robotics startup Everestlabs.ai, where he builds robotic solutions for the recycling industry. He hopes to return to India to pursue his ambition of developing products and services which can have a lasting impact on the lives of people.

Abhilasha Sinha

abhilasha.311@gmail.com Harvard Business School MBA

Abhilasha is currently building her own start-up – Inner stack. Previously, she worked as Chief Marketing and Product Officer and also as the Chief of Staff at Hike, India. Prior to this, she worked as VP of Strategy and Operations at Elucidata, a Delhi & Cambridge based startup, building an AIenabled platform for the biopharma industry to enhance drug development and as an Associate of Innosight, a strategy & innovation consulting firm advising Fortunate 100 clients in the healthcare sector. Earlier in her career, she was part of the founding team of Avanti Learning Centres, where she built and led teams across products and operations to deliver highquality and affordable math and science programs across the country. She graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

Abhinav Sekhri

abhinavsekhri@gmail.com Harvard Law School LLM

Abhinav has done his LL.B. from National Law School of India University, Bangalore where he graduated with Honours and completed his LL.M. from Harvard University. After completing his graduate studies he returned to India to teach and practice criminal law and procedure. He is currently practising law in Delhi. Abhinav also runs a blog called ‘The Proof of Guilt’, which discusses issues of Indian criminal law and procedure in a simple and accessible manner to help create awareness. Besides the law, he loves to read fiction and history, listen to music and play football.

Abhishek Chari

vaccinatedvadam@yahoo.com University of Utah Masters in Biology

Abhishek completed his Bachelors’ in Biomedical Science from the University of Delhi followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Molecular and Biochemical Technology from the same university. He then completed a Masters’ programme in Biology from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City in 2016. He is a co-founder and contributing editor for IndSciComm, a science communicative collective. Abhishek is currently Co-owner & Volunteer Editor at Karma Co-Operative. Previously, he worked as Outreach Assistant at Seneca Applied Research.

Adithya Rao

adithya.srao@yahoo.com Stanford University MS in Electrical Engineering

A Bachelors’ in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani Goa Campus, Adithya has worked on research projects at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. He completed his MS program in Electrical Engineering at Stanford. Currently, Aditya is he is working as Senior Engineering Manager – Enterprise AI at Scale AI. Previously, he has worked as Engineering Manager at Robinhood.

Aditi Shankar

to.aditi.shankar@gmail.com Massachusetts Institute of Technology MBA

Aditi has done her BA in Biological Sciences from Barnard College, Columbia University and has an Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from MIT Sloan School of Management. She aspires to develop sustainable health technology solutions. In keeping with this, she has worked across a spectrum of innovative healthcare organisations such as the Gates Foundation and MIT-founded startups including DayToDay Health (acquired by Babylon Health) and Catalia Health across India and US. Currently, she is working within Healthcare Informatics Strategy at Royal Philips, a leading global health technology player, in Amsterdam. Prior to her MBA, she has also worked as a strategy consultant at reputed firms, including The Boston Consulting Group and Archstone Consulting – A Hackett Group Company. Besides work, she enjoys yoga, hiking, and diving.

Aditya Barve

aditya2397@gmail.com University of Wisconsin-Madison MS in Computer Science

Aditya empowers people by building time-saving cloud solutions at Microsoft. He earned a Master’s in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin Madison and a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from the College of Engineering Pune. He also developed algorithms for India’s first passively stabilized satellite, Swayam.

Aditya Gera

gera.aditya@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Mechanical Engineering

Aditya is currently working as Software Engineer R&D with Cadence Ltd. He pursued his Masters’ in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. His major interests lie in deep-learning, experiment design and analysis, mechatronics and analysis of Formula-1 races. He likes to devote time to the projects to tackle global issues like energy, climate, etc. with engineering. He likes to go for a swim or hang out with friends in free time.

Aditya Kothari

aakothariofficial@gmail.com Stanford University MS Aeronautics and Astronautics

Aditya is a recent Mechanical Engineering graduate from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore and is headed to Stanford University to pursue an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics. His academic journey includes internships and project experience with Aeronautical Development Agency (Ministry of Defense), Boeing India, Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds (GKN) Aerospace in Bangalore, and Tata Motors Ltd. Post his Master’s, he aims to contribute to the aviation sector in the US and eventually establish a deep-tech aerospace company in India. He enjoys aeromodelling (designing and building RC aircraft as a hobby), exploring acoustic guitar-based music, and discussing geopolitics.

Aditya Kulkarni

adi2188@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Information Networking

After a BE in Electronics & Telecommunication from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Aditya obtained his Masters’ degree in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012. Having worked at Yahoo!, WalmartLabs, LinkedIn, Rubrik and Apple, Aditya currently works at Airbnb in the Data Infrastructure area. Outside work, he enjoys theatre and works with
several theatre groups here in the San Francisco Bay Area in the capacity of an actor and director.

Aditya Singh

keynes.john.maynard@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Financial Mathematics

Aditya did his Master’s in Financial Mathematics from Stanford. Subsequently, he worked in Hong Kong and then in London at JP Morgan as a Vice President in the Equity Derivatives Division. He moved back to Hong Kong in 2016 to join a newly formed team at Citadel Securities, where he went on to lead index arbitrage trading for Asia and Europe, before taking on a broader role overseeing systematic and semi-systematic trading teams as Head of Markets, APAC for Citadel Securities.

Agneya Loya

agneyaloya@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Sustainable Design and Construction

Agneya is currently Product-led Software Engineer at Stealth Robotics Startup. Previously he worked as Director at Loya Pre Engineered Buildings Pvt. Ltd in Maharashtra , India and as a Product Manager at Dusty Robotics in the San Francisco Bay Area building robot-powered tools for the modern construction workforce. In this role, he co-owns all product management responsibilities for the robot software, tablet software, web application and data analytics product verticals. Before this experience, he gained an understanding of the American construction industry by working at two large national contractors – Clark Construction and DPR Construction. Agneya completed his Bachelor in CEE from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Master in CEE from Stanford University. Agneya is passionate about product development, robotics, education and the environment. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, tennis, reading, cooking, and social dance.

Aishwarya Kanakath

aishwaryakanakath@gmail.com University of Oxford MSc in Law and Finance

Aishwarya is currently working as a partner in the law firm Khaitan & Co., previously she worked as partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and holds a postgraduate degree in Law and Finance from Oxford University. She completed her undergraduate Law degree from National Law School University of India, Bangalore. Her areas of specialization include mergers and acquisition and corporate law.

Aishwarya Mohanty

aishwarya.1654@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Criminal Justice Policy

Aishwarya pursued the M.Sc. in Criminal Justice Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is a law graduate from National Law University Odisha, Cuttack (NLUO). Subsequent to her graduation, she worked as a legal researcher on issues relating to the criminal justice system, particularly on torture and the death penalty. At present, she leads the Law & Policy Research efforts at Zenith Society for Socio-Legal Empowerment where her work focuses on the Sahariyas, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG).

Ajinkya Naik

najinkya1313@gmail.com University of Cambridge MASt in Theoretical Physics

Ajinkya Naik is a BSc Physics graduate from Abasaheb Garware College, University of Pune, and has recently graduated with a MASt in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge. He has worked on significant research projects at institutions like the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and the University of Cambridge. His past work has been primarily focused on gravitational wave astronomy. More recently, he completed a Cambridge Mathematics Placement project at the Institute of Astronomy (IoA), Cambridge, working on the problem of efficient astronomical time series analysis. His research interests are now shifted towards exoplanet astronomy, and he plans to pursue a PhD in this field, with the long-term goal of contributing to cutting-edge observational and computational exoplanet science. Outside academics, he plays the harmonium and guitar, enjoys listening to Indian Classical Music, and also engages in sports like cricket, football and swimming.

Akshat Rathi

rathi.akshat@gmail.com University of Oxford PhD in Organic Chemistry

Akshat Rathi was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue research in organic chemistry at the University of Oxford. After completing his PhD, Akshat became a journalist and worked at The Economist and Quartz. Currently, Akshat is working as Senior Reporter for Climate at Bloomberg News. His work has won numerous awards, including the Overseas Press Club award and as a finalist twice for the prestigious Loeb Award. In 2023, he published his first book Climate Capitalism, which made it to the book of the year list for The London Times and The Economic Times.

Akshay Mandan

mandan.akshay@gmail.com The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania MBA and MA in International Studies

Akshay completed his Masters in Business Administration ( MBA) from The Wharton School and MA in International Studies, from The University of Pennsylvania in 2016. Post MBA, Akshay joined Amazon in Seattle and currently works as Principal Product Manager with the International Expansion team, focussed on launching Amazon in new geographies. As part of that, he leads devising and building Amazon’s customer experience across each of these international market segments. Recently, Akshay led Amazon’s marketplace launch in Singapore in October 2019. Outside of work, Akshay enjoys playing Squash, traveling and exploring new places.

Akshay Rajwade

akshay.rajwade@gmail.com Stanford University Masters in Management

Akshay has worked as the Co‑Founder & CEO of Savage, a wellness club. Prior to this, he worked with Cure.fit as Product Head and was responsible for defining and driving product vision, strategy and execution. Akshay is a Silicon Valley veteran with over 12 years of experience in the Consumer Internet and Technology space. He spent close to 7 years at Google where he worked on initiatives ranging across Global Computing Infrastructure, Google Cloud Platform, Analytics and Social. Prior to Cure.fit, Akshay served as the Director of Mobile Product at Flipkart where he led the product development across Flipkart’s consumer facing Mobile Applications through its exponential growth phase in the two years 2014-2015. Akshay holds a Masters’ Degree in Management from Stanford and a Bachelors’ in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras(IIT-M).

Akshina Mehta

akshinamehta@gmail.com University of Oxford Masters in Integrated Immunology

Akshina Mehta has a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology with excellent grades from Jai Hind College, Mumbai. She has also undergone training in renowned organizations like the National Facility of Biopharmaceuticals, the R&D Department of Bharat Serums and Vaccines, Jaslok Hospital and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. After her Master’s in Integrated Immunology at Oxford University, she worked at University College London (UCL) Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine and worked on developing a disease model for type 1 diabetes. After which she worked in the capacity of a Research Fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the field of developmental biology and disease modelling in Zebrafish model organisms. She moved to Toronto, Canada in April’ 20 looking to connect with alumni and members of the foundation there. Currently she is the founder of Raisson D’etre.

Alok Kothari

kothari.alok@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University Masters in Language Technologies

Alok completed his dual degree in Mathematics and Computing from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2009. He followed that with Masters’ program in Language Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science. On completion of his course, he worked at Apple Siri for nearly 3 years. He then co-founded Harmony, a blockchain company in Silicon Valley in 2018. As his second startup he was Founder/CEO of a Healthcare AI startup whose IP he sold early in 2024. He is currently Founder at Wordsense AI. Alok likes hiking, travelling and has also co-authored a book called “Game Changers”

Aman Singhal

jss.aman@gmail.com Virginia Tech MS in Electrical Engineering

Aman is a university valedictorian from Uttar Pradesh Technical University, and holds a Masters’ degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech. Aman has 10+ years of industry experience in the design and development of networking software for Cisco switches and SONiC routers. Currently, Aman is working at NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara as Senior software engineer on GPU Fabric orchestration and virtualization for Accelerated Cloud Computing and Generative AI applications.

Amit Korde

amitkorde97@gmail.com ETH Zurich MS in Metallurgy and Materials Sciences

Amit graduated with a gold medal for being first in order of merit from the College of Engineering, Pune in 2017 with a degree in Metallurgy and Materials Science Engineering. He completed his Master’s in Materials Science from ETH Zurich in 2021 and later worked as a Process Engineer – Optical Coatings at SwissOptic AG, Switzerland until 2025. He’s currently pursuing his PhD in nanofabrication at the Paul Scherrer Institute / ETH Zurich.

Amita Katragadda

amitachoudary@gmail.com Stanford University MBA

Amita completed Bachelors’ in her Law from NALSAR University of Law (Hyderabad) where she was awarded six gold medals including the best student for overall excellence. She also holds an Masters in Business Administration ( MBA) from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. She was listed in the prestigious “40 Under Forty India’s Hottest Business Leaders 2019” by the Economic Times. She was also recognised by Asian Legal Business in their “40 under 40” list (2019), which profiles 40 of the most accomplished lawyers in Asia under 40 years of age. She is currently a Partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.

Amrita Ray Chaudhury

amritaraychaudhury@yahoo.co.in University of Michigan, Ann Arbor PhD in Biomedical Engineering

After completing her Bachelors’ in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from R.V. College of Engineering, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Amrita joined University of Michigan Ann Arbor for a Masters’ programme in Electrical & Computer Science. She completed her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the same university.

Amrutanshu Dash

amrutanshu.dash@gmail.com University of Oxford Bachelors' in Common Law

Amrutanshu is a dual-qualified lawyer, qualified as a Solicitor of England and Wales as well as an Advocate in India. He is currently an Associate in A&O Shearman’s International Arbitration group based out of Singapore. He advises and represents private clients, sovereign states and state owned entities in international commercial arbitrations, investor state arbitrations and related court litigations in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. Amrutanshu has also worked as a disputes and arbitration lawyer in India, during which time he focussed on commercial law and constitutional law disputes across various judicial forums including the Indian Supreme Court, and the High Courts of Delhi and Bombay. Amrutanshu completed his undergraduate law degree from the National Law University, Delhi. He graduated as the overall topper with ten gold medals from his undergraduate programme. Following this, he received a full scholarship to complete his master of law degree (BCL) from the University of Oxford. At Oxford, Amrutanshu graduated with an overall distinction and the Law Faculty Prize for topping the Intellectual Property law paper.

Anahita Mehta

anahitamehta@gmail.com University College London MSc in Audiological Science

Anahita has completed her MSc in Audiological Science at University College London (UCL).After graduating in 2010 with a distinction, she worked as a research assistant at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham. She then joined a PhD programme in Auditory Neuroscience for which she received the UCL Overseas Research Scholarship as funding for all three years. She completed her PhD at University College London and worked at the University of Minnesota as a Postdoctoral Associate. Currently, she is Assistant Professor at University of Michigan.

Aniket Murhekar

aniket1602@gmail.com, aniket2@illinois.edu University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign PhD computer Science

Aniket Murhekar is currently a Post Doctoral researcher at University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University . Previously, He was a fully-funded PhD student studying Theoretical Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he also works as a Teaching Assistant as well as Graduate Research Assistant. He is also working as a Research Assistant at Google. He graduated with a B.Tech in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. His research work has been published at international conferences and his work while interning at Adobe has received a US patent. Aniket likes swimming, reading about philosophy and mythology, and classical Marathi songs. He is also passionate about teaching.

Anirudh Venkatesh

anirudhvenkatesh98@gmail.com Purdue University PhD Chemical Engineering

Anirudh has completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University. Currently, he is working as Senior Scientist at Abbvie, North Chicago, USA. He completed his B.Chem. Engg. from the Institute of Chemical Technology Mumbai in 2020. He completed his B.Chem. Engg. from the Institute of Chemical Technology in 2020. He specializes in using applied mathematics to study biophysical systems. He is also an avid debater and a math fanatic who has published his research related to fluid mechanics in multiple international journals. Moreover, he is a recipient of Mrs SG Marve Award at Institute of Chemical Technology and he has also been a visiting research scholar at the University of Kentucky.

Anish Morakhia

amorakhia@gmail.com Texas A&M University MS in Electrical Engineering

Anish graduated with a Bachelor’s in Electronics & Communication Engineering from National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, and earned his Master’s in Electrical Engineering, specializing in Analog Circuit Design, from Texas A&M University. He works for NVIDIA in Santa Clara, California where he designs high-speed circuits that interconnect large clusters of GPUs in the datacenter.

Ankeeth Ved

ankeeth@gmail.com University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign MS in Aerospace Engineering and MS in Computer Science

Ankeeth is the Technical Director at Cummins Inc., where he leads a team responsible for developing and executing testing infrastructure strategies for all fuel system products globally. He holds an MS degree in Aerospace Engineering and Masters in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, completed in 2011. Ankeeth also earned his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology Calicut. Recently, he graduated from the Executive Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Ankit Prasad

ankitprasad12@gmail.com London Business School MBA

Ankit Prasad is currently a Principal at Norwest Venture Partners, focusing on Growth Equity and Venture Capital investments across sectors in India. He completed his Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from London Business School (LBS) in 2017 and B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2010 with a major in Civil Engineering. While at LBS, he also completed an MBA exchange at The Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania). Prior to Norwest, he worked as an M & A Associate with Societe Generale, London. Previously, he was an Investment Analyst with International Finance Corporation (IFC), direct investment arm of the World Bank Group, focusing on financial services private equity and credit investments in India. Before IFC, he worked with Credit Suisse in Mumbai as an M&A analyst focussing on Financial Services sector.

Ankur Ahuja

ahujankur@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Finance and Economics

Ankur was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue an MSc in Finance and Economics at London School of Economics & Political Science ( LSE). After graduating, he decided to pursue a career in strategy consulting and is currently an Associate Partner with Bain & Company in London. Ankur has also completed an Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from INSEAD in 2017. Ankur is a passionate boulderer and mountaineer, and has completed three of the Seven Summits so far. He is also passionate about working with organisations in the social sector, and does a lot of pro bono consulting through Bain.

Anmol Gupta

gupta.anmol1024@gmail.com Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA

Anmol Gupta completed his dual degree (B.Tech + M.Tech) in Electrical Engineering in 2020 from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) and is studying at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to pursue Master’s in Business Administration (MBA). Previously, Anmol worked at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, advising senior government leaders in India and Mongolia on healthcare, education, climate change, and governance. He began his career at Bain & Company, where he supported and led workstreams on growth strategy, resource management, and cost optimisation. He also worked briefly with Sarvam AI, an applied GenAI startup, where he worked on strategy, go-to-market, and product development. In addition, Anmol has worked on technical and research projects at TransUnion CIBIL and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Post-MBA, he aims to scale a mission-driven preventive healthcare startup and eventually build his own venture focused on expanding access to quality, affordable healthcare in India. Outside of work, Anmol is passionate about reading, poetry, fitness, dancing, food, and travel.

Ansh Gupta

ansh.hg@gmail.com Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) MSc in Chemical Engineering

Ansh Gupta is a B.Tech graduate in Chemical Engineering from Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai with internship experience at Reliance Industries Ltd. He is currently pursuing MSc in Chemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). After completing his Masters, he plans to join the energy sector, aiming to contribute to its growth. His long-term goal is to return to India and continue working in the industry to aid in the country’s development. Ansh enjoys following football, cricket, and table tennis, and actively participates in various quizzes and competitions, showcasing his diverse interests and competitive spirit.

Anshuman Tiwari

anshumantiwarice@gmail.com TU Delft MSc in Structural Engineering

Anshuman is currently working as a Data Engineer with Alliander in the Netherlands. He did a Micromasters in Statistics and Data Science from MIT after graduating from Delft University of Technology, Netherlands with a MSc in Structural Engineering. He did his undergraduate studies from National Institute of Technology (NIT) Jaipur and then later served as a Project Technical Assistant at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He is passionate about personal development and is currently pursuing a Professional Life Coaching program. He believes in the power of collaboration and teamwork to make a remarkable contribution to the world and is therefore open for potential collaborative opportunities to develop impact solutions to big problems.

Antariksh Bothale

antariksh.bothale@gmail.com University of Washington MS in Computational Linguistics

Antariksh lives in the Bay Area, California and is a Software Engineer at Google in the Gemini for Home team. He finished his Dual Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. His interest in programming and languages led him to pursue an MS in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington, Seattle. . Antariksh has a keen interest in linguistics, photography, cooking and writing. He recently launched SanskritSahitya.org, a digital initiative dedicated to making classic Sanskrit literature structured, searchable, and accessible to a modern audience.

Anu Venugopal Nair

anuv.nair@gmail.com Georgia Institute of Technology MS in Computer Science

Anu completed his Masters’ in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been mentioned in Georgia Tech’s medical circulation for his involvement with a health care delivery project. Anu is currently working with Oscilar Inc as a Software Engineer.

Anuja Mehta

anuja216@gmail.com Columbia Business School MBA

Anuja completed her Masters in Business Administration ( MBA) from Columbia Business School in May 2015 and went on to work at Bain and then Google in New York. At Google, she was fortunate to be able to work on mission-oriented initiatives, such as launching & managing the Google News Initiative: a $300M fund to support the news industry, and launching the Jobs Spot app in India that connects entry-level workers to jobs. She recently transitioned back to India and is excited to spend all her time in Mumbai after 6 years away. Anuja recently founded Uncommon Labs. Previously, she was Head of AI Strategy & Operations, APAC & EMEA Partnerships at Google in India. Earlier she was start up advisor & consultant at Various Companies.

Anupam Purwar

anupamgupta.mailbox@gmail.com Indian School of Business MBA

Anupam Purwar lead Generative AI initiatives for Sprinklr Inc. (NYSE: CXM) as the Director of Machine Learning leading their Agentic AI Charter. Prior to this, Anupam was a Sr. Research Scientist with Amazon for ~6.5 years where he led the development of data science and machine learning-based solutions for Amazon Global Fulfillment out of their Seattle office. Anupam holds an MBA in Finance and Information Systems from the Indian School of Business (ISB) and a Bachelor of Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. He received merit scholarship and graduated among Top 5% in class both at ISB and BITS-Pilani. Prior to this, Anupam worked as a Scientist at Indian Institute of Science (IISc). At IISc, he was part of a multi-institutional effort which included IITs and ISRO to develop novel structures. Besides, he has authored 30+ peer reviewed articles pertaining to Generative AI, Machine Learning, IoT, computational design with 330+ citations and received multiple best paper awards. He is a certified Machine learning professional with 12+ certifications from Google and AWS. You can know more about him here:
https://anupam-purwar.github.io/page/
Anupam Purwar loves teaching, mentoring students, startups and has delivered talks on Generative AI, Machine Learning and career development at BITS Pilani, IIT Delhi and Indian School of Business. Most recently Anupam taught Agentic AI to a batch of 70 students in Seattle/Bellevue in a 10 week long programme . He is also one of the youngest receipient of Malviya Award from Indian Ceramic Society.

Anupriya Gagneja

anupriya.gagneja@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Computer Science

Anupriya has done her BE in Computer Science (Gold Medalist) from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani’s Hyderabad campus. She was working at Microsoft till 2016, after which she joined Stanford University for her MS in computer science and also worked as research assistant there. She has also previously interned with ISRO, eBay and PayPal India. She actively engages in community work through her workplace. She would like to work in research and development and may consider pursuing a PhD. Currently, she is working as an Engineering Manager – Data Infra for AI at Meta. Previously, she worked as a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Apple, Seattle.

Anupriya Kumar

anupriya.ssc@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Finance and Economics

Anupriya is a financial economist, and has consulting experience with the World Bank-EBRD and Big 4 firms. She joined the Masters programme in Finance and Economics at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) with a full scholarship from LSE. She has been invited as a judge and speaker at the Reserve Bank of India’s financial awareness events and has been featured in Outlook Business Women of Worth. She is currently an executive director at Ascendus.

Anusha Kamath Manjeshwar

akamath2006@gmail.com University of Minnesota, Twin Cities PhD in Chemical Engineering

Anusha has completed a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities. She is currently working as a Process Engineer 3 at Lam Research at Tualatin, Oregon, USA. Through her work, she aims to be able to convert low-grade waste heat to electricity using phase transformations in ferroelectric materials. She hopes to build on the skills learned during her doctoral degree to increase the accessibility of technology and to improve the standard of living around the globe. Through her work in the industry, Anusha hopes to lead the revolution for design that offers both quality and affordability to further the cause of sustainable growth. She is also an avid reader.

Archana Balan

archanabalan1995@gmail.com Johns Hopkins University MS in Biomedical Engineering

Archana was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Masters in Biomedical Engineering from John Hopkins University. Post her Master’s degree, she is currently a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She graduated with a Bachelors’ degree in Electronics and Instrumentation engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) University Vellore with second rank in University and was awarded VIT’s Merit scholarship during all 4 years of her engineering program. She was a part of a project on “Development of Artificial Pancreas for Type 1 Diabetes Patients in India” at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. She aims to combine her engineering skill set with computational techniques for developing affordable diagnostic devices. She believes that her motivation to serve the society will drive her towards achieving her goal of “timely diagnosis of diseases for all”.

Archis Mukhopadhyay

02archis@gmail.com ETH Zurich MSc in Physics

Archis is a recent Physics graduate from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata and is currently pursuing Master’s in Physics at ETH Zurich . His academic journey includes research at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), where he modeled spectra of young stellar objects, and as a DAAD-WISE fellow at the Galaxies and Cosmology Theory group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, working on galaxy evolution using large-scale cosmological simulations. Archis aims to pursue a PhD in exoplanetary science, with a long-term vision of contributing to India’s research ecosystem as a scientist and educator. Outside academics, he is a trained violinist, has participated in science outreach initiatives, and enjoys playing badminton.

Arjun Shah

arjun.shah@hotmail.com ETH Zurich MS IN Chemical and Bioengineering

Arjun is currently working as a Senior Project Engineer at BakerHicks, Basel, Switzerland. He completed his Masters’ in Chemical and Bioengineering from ETH Zurich and undergraduation in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. His short-term goal is to work on innovative projects that solve ubiquitous real-world problems. Eventually he aspires to assume leadership positions, where he intends to lead efforts towards achieving leaner operations and reducing their environmental footprint. He scored a perfect 340/340 in the GRE which is a rare feat and has been named a prestigious Alfred Werner Scholar by the Swiss Chemical Society.

Arnold Paul Pereira

arnie001@gmail.com, arnold.p.pereira@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Arnold has completed his Masters’ in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Currently, he is working as Software Engineering Manager at META on building a scalable and privacy aware machine learning platform. The platform supports keeping the platform safe and secure in addition to the business critical use cases. In the past, he worked on making operating systems more secure and on distributed systems intended to provide large scale computing capabilities for corporate and government use at Microsoft. He has 2 patents for operating systems security and productivity monitoring.

Arundhati Nayadu Kona

arundhati.nayudu@gmail.com University of California Berkeley Law LLM

Arundhati graduated from UC Berkeley School of Law with a Master of Laws degree. She passed the California Bar exam and is currently working with an Immigration Law Firm in San Francisco. She is deeply compassionate towards stray animals and helps raise funds for an animal welfare organization, run by her Uncle in Bhopal, India.

Arvind Ganesh

chikki.ag@hotmail.com University of Texas at Austin MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Arvind Ganesh graduated in 2021 from Delhi Technological University in Electronics and Communication Engineering with gold medal and is currently pursuing Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, with a focus on semiconductor design and AI hardware. He has research experience in advanced transistor architectures, with publications in IEEE and Springer. Arvind has worked at leading semiconductor firms including Cadence, NXP Semiconductors and most recently as a Senior Hardware Design Engineer at SiFive India. His long-term goal is to establish a semiconductor design startup in India to support the country’s growing chip industry. Outside of work, he is passionate about sports and global political discourse.

Ashima Bhatnagar

ashima95@gmail.com Delhi School of Economics MA in Economics

A graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University with BA (Hons.) in Economics, Ashima pursued MA in Economics at Delhi School of Economics. She is currently working as Senior Financial Analyst at Google. Previously she worked as Manager, Strategic Finance with Warby Parker. She has also worked with J.P Morgan as an Investment Banking Analyst and would like to make a career in investment banking. Ashima is also a violinist and a part of the Delhi Community Orchestra.

Ashutosh Singh

pratap.ashutosh@gmail.com Indian School of Business MBA

Ashutosh was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from Indian School of Business. He is the founder of LB SAFE, a digital advertising agency. He was the Chief Innovation Officer at Empower Pragati. He worked for the Ministry of Shipping for their Skills and Livelihood initiatives for port led prosperity under the Government of India’s flagship Sagarmala programme. Prior to this, he was associated with the Committee for Sector Skill Council Reforms setup by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India which suggested ways to make India the “Skills Capital of the World”. He has earlier worked for a Sector Skill Council (IASC SSC), a NSDC training partner (Empower Pragati), parliamentarian, a non profit foundation (Deshpande Foundation), Jameel Poverty Action Lab and TCS.

Ashwin Paranjape

ashwing.2005@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Computer Science

Ashwin was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Masters’ in Computer Science with specialization in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University. Currently, he is founding AI lead at an early stage stealth startup Samaya AI. He is also a Computer Science engineer from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and has completed his PhD from Stanford in Natural Language Processing in the subject area of conversational systems. During his PhD, he also lead Stanford’s team as part of the the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge.

Atharva Chaure

7atharvac@gmail.com Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) MS in Chemical Engineering

Atharva is a Chemical Engineering graduate from the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai, and is currently pursuing MSc in Chemical Engineering from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). His academic journey included projects on model predictive control in batch processes and green field project development. As a MITACS Global Link scholarship recipient, he gained valuable experience interning at McMaster University. In the long term, he aspires to work in MNCs in the fields of circular economy and sustainability, and eventually transition into entrepreneurship to offer innovative solutions for process optimization and development. He is also a recipient of the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Undergraduate Engineering Scholarship in 2024. Beyond academics, Atharva enjoys reading, traveling, playing guitar, and swimming.

Ayush Agrawal

ayush.agrawal.c2021@iitbombay.org University of California Los Angeles MS in Mechanical Engineering

Ayush Agrawal is a Mechanical Engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) . He is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering specializing in Robotics at the University of California Los Angeles. Previously, he worked as a Vehicle Controls Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover TBSI for three years. During his undergraduate studies, Ayush designed seismic resilient structures through a research project with the University of Toronto, funded by the MITACS GRI Scholarship. He also interned in Robot Programming and Controls at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and presented his research at the 2023 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in Singapore. In continuation of this pursuit, he interned at Tesla, Inc. as a Vehicle Controls Engineer. Ayush aspires to join the robotics industry and aims to lead a tech enterprise focussed on preventing fatal accidents in hazardous environments. Outside his professional pursuits, he enjoys running and listening to podcasts on control theory and automotive engineering.

Barun Patra

barunpatra95@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Machine Learning

Barun completed his undergraduate studies at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, graduating with a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering with a departmental specialization in Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, and his Master’s in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University. Barun is currently working with Microsoft AI as Member of Technical staff. Previously, he worked at Microsoft as a Senior Applied Scientist. He was a part of the Turing team at Microsoft as an Applied Scientist that focussed on building multilingual models to support different scenarios in numerous languages. He’s been a Teaching Assistant for Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University, and Artificial Intelligence at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and enjoys teaching, reading, and playing racquet sports.

Bharan Giridhar

bharan.giridhar@gmail.com University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering

Bharan was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Post Graduate Scholarship to pursue MS in Electrical Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is currently working as a Senior Engineering Manager at Apple Inc., Cupertino CA in the Silicon Engineering Group leading multiple teams that work on Apple Silicon, that power Apple’s products ranging from the lowest power airpods to the highest performance Macs. He completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering (VLSI) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He previously received his B.Tech in Electronics & Telecommunication from National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, and thereafter worked as a Design Engineer with Texas Instruments.

Bhargav Patel

bhargavpatel091097@gmail.com ETH Zurich MS IN Chemical and Bioengineering

Bhargav has completed his Masters’ in Chemical and Bioengineering at ETH Zurich and is currently working as a Project Manager at GRZ Technologies, Switzerland. He completed his B.Chem Engineering at Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai His long term goal is to be an entrepreneur and set up his own industry from scratch and he would like to work in the sustainable development or biotechnology sectors. His hobbies include reading, hiking
and travelling.

Bhavya Gupta

bhavyangupta@gmail.com University of Pennsylvania MS in Robotics

Bhavya has studied Engineering Physics at Delhi Technological University. His team’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle secured the overall 3rd position at the Student Unmanned Air Systems Competition held annually at Webster’s Field, Maryland, USA. He has also been a part of the team that developed Aarush X1, an indigenous next generation urban UAS developed at DTU in collaboration with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. Having graduated from University of Pennsylvania with a Masters’ degree in Robotics, he is currently working on autonomous driving at Latitude AI as Senior Software Engineer . Previously, he worked on autonomous yard operations at Outrider Technologies at Colorado, USA.

Bhavya Gyan Mohan

mohan.bhavya@gmail.com Columbia Law School LLM

An LL.B. from National Law School of India, and a trained Hindustani vocalist, Bhavya has also been the editor of the Indian Journal of International Economic Law. She has completed her Masters’ programme in LL.M from Columbia Law School and is a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar in the programme. Post graduation, she worked as an Associate with AZB & Partners. Currently, Bhavya is a Partner at Argus Partners (Solicitors & Advocates).

Bhawesh Kumar

bhaweshkumar636@gmail.com Harvard University Ph.D. in Health Informatics

Bhawesh was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue an MS in Health Data Science from Harvard University. He is currently a Research Engineer on the Health AI team at Google Research, where he works on post-training and evaluation of large language models for real-world consumer health applications. His work is especially focused on the reliability and fidelity of large language models in healthcare settings, with the goal of ensuring that models perform safely and meaningfully when deployed at scale, not just in curated benchmarks. Previously, Bhawesh earned an SM in Health Data Science from Harvard University and completed his undergraduate studies at IIT Kanpur, where he studied electrical engineering, physics, and biology. His long-term vision is to use technology to improve accessibility to healthcare and medicine.

Bindu Jagannatha

bindu.bhargavi.j@gmail.com University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign MS in Aerospace Engineering

Bindu was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue MS in Aerospace Engineering from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Currently, she is working as a Senior GNC Engineer at Capella Space. She also completed her PhD from UIUC broadly in the field of Space Logistics Optimization. Her research work primarily focuses on Astrodynamics and Mission Design, but she is also involved with UIUC’s CubeSat projects as their Lead Software Designer. Bindu was also awarded the Amelia Earhart Fellowship by Zonta International in 2014 to continue and support her studies. She also completed her Bachelor’ in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal.

Chahat Chawla

chahatchawla001@gmail.com Columbia University MS in Computer Science

Chahat is a graduate of Columbia University in the City of New York where he finished his degree at the Graduate School of Engineering & Sciences and Columbia Business School working across Entrepreneurship, Product & Technology. Based out of New Delhi & Mumbai, he currently works with Hexa Climate, a clean energy organization backed by I-Squared Capital, a leading global infrastructure investment manager with over $45 billion in assets under management. Chahat is leading initiatives as a Strategy & Growth Consultant for the Product & Technology team. He is excited about the potential of technology in the Indian Clean Energy Market, and he wins each day by unlocking new possibilities in user experience driven clean energy.
A graduate of Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and also an English Masters degree graduate, he loves cinema and performing arts for the truth it brings to life and the sheer joy of performing.

Chandresh Dubey

ckdubey@gmail.com New York University MS in Mechanical Engineering

Chandresh completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU Tandon School of Engineering). He received Dean’s Research Scholarship for all the semesters during his Masters’ program. He published two book chapters and a journal paper based on his Masters’ thesis research. After graduating he worked at Beltran Technologies in NYC as Mechanical Engineer where he designed structural and electromechanical systems for wet electrostatic precipitation systems. He worked at Ocean Power Technologies, New Jersey where he was involved in designing and developing innovative WEC (Wave Energy Converters) systems that convert ocean wave energy into electrical energy. Currently, he is working as Senior Manager II, Advanced Solutions at Kulicke and Soffa.

Charag Avinash Krishnan

charag.krishnan2009@teachforindia.org Kellogg School of Management MBA

Charag is a Partner with McKinsey & Company’s Education practice and founding lead of the Education Analytics Domain team. He helps clients improve student outcomes and financial health by serving them on strategy, operational turnarounds, and analytics. His work spans institutions across the spectrum of education – universities, impact investors, non-profits, governments, and philanthropic foundations. Charag taught grades 2 and
3 at a low-income municipal school in Pune, India, as part of the founding cohort of Teach for India and was involved setting and scaling up India operations of Generation, a non-profit focussed on youth employment founded by McKinsey. He has been a UNICEF Innovation Unit Fellow and currently serves on the Board of Mantra4Change US and Advisory Board of Teach for India US. He graduated with an Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management as a Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation, Tata, and Mahindra Scholar and a recipient of the Dean’s Award. Charag holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics from the National Institute of Technology, Bhopal. He writes and speaks extensively on topics of education having delivered keynotes and panels at multiple global conferences and authored an HBR case study on Teach for India.

Charu Gupta

charugupta.dr@gmail.com Harvard School of Public Health MS in Public Health

Charu is currently a Medical Officer at the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration). She previously worked as an Attending Nephrologist at Children’s National Hospital, US where she also held an additional role of ‘Fellowship Program Director’ and guided future generations of nephrologists. She was also an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. Charu has received certifications from the American Board of Pediatrics in the field of Pediatric Nephrology, General Pediatrics and Pediatric Hospital Medicine. After completing MBBS from Lady Hardinge Medical College, University of Delhi, Charu joined
Harvard School of Public Health, to pursue a Master’s degree in Public Health with a focus on health care management and policy. She now lives close to Washington DC with her husband and two kids. In her free time, Charu enjoys cooking Indian food, dancing to Bollywood tunes, travelling and spending time with her family.

Chinmayi Kashyap

chinmayi.kashyap28@gmail.com University of California, San Diego MS in Bioengineering

Chinmayi completed her Bachelor of Engineering in Biotechnology from BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore. She secured an All India Rank of 9 on Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), Biotechnology in 2019. Along her professional journey, Chinmayi has gained valuable experience working with leading biotech research organizations, both in industry and academia, including ITC, Unilever, inStem, and CytomX Therapeutics. In 2023, she defended her thesis in the immuno-oncology research area and graduated with Master of Science in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego. Currently, she is an Associate Scientist in the Metabolic Diseases team at Insitro in South San Francisco, California. Chinmayi is driven by the vision to develop innovative, affordable therapeutics and position India as a leader in global drug discovery. Outside of her professional pursuits, she is a trained Hindustani classical vocalist and Kathak dancer, with a passion for travel and public speaking.

Chintan Dhananjaya Chandrachud

chintan.dc@gmail.com University of Oxford BCL and Mphil

Chintan was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue the Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford. He is a Barrister at Brick Court Chambers, London. His practice focuses on commercial litigation and international arbitration. He is the author of “Balanced Constitutionalism: Courts and Legislatures in India and the United Kingdom” (OUP) and “The Cases that India Forgot” (Juggernaut).

Chirag Mahapatra

chirag.mahapatra@gmail.com University of California, Berkeley MS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

Chirag is currently an invester at start-ups. Previously, he was a Co-founder of Blaze AI at California, USA. He worked at Facebook as an Engineering Manager supporting teams solving problems in privacy and infrastructure in the Growth org. Prior to that, he was leading the Membership and Authentication Infra teams at Airbnb. Before that, he worked at Trooly (acquired by Airbnb), Amazon and Goldman Sachs. Further back, he pursued graduate studies at University of California Berkeley and undergraduate studies at National Institute of
Technology Karnataka, Surathkal.

Daattavya Aggarwal

daattavya.aggarwal98@gmail.com University of Oxford Masters' in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics

Daattavya was awarded the scholarship to pursue MSc. in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford where his dissertation was on Calabi-Yau Manifolds and Mirror Symmetry. He is currently a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. His research interests are at the intersection of mathematical physics and machine intelligence. His main focus is on developing tools for the discovery of new mathematics and analysing their structure. Other ongoing work includes studying interesting geometries that arise in string theory and mathematical physics, often through the application of machine learning techniques. He enjoys rock climbing, playing music and quizzing.

Daksh Adhar

adhardaksh@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Robotic Systems Development

Daksh Adhar is a graduate student in the MS in Robotic Systems Development program at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He completed his undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics at Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT-G), where he worked on learning-based control and sim-to-real transfer for dexterous bionic manipulation. His interests center on embodied learning systems, with a focus on manipulation, humanoids, and deploying learning-based controllers on real hardware. At CMU, he recently completed an industry-sponsored capstone project with Smith&Nephew on AR-assisted robotic total knee arthroplasty, focused on improving surgical accuracy through perception, motion planning, and augmented reality integration. His long-term vision includes advancing humanoid robotics and rehabilitation technologies, with the ultimate goal of establishing his own robotics firm in India.

Darshan Chheda

dchheda@live.com TU Delft, Netherlands MSc in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering

Darshan is currently working as Process Engineer at Amar Equipment Ltd. He previously worked as Teaching Assistant at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and as Research Assistant with CyberHydra B.V. in Holland. He completed his MSc in Chemical Engineering from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) to broaden his expertise in the field of chemical process design & development. He is a B. Tech graduate from Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) in Chemical Engineering (Dyestuff & Intermediate Technology). He likes reading books, star gazing, cycling and doing art in free time.

Darshan Sunil Shah

dssiitb@gmail.com Imperial College London PhD in Bioengineering

Darshan Shah is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where he heads the ‘BiOME’ lab established to further research and teaching in Biomechanics, Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Engineering. With a strong background in engineering design, coupled with an avid interest in human anatomy, he delves into understanding the functioning of the human body from an engineering perspective, in close collaboration with surgeons, clinicians and the medical industry. Darshan is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where he graduated with a dual degree (BTech, MTech) in Mechanical Engineering. He went on to pursue further studies in Bioengineering at Imperial College London, UK, where he completed a second Masters (MSc), a PhD and a year of postdoctoral research. Following this, he spent a couple of years at the Institute for Orthopaedic Research and Training, Belgium – an interdisciplinary lab affiliated to the faculties of engineering, anatomy and orthopaedics – supervising a team of surgeons and engineers on translational orthopaedic projects, before coming back to the current faculty position in India.”

Deeksha Pandey

deekshapande1993@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Deeksha was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Master’s in Economics from London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). Currently, she is working as Vice President, Sr. Research Associate at AllianceBernstein. After working in consulting for about 4 years, she completed her Masters in Business Administration ( MBA) from Columbia University. Prior to that, she has worked in Deloitte and KPMG in India and has helped to set up their economic consulting practice. She is also a graduate in Economics from Hans Raj College, Delhi University.

Deeksha Sharma

deeksha.vasist@gmail.com University of Oxford Bachelor of Civil Law and PhD in International Taxation

Deeksha was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Bachelor of Civil Law from the University of Oxford. She is now a Partner at the US law firm Paul, Weiss and is based in London. She completed her PhD in International Taxation from the University of Oxford and LL.B.(Hons) from Amity Law School, GGSIP University. She is also a trained Bharatnatyam dancer.

Deepesh Gupta

mr.deepeshgupta@gmail.com University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign MS in Civil Engineering

Deepika was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship for two years in Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) in Economic Policy at Columbia University. While she was awarded a Scholarship from the University for the first year, Deepika has also received a Teaching Assistant Fellowship in International Monetary Economics. She has worked with Astor Investment Management and Morgan Stanley. Currently, she is the Global Head of Manager Selection at BlackRock, New York where she has also held the position of a director in the past.

Deepika Sharma

deepika21187@gmail.com Columbia University MPA in Economic Policy

Deepika was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship for two years in Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) in Economic Policy at Columbia University. While she was awarded a Scholarship from the University for the first year, Deepika has also received a Teaching Assistant Fellowship in International Monetary Economics. She has worked with Astor Investment Management and Morgan Stanley. Currently, she is the Global Head of Manager Selection at BlackRock, New York where she has also held the position of a director in the past.

Deepti Nair

nair.dee@gmail.com Purdue University MBA

Deepti was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue her Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from Purdue University. After graduating in 2012, she worked with A. T. Kearney as an Analytics Associate for 2 years. She currently works as a Senior Manager of Product Management at Amazon.

Devang Mundhra

devangmundhra@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Electrical Engineering

Devang completed his Masters’ in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. After graduation, he joined Oracle America working on cloud in a box data solutions, developing distributed high-performance storage servers. He returned to India in 2015. Currently he is the Co-founder of Anaira AI. Previously he worked as Chief Technology Officer and Product Officer at KredX, Bangalore.

Devang Toshniwal

devangtoshniwal@gmail.com The Wharton School of UPenn MBA

Devang Toshniwal is based out of Mumbai and is a Vice President at Warburg Pincus, a global private equity fund. He focuses on the fund’s investment initiatives in cross border technology services, including AI, data and analytics services, IT services and BPO services. He has obtained a Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business with a major in Finance. Prior to business school, he was working as a Senior Associate with Warburg Pincus in Singapore. He joined the firm’s India team in 2018 and transitioned to Singapore in 2020 to help the firm scale up its investing initiatives in ASEAN. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, Devang has worked at The Boston Consulting Group and PwC. He is a Chartered Accountant with an All India Rank-21 in CA-Final. He holds a B.Com from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata and has passed all levels of International CFA and Company Secretary. Besides investing, he is passionate about mentoring underprivileged children and consulting startups / first-generation entrepreneurs. He is an avid swimmer, a certified scuba diver, an amateur runner and a long-time physics enthusiast.

Devina Malaviya

devinamalaviya19@gmail.com University of Cambridge LLM

Devina is a graduate from National Law University, Delhi. She completed her Master of Law (LLM) at the University of Cambridge. Currently, she is working as Associate Dean, Clinical Legal Education and Assistant Professor of Legal Practice at Jindal Global Law School. In law school, she worked as a researcher for the Death Penalty Research Project carried out by National Law University, Delhi. Upon graduation, she has worked as Law Clerk cum Research Assistant with Justice Kurian Joseph at the Supreme Court of India.

Divya Iyer

divyaiyer82@gmail.com University College London, SOAS Masters in Human Rights Law

Divya was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Masters in Human Rights Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK. She currently serves on the Senior Leadership Team of Crisis Action and is the Director of Campaigns and Impact. Before joining Crisis Action, she was with Amnesty International for nine years, holding several leadership positions including Senior Adviser, Asia Pacific, Senior Research and Policy Adviser, and Director of Research. Divya is an experienced social change strategist, feminist leader, and an award-winning, bi-lingual broadcast journalist with over two decades of demonstrated leadership and impact in journalism, human rights, strategic campaigning, and advocacy for change. She is passionate about gender rights, equality, and justice. She is a strong believer of harnessing the power of people, evidence, and storytelling to pilot solutions and advocate for change. She holds a Master’s in Journalism from Symbiosis University and BA (Hons) English degree from Hindu College, Delhi University.

Divya Punwani

divyadp@gmail.com University of Oxford MSc in Immunology

A BSc in Life-Sciences graduate from St. Xavier’s college in Mumbai, Divya was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Post Graduate Scholarship to pursue MSc Immunology at the University of Oxford. Post her Masters, she then completed PhD in Immunology at the University of Oxford, UK in January 2010. She worked as a post-doctoral scholar and then as a Research Specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, in the Department of Paediatrics, until February 2017. She joined Roche Diagnostics International Ltd in Switzerland in May 2017 as a Clinical Science Associate and currently holds the position of Global Head, Clinical Development Cardiovascular and Metabolic diseases.

Divyansh Kaushik

divyanshkaushik96@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University Masters in Language Technologies

Divyansh was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to Masters in Language Technology and Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University. Currently, he is Vice President at Beacon Global Strategies, where he advises technology companies and startups on national security issues related to AI, semiconductors, and emerging technologies. Dr. Kaushik has testified before the U.S. Congress on U.S.-China AI competition and accelerating AI infrastructure to maintain U.S. technological leadership. He frequently provides expert commentary on AI and national security in major outlets, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Reuters, and Bloomberg, often addressing the growing threat posed by China’s technological ambitions.

Dr. Santosh Chapaneri

santoshchapaneri@gmail.com University of Arizona MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Santosh Chapaneri is currently a Professor of Practice, Adjunct Faculty at Golden Gate University and a Lead Data Scientist at Wolters Kluwer developing healthcare solutions using Generative AI. He received the PhD degree from University of Mumbai (India) and M.S. degree from University of Arizona (USA) in Electrical & Computer Engineering. He has published over 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences and has 350+ citations till date. Earlier, he worked as a Software Developer at Patni Computer Systems Ltd., Mumbai, India and at Microsoft Corporation, Seattle, USA. At Patni Computers, he was involved in the Research and Development related to video codecs and was responsible for client interaction and preparing client deliverables. At Microsoft, he was a Software Developer for various components of Windows Photos and also handled the localization of the product. He has also an academic experience of 10+ years delivering courses and mentoring projects for undergraduate and post-graduate students at the University of Mumbai. His research areas include Generative AI, Machine Learning and Signal Processing. He is a reviewer for IEEE Access, IET Communications, IET Computer Vision, IET Electronics Letters, IET Signal Processing, and IET Transactions on Image Processing.

Drishika Nadella

drishikanadella@gmail.com Heidelberg University MSc in Physics

Drishika is currently pursuing M.Sc in Physics at Heidelberg University in Germany, with a specialization in Astrophysics. She graduated with a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), Surathkal. She is interested in planet formation and detection, and is currently doing her MSc thesis characterizing the interaction of planet-forming disks with their environments.

Eeshani Godbole

eeshanigodbole@gmail.com University of Minnesota, Twin Cities PhD in Chemical Engineering

Eeshani is a Research Scientist at the GE Aerospace Research Center in Upstate NY, where she develops materials for commercial aircraft engine applications. She earned her PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2022 from the University of Minnesota, focusing on high temperature ceramic coatings for jet engines and gas turbines. Her doctoral research earned recognition from the American Ceramic Society with the 2024 Morgan Medal and the 2021 Graduate Excellence in Materials Science (GEMS)-Diamond Award. At GE Aerospace, her work has been honored with the Science and Technology Excellence Award at the 2025 Engineering Recognition Day. Beyond her research, Eeshani is dedicated to supporting the broader materials community and serves on the Board of Trustees for the Ceramic and Glass Industry Foundation, the non-profit wing of the American Ceramic Society. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. Outside of work, Eeshani is an avid reader, a Bharatnatyam dancer, and enjoys traveling.

Esha Joshi

eshajoshi15@gmail.com Graduate Institute, Switzerland Master in International and Development Studies (Environment), Geneva

Esha is a BA- LL.B. (Hons) graduate from Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur and is currently pursuing Masters in International and Development Studies with a specialisation in Environment and Sustainability at Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland. She has worked on environmental and energy issues at organisations including the United Nations Development Programme, Trilegal and Dentons Link Legal. She was a Program Associate at Kalpavriksh – Environment Action Group, where she focused on legal and policy issues pertaining to forest rights, community-led conservation and biodiversity management. Esha is keen to explore energy and environmental policy from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. Her long-term goal is to become a practitioner at an international think tank, crafting multi-sectoral, sustainable policy solutions for environment & energy challenges. In her free time, Esha enjoys reading historical fiction, learning languages, yoga and trekking. She is also a trained Bharatanatyam dancer and Taekwondo player.

Gaurav Balhara

gaurav.balhara@gmail.com Indian School of Business MBA

Gaurav is currently working as Head of Sales at SquadStack . Prior to this he worked with Lead Squared as the SVP of Strategy and Pricing. Gaurav is a B. Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from the Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad. He is passionate about real estate development and startup. He has worked with leading companies like EMAAR, and Piramal Realty. Before Piramal, Gaurav worked with Mckinsey & Co and Unitech Group. He founded the firm PropCoin which worked in real estate investments.

Gaurav Dubey

gaurdube@gmail.com Harvard Business School MBA

After completing his Bachelors’ in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Gaurav joined ITC Ltd. On completion of his Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from Harvard Business School in 2010, Gaurav worked as VP Business Management & Strategy with the CEO at Yes Bank and led the Corp FP&A and Treasury functions at Vectra, an Apollo Private Equity owned company. Currently, he is working as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Highland Electric Fleets at San francisco, USA.

Gayatri Malhotra

University of Oxford Bachelor of Civil Law

Gayatri completed her BA- LL.B. (Hons) degree from Jindal Global Law School in 2022 and is currently pursuing Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) at the University of Oxford. She served as Litigation Counsel at the Internet Freedom Foundation, where she appeared in landmark cases concerning freedom of speech, internet shutdowns, online censorship, platform accountability, and the right to privacy before various High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. Beyond the courtroom, Gayatri has been actively engaged in policy advocacy on technology regulation and fundamental rights. She has contributed to legislative consultations, drafted policy submissions on digital rights, and authored reports presented to United Nations bodies. Following her time at Oxford, Gayatri intends to continue working at the intersection of law, technology, and human rights through strategic litigation, policy reform, and academic engagement. Outside of her legal work, Gayatri enjoys reading history and exploring themes in popular culture.

Gokul Nanda Gopakumar

gokulnanda96@gmail.com Pennsylvania State University PhD in Materials Science and Engineering

Gokul is currently pursuing his PhD in Materials Science at the Pennsylvania State University. He completed his BE(Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, and his Masters by Research in Metallurgy and Materials Science from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. His interests lie in materials synthesis and is currently focused on semiconductor materials. Post his PhD, he wants to work in R&D or at national labs in the USA. He would eventually like to contribute to science policies related to clean energy. He likes photography, table-top RPGs, and console gaming and he is passionate about Formula 1 racing as a sport.

Gorish Aggarwal

gorish1995@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Electrical Engineering

Gorish completed his MS in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University with a research focus in Computational Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence. During his masters, he was the course instructor for the graduate course on Linear Dynamical Systems (EE 263) and also worked on Stanford Artificial Retina project under Prof. EJ Chichilnisky to develop an electronic implant that will restore vision to people blinded by incurable retinal disease. Currently, he is the CEO and Co-founder at Sybill.ai, a startup at San Francisco. He is also a founder at Humans of Sales. He previously worked as Virtual Software Engineer at Stanford University. He has a deep-rooted interest in entrepreneurship and dabbles in multiple domains including retail, fintech, and education. An Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi graduate, he has co-authored various research publications and filed multiple patents. He is always excited about connecting with other people from the community and can be reached at his Gmail or LinkedIn anytime.

Gourab Barik

gourabbarik73@gmail.com Purdue University PhD in Electrical and ComputerEngineering

Gourab is a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer EngineeringDepartment at Purdue University. His research focuses on developing low-power mixed signal computing circuits for video sensor camera nodes/systems and designing circuits for biomedical applications to enable efficient communication and power management. Prior to his Ph.D., he worked as an Analog Design Engineer at Tagore Technology (Currently Global Foundries), Kolkata, focusing on Power Management ICs. He holds a B.Tech. in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur. Post-Ph.D., he aspires to contribute to the semiconductor fabrication lab revolution in India. Beyond academics, Gourab is a passionate sports enthusiast who enjoys playing cricket, table tennis, and football.

Guha Arunkumar

guha.arunkumar@gmail.com University of Pennsylvania MS in Biotechnology

Guha is currently working as principal Scientist focussing on viral vaccine research and development in the Infectious Disease Research department at Moderna, Massachusetts, USA since September 2021. He completed his PhD in Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York in May 2021 where he focussed on characterizing antibodies and vaccines against influenza viruses. Prior to this, he completed his Masters’ in Biotechnology at the University of Pennsylvania in May 2016, and his Bachelor’s in Biotechnology from Vellore Institute of Technology University, Vellore in 2014.

Gulika Reddy

gulika@gmail.com Harvard Kennedy School Masters in Public Policy

Gulika Reddy was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue an LL.M. from Columbia Law School. She is a human rights advocate and the Director of the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School. She has conducted advocacy work globally, addressing inequality, discrimination, and armed conflict. Reddy’s research interests include critical perspectives on human rights and the intersection of human rights and peacebuilding. Previously, she was the Acting Director at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic and the Co-Executive Director of its Human Rights Institute. In India, she worked with lawyers and non-profits to combat identity-based discrimination. Reddy is the Founder of Schools of Equality, a non-profit organization that runs experiential programs in schools with the aim to shift attitudes that perpetuate gender-based violence and other forms of identity-based harms. She also has an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School.

Gunjan Dhanuka

gdhanuka192@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Computer Science

Gunjan Dhanuka is a Research Scientist at Mistral AI, where he focuses on the development and advancement of Multimodal Models. He holds an MS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where he was advised by Prof. Zico Kolter. His research at CMU centered on the robustness of Generative Models, specifically addressing model efficiency, dataset debiasing, and tackling memorization to make Machine Learning more scalable and secure. Gunjan earned his B.Tech. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT-G) in 2024. During his undergraduate years, he contributed to research on video anomaly detection at CMU. His industry experience includes internships at Apple, where he developed agents for data analysis, and Rubrik, where he worked on distributed systems. A recipient of the Reliance Foundation Scholarship for CS and AI (2021) and the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY) Fellowship (2020), Gunjan is driven by a long-term vision to establish a startup in India dedicated to democratizing AI in a safe and accessible manner. Outside of his research, he is an avid trekker and quizzer who enjoys writing for his blog and playing video games.”

Hardik Machhar

hardik_k_m@yahoo.com University of Cornell MS in Operations Research

Hardik was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Post Graduate Scholarship to study MS in Operations Research from the University of Cornell. Having completed the course in the year 2007, he also received the best Master’s of Engineering project award in the same year for his exuberant project on School Bus Routing. This was followed by a job at Capgemini Consulting where he focussed on delivering Telecommunication projects for clients. Currently, he is a Principal at Deloitte Consulting focusing primarily on public sector clients to improve public assistance for the masses across the country.

Hardik Patil

hardikpatil4897@gmail.com University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MSE in Structural Engineering

Hardik Patil was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue a Master of Science degree in Civil (Structural) Engineering from the University of Michigan. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering and Scientific Computing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Hardik’s research focuses on analysing and designing thin-shelled origami-inspired and barlinked reconfigurable structures. He holds a Bachelor of Technology (with Honors) degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He wishes to pursue a career in industry research and has worked on various projects spanning topics like machine learning, optimisation theory, structural analyses, remote sensing, and water resources. Outside of the classroom, he volunteers as a student mentor to help undergraduate students with their research and has served as the head of Media & Marketing for the Entrepreneurship Cell of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. In his free time, he likes to engage in photography, gaming, cooking, books, and workouts.

Harish Sundaresh

psharish@gmail.com Massachusetts Institute of Technology Masters in Computation for Design and Optimization

Harish Sundaresh is currently Head of Systematic Strategies at Loomis, Sayles & Company where he heads a team responsible for developing and managing systematic quantitative trading strategies in the multi-asset space. Prior to joining Loomis Sayles in 2010, he was a partner, director and portfolio manager at Armored Wolf, a global macro hedge fund based in Orange County. Previously, Harish was a quantitative analyst at Duff Capital Advisors, a global macro tiger cub hedge fund and at UBS Investment Bank, based in New York. He earned a BS in electrical engineering from Anna University, India and an MS in Applied Mathematics (Computational Engineering) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Harish also serves as an editor and reviewer for several quantitative financial conferences and journals,and has been quoted in leading financial publications including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and the Financial Times.

Harsh Poonia

harshpoonia.cs@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University Master of Science in Machine Learning

Harsh is a recent computer science graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) and is currently pursuing MS in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University. His academic journey has included research internships with TU Darmstadt under Prof. Devendra Singh Dhami and a software engineering role at Optiver, a top quantitative finance firm. His bachelor’s thesis focuses on building invariant representations for speech to better support underrepresented accents. Post his Masters, he aspires to work in industry before founding or leading a research lab in India focusing on impactful AI systems. Outside academics, he enjoys sports like cricket, football, and basketball, as well as sketching and writing.

Harsh Vijay Singh

harsh.vijaysingh@gmail.com Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs Masters in Public Administration

Harsh currently works as Head, Equitable Transition Initiative at World Economic Forum. He has worked for over 15 years at the intersection of energy, environment, and economy in diverse roles and multiple countries, and led WEF’s flagship research initiatives on energy transition and industrial decarbonization. Formerly, he conducted research on industrial energy efficiency policies, and developed off-grid electrification business models in India. He holds a masters’ degree in Public Administration from Columbia University (US), and a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.

Harshet Lunani

harshet@gmail.com University of Oxford MSc in Mathematics and Computers

An alumnus of the prestigious St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi, Harshet graduated from the University of Oxford with a Masters’ in Mathematics and Computers. He has worked with Merrill Lynch, Boston Consulting Group and Endeavor Global prior to joining Milvik (a Swedish startup involved in providing micro insurance in merging markets through a mobile platform) where he served as the Country Director (Indonesia). He is the founder Building Insuretech in SE Asia at Qoala, an insure-tech company.

Harshit Mehta

harshit.s.mehta@gmail.com ETH, Zurich MS in Process Engineering

Harshit graduated in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai and completed his Masters’ degree in Process Engineering from ETH Zurich. He is currently working as the Head of Process Engineering at GRZ Technologies SA. Harshit’s ambition is to contribute to the growth of India’s green hydrogen industry.

Ishaan Watts

wattsishaan18@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University Master in Machine Learning

Ishaan Watts is a Master’s student in Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University. Previously, he was an AI resident at Google DeepMind, where he worked on continual learning and was a core contributor to Gemini 2.5 Pro. He has also worked as a student researcher at Microsoft Research, where his research on multilingualism and safety evaluations was published at several top-tier conferences. He completed his undergraduate studies at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-D). Outside of research, he is a competitive triathlete.

Ishita Mohanty

mohanty86@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

A B.A. in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, Ishita was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Post Graduate Scholarship to pursue the Diploma programme in Economics course at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). Later she also pursued her Masters in Economics from University of Warwick and Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from The Wharton School of Business. Currently, she is a Finance Director & Board Member at SportsCast India and also Head of Finance at Betches Media.

Jai Kedia

jaikedia1999@gmail.com University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MSE in Civil Engineering

Jai is a Master’s student in Civil Engineering at the University of Michigan, where he was awarded the Tishman Masters Fellowship. Working under the guidance of Dr. Vineet Kamat and Dr. Carol Menassa, his research investigates the legal complexities of automation, specifically designing liability frameworks for Human-Robot Collaboration in construction. He combines this academic rigor with his prior management experience in the infrastructure sector to bridge the gap between technical innovation and industry policy. An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M), Jai is also a dedicated water polo player and swimmer.

Janardhan Kodavasal

jkodavasal@gmail.com University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering

Janardhan is a 2007 Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholar. He earned his MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA in 2013. Thereafter he worked as a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago) for five years, where he led efforts to apply supercomputing and machine learning to rapidly optimize product design. From 2018-2023 he was an Engineering Manager at Cummins Inc. (Columbus, Indiana), developing cutting-edge engine and powertrain products. He moved to Bangalore with his wife and daughter in June 2023 to lead his family’s wastewater treatment business, Ecotech Engineering, where he is an Executive Director. Janardhan is currently living in Chicago and enrolled in the Executive MBA program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Jay Shah

jayshah4494@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Chemical Engineering

Jay obtained his Bachelors’ degree in Chemical Engineering from Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai and completed his Masters’ degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 2017. He is currently based in New York and working as a software engineer in the financial services industry. Previously, he had a 3-year stint at Aspen Technology in Houston, Texas where he worked on industry-leading planning & scheduling tools for the petroleum supply chain.

Jayant Rane

drjkrane@gmail.com University of Bath MRes in Regenerative Medicine

Jayant completed MBBS from Grant Medical College, Mumbai. He was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue MRes in Regenerative Medicine from University of Bath, which he completed with distinction. He then received a Marie-Curie Fellowship to pursue doctoral research in cancer and stem cells at the University of York. Following a research stint, he started an academic clinical career, where he aims to continue basic research along with a clinical medical career. His work focuses on cancer evolution and designing new treatments. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor and an oncologist at University College London.

Joby Swankutty

jobyswan@gmail.com, joby.swankutty@rbccm.com University of Cornell MBA

Joby Swankutty is a Managing Director, Head of U.S. Financial Performance Management and U.S. Booking Strategy at the Royal Bank of Canada in New York. He has been with RBC for 9 years and worked on U.S Capital Management framework development, CCAR processes and analytics, Capital Policy, U.S ALCO, Balance Sheet Management, and Financial Performance Management. He received his Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) degree in Finance & Strategy from Cornell University, Ithaca and his Electronics Engineering degree from the National Institute of Technology Calicut, India. Prior to joining RBC, he was with Citibank for 3.5 years in the North America Consumer Bank Business Treasury team, primarily working on Asset Liability Management, Funds Transfer Pricing and Liquidity. Before joining the Consumer Business Treasury Team, he worked in various teams such as Citi Corporate Strategy and Citi Treasury FX & International Markets.

Jostin Dcosta

jostindcosta@gmail.com Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne (EMSE), University of Lyon PhD in Ultra-Flexible Organic Oximeter (UFOO)

Dr. Jostin Vinroy DCosta is a materials science researcher specializing in flexible and wearable optoelectronic devices. He completed his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at the École des Mines de Saint-Étienne in France, where he focused on developing ultra-flexible organic photodetectors and advanced thin-film encapsulation systems. He is currently a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the same institute, working on the fabrication and integration of sensors for next-generation wearable technologies.
His broader experience spans cleanroom microfabrication, nanomaterial and polymer processing, device integration, and electrical, mechanical, and environmental testing. Earlier in his career, he contributed to MEMS-based gas sensor development at IISc Bangalore on an ISRO-funded project, flexible OLED process development at IIT Kanpur, and iron-oxide nanoparticle research at IIT Guwahati. He has published in high-impact journals, presented internationally, and received academic fellowships and awards. Beyond research, he enjoys debating and quizzing.

Jyoti Narula Ranjan

jyoti.narula@gmail.com Indian School of Business MBA

Jyoti has a Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from Indian School of Business (ISB, Hyderabad), and a MCA (Masters’ in Computer Application) from University of Delhi, New Delhi. Currently, she is on a pause from professional commitments, after spending 19+ years in various roles across 8 different firms. In her most recent stint she was leading the APAC Chapter of X.Growth for BCGX at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) based out of Mumbai. She has earlier worked with Meta (Facebook), Google, Star India (‘Hotstar’), Aricent, Embibe, InMobi and Netcore. She has also independently consulted with small to mid-sized companies. In a parallel role, Jyoti is the co-founder at SynTalk, a freewheeling interdisciplinary talk show with a philosophical approach to understanding the world from a long term perspective. SynTalk has released 192 episodes since 2014 & hosted SynTalkrs from a multitude of disciplines. SynTalk is committed to creating a unique globally recognized platform for original long term conversations & thinking across disciplines.

Kaivan Wadia

kaivanwadia@gmail.com University of Texas, Austin MS in Computer Science

Kaivan is the cofounder and CTO of CoverForce, where he leads engineering and product development for a rapidly scaling InsurTech platform modernizing insurance distribution in the United States. Backed by leading investors including Insight Partners and NYCA, CoverForce partners with many of the top 100 wholesalers and brokerages nationwide to power modern workflows, deep carrier integrations, and data-driven insurance operations. Prior to founding CoverForce, Kaivan earned his Master’s degree from The University of Texas at Austin and spent several years at Amazon as a Software Development Engineer, including helping build and scale a new team within Amazon Advertising. He brings that experience in building high-scale, mission-critical systems to CoverForce as it continues to expand across the U.S. insurance ecosystem.

Kamalpreet Kaur

kamalkaur.kaur7@gmail.com University of Bonn Masters of Science Astrophysics

Kamalpreet is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. She was awarded the Bonn-Cologne Graduate School Scholarship in 2022 to pursue her master’s degree in astrophysics from University of Bonn. Her career as an astrophysicist took a clear direction thanks to the courses offered. She has already contributed to numerous studies, including those involving the Sun, black holes, and radio astronomy. She is now focusing on how magnetic fields impact the galaxy evolution using data from the MeerKAT Radio Telescope. She enjoys reading books and watching films and shows. She also has a passion for academic pursuits. During her undergraduate studies, she served as the President of the Physics Society and is currently a dedicated volunteer for Astronomy on Tap, a German initiative aimed at popularizing astronomy among the public.

Karan Gulati

karan.gulati7858@gmail.com University of Cambridge Master of Corporate Law

Karan Gulati is a graduate of Symbiosis Law School, Noida. He earned a Master of Corporate Law from the University of Cambridge, where he served as President of the Cambridge University Graduate Law Society and as General Editor of the Cambridge International Law Journal. He plans to join a UK-based law firm with a long-term goal of leading legal innovation and bridging the gap between economic development and regulatory frameworks. With over four years of diverse professional experience, Karan’s work has been frequently cited in the training of judicial officers across India and by senior advocates before the Supreme Court of India. Beyond his professional pursuits, he enjoys travelling and high-altitude trekking, reflecting his adventurous spirit and love for exploration—qualities that complement his personal and professional ambitions.

Karan Kumar

karan.csf@gmail.com, k.karankumar@gmail.com Harvard Business School MBA

Karan is currently working with Amazon as Senior Manager – Product Management Technical. Previously, he volunteered with Sadhanapada by Isha Foundation. He studied Commerce at the undergraduate level from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University, and worked for 7 years, including two and a half years as an early hire at Central Square Foundation before getting an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2016.

Karan Maini

karan.maini1988@gmail.com University of Wisconsin-Madison MS in Computer Engineering

Karan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, and a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He began his career as a software engineer at Nomura Investment Bank and is currently a senior staff engineer at Visa in Foster City, California, focusing on Behavioral Analytics & AI Innovation in the Cybersecurity business unit. Previously, Karan was a senior Engineer at Cisco Systems in San Jose, California. As a member of the WAN Orchestration team, he received multiple awards for his exceptional work on Smart Licensing development. He played a key role in developing the Cisco Crosswork Network Automation suite, which optimizes real-time network performance and enhances service velocity. Additionally, he contributed to the implementation of the Crosswork Optimization Engine, a closed-loop solution designed to automate bandwidth optimization and traffic steering with minimal operator intervention.

Karan Shinghal

karan531j@gmail.com University of Sussex MSc in Climate Change, Development and Policy

Karan Shinghal is a BBA graduate from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai, who grew up in Dehradun. Over the last eight years of his career in food systems, he has built and scaled a food and beverage company, and worked with the/Nudge Institute, where he designed agriculture and livestock-based interventions to alleviate poverty for 3500 small and marginal women farmers. Most recently, he was working with a think tank – CEEW, where he informed and supported the development of narratives and policies on millets, agroforestry and regenerative agriculture to further the agenda of building sustainable food systems. He co-authored the book, “Millet Mantra”, which highlights stories of people and organisations who have championed millets from farm to fork in India. Karan has completed his MSc in Climate Change, Development and Policy from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. He aspires to enable 150 million smallholder farmers in India to rise out of a life of mere sustenance and create a sustainable food future for all. Karan is also an active long-distance runner and adventure enthusiast.

Karan Vikram Rao

karanrao30@gmail.com Indian School of Business MBA

After graduating from H. R. College of Commerce & Economics, University of Mumbai, Karan worked with TresVista Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. as a Financial Analyst for 3 years. He then joined Indian School of Business (Hyderabad) to pursue his Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) in Finance and Strategy after which he took up a role with Deloitte as a Strategy Consultant. He spent 5 years in the US working with CFO organisations of Fortune 500 trying to optimise their operations. Given his passion for solving business problems, he is back to India working as Senior VP of Business at Rocketium to help them optimise operations and scale their businesses. In his free time, he enjoys playing cricket.

Karishma Tiwari

kari1701@gmail.com University of Oxford MPhil in Economics

Karishma completed the Mphil in Economics from the University of Oxford in 2015 and her Bachelors’ in Economics from the School of Economics, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), University of Mumbai in 2013. She went on to work as an economic consultant with FTI Consulting and Deloitte where she advised both public and private sector clients on economic issues. She then transitioned into the development sector, working as Special Project Manager at CAMFED International, a non-profit that supports girl child education and post-school transition in sub-Saharan Africa. She is currently the Country Manager at JBJ Foundation in Malawi, where her role includes oversight of the implementation of projects spanning health, education, nutrition and economic development. Prior to this, she was posted as an ODI Fellow posted to the Ministry of Health in Malawi, where she worked on matters of national health policy and health sector reforms.

Karthik Vijayakumar

karthik4294@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Robotics

With a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Trichy, Karthik pursued his Masters’ in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in the field of Motion Planning for autonomous agents. Currently, he is working as Staff Software Engineer at Aurora, California. He will eventually return to India and start a company that uses robotics for health, agriculture and defence. He likes to play cricket and has also played it professionally.

Kartik M. Sivaraman

kartik.m.sivaraman@gmail.com ETH Zurich MS in Micro-Nanosystems

Kartik completed his MSc in Micro-Nanosystems in 2009 and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 2013, both from ETH Zurich. He has since been working in the medical device and pharmaceutical sector in Switzerland. He is currently an Associate Director (Science and Technology) at Novartis Pharma in Basel, Switzerland. His work is focused on designing and testing new medical devices for delivering complex biologics, radioligand therapies and cell and gene therapies.

Kartik Patekar

kartikpatekar@gmail.com University of Cambridge MS in Mathematical & Theoretical Physics

Kartik studied Applied mathematics at Cambridge as a Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation scholar after finishing his bachelor’s from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Having focused on statistics modules at Cambridge, he is passionate about applying his learnings on applied microeconomics and development research. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Economics at Boston University.

Kedar Dabhadkar

kedar.dabhadkar@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Chemical Engineering

Kedar is a Data Scientist in the Equipment Intelligence group at Lam Research, bringing statistics and AI-driven automation to semiconductor manufacturing. Before this, he worked at Ketos to build and scale water-quality monitoring for critical applications, such as removing lead from drinking water. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, followed by a Master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University, both in Chemical Engineering. Read more about his work at https://dkedar.com.

Kishen Kudur Shastry

kishen.kudur@graduateinstitute.ch University of Cambridge MPhil in Economics

Kishen was awarded NSF scholarship to pursue an MPhil in Economic Research from Cambridge. He is currently pursuing PhD Economics at the University of Cambridge post his MPhil as well as working as a research assistant at the University. In addition, he also holds an Economics degree from The Graduate Institute Geneva, where he was a Hans Wilsdorf Foundation scholar. Kishen was awarded a full scholarship to pursue Liberal Studies at Ashoka University as a Young India Fellow. He holds a Computer Science undergraduate degree from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka. He was also sponsored by The Fund for American Studies to attend the Asian Institute of Political Economics at Hong Kong University. Kishen’s long-term goal is to contribute towards politics and public policy discourse in India. His subject interest lies in the intersection of economics and development policies. He is a regular participant in international conferences and writes for journals focussing on these subjects. He has previously worked at the investment bank Credit Suisse.

Krithika Jeyaraman

krithika_jeyaraman@rediffmail.com University of Indiana MBA

Krithika completed her Bachelors’ in Electrical Engineering from Anna University, Chennai and went on to join the Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA)programme of the University of Indiana, Kelley School of Business. Currently, she is working as Director P & C Product Management (State Management) with United Services Automobile Association, USA.

Kriti Gupta

kritig94@gmail.com Harvard Business School MBA

Kriti graduated with a Bachelors’ degree in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and worked with IDG Ventures India (now called Chiratae Ventures) as a part of the Investment Team. She completed her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2021. After completing her Masters’ at Harvard, she returned to India and is currently is a Vice President at PeakXV. Her long-term goal is to further the growth of the Indian startup ecosystem in terms of policy, investments and stronger public private partnerships.

Kshitij Saxena

ksaxmail@gmail.com IIM Bangalore MBA

Kshitij is the Founder and General Partner at Relentless VC and also Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Previously, he was the CEO and co-founder of Autoninja, India’s largest Auto CRM. Kshitij started Autoninja in 2013, raised 2 rounds of venture financing, got the company to profitability and exited ICICI Lombard in a rare all-cash deal in 2019. Autoninja was Kshitij’s second startup. Before this, Kshitij started a gaming studio, 5Shells, that did not pan out. Kshitij was a Vice President at ICICI Lombard. He is also a visiting faculty member at Indian Institute of Management Bengaluru where he teaches Venture Capital & Entrepreneurship. He also invests in technology startups through Relentless VC, his angel fund. Kshitij has spent more than a decade in the venture capital ecosystem pitching and building his two startups. Kshitij has an Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Bengaluru, where he was on the Director’s Merit List, and has a BTech from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He is a programmer at heart and is also the father of a baby boy.

Kunal Saluja

kunal15saluja@gmail.com, ksaluja1@jhu.edu Johns Hopkins University MS in Robotics

Kunal is currently running a computer vision consulting company. Before starting his company, Kunal worked as a Director of Computer vision at a self-driving startup. He completed his MS in Robotics from Johns Hopkins University with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence. He has been involved with numerous startups focussing on robotics and computer vision.

Kushal Bahl

kushal.bahl@gmail.com University of Akron PhD in Polymer Engineering

A B.Tech in Polymer Engineering & Technology from Institute of ChemicalTechnology, Mumbai, Kushal was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Masters’ program in Polymer Engineering at the University of Akron. After graduating in 2010, he continued to pursue his PhD in Polymer Engineering there. He is passionate about building teams and developing a culture of partnership, innovation, and respect. He enjoys working cross-functionally to bring next generation materials technologies to market. Currently, he lives in Boston, Massachusetts and works as a Global Technology Director at Teknor Apex Company.

Madhav Malhotra

madhav_mal@yahoo.co.in University of Oxford MPhil in Economics

Madhav was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue MPhil degree in Economics from University of Oxford. Currently, he is a PhD student in Economics at Columbia University. He has previously worked as a Research Assistant at the Department of Management at the London School of Economics and with the International Growth Centre (Myanmar Office). Prior to that he received his formal education at Hansraj College, University of Delhi. Madhav wants to continue working at the intersection of ac ademia and policy and study issues in international trade, development and industrial organisation which can provide guidance on the process of structural transformation in developing countries.

Madhu Yalamarthi

yalamarthi.madhu@gmail.com Stanford University MBA

Madhu Yalamarthi is the co-founder and CEO of Modak, a US-based fintech platform focussed on leveraging the power of technology and finance to empower teens in reaching their fullest potential. Modak raised $19 M in funding from GGV Capital, Nazca, Monashees, and other leading investors. Prior to Modak, Madhu was a Vice President at GGV Capital – a $9.2 Billion global venture capital firm – where he invested over $200M in 14 startups across the US, India, and LatAm, of which 4 startups became unicorns. Prior to that, Madhu worked across India, Africa, and the US in strategy, operations, and product development functions. Madhu has a Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) and MS from Stanford University, where he graduated in the top 10% of his MBA class. Madhu is a first-generation high school graduate and comes from humble beginnings in rural India. The path from there to here taught him the importance of education, hustle, and hard work. Hence, he gets energy from helping others reach their fullest potential. Madhu is especially keen on guiding and mentoring students who are the first in their families to
graduate from college.

Madhubala Sriram

smadhu2004@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

An alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, Madhubala has completed a two year Masters’ programme in Economics from London School of Economics and Politics (LSE). Madhubala who is a trained classical singer also performed on the Lion King Stage as part of LSE’s annual play. She represented LSE at the London regional round of the Voice Festival UK 2013. After graduating from LSE with a Distinction, she joined RBS London as a graduate analyst. Currently, she is working as an Executive Director at J.P.Morgan.

Mahak Garg

mhkgarg17@gmail.com Stanford University MBA

Mahak is an entrepreneur and business leader driven by the mission of enhancing human potential. As a Stanford MBA and a Forbes 30U30 honoree, her work consistently focuses on high-impact learning solutions. She is currently working in stealth on her 2nd startup. Previously, as the Director of the MBA program at Masters’ Union, Mahak successfully oversaw a period of significant expansion, growing the program’s top line by 200% in less than 2 years. This followed her experience founding an education startup Udayy. Mahak’s foundation includes an early career in finance at Nomura, where she launched the first equity structuring desk in India, and operational experience in her family’s manufacturing business of artificial leather and non woven fabrics. She is a graduate with the highest distinction from NSIT and has been an active meditation practitioner for over 12 years.

Maithili Pai

maithili.pai93@gmail.com Harvard Law School LLM

Maithili graduated from National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) with a BA-LL.B. (Hons.) degree in 2017 . She served as a judicial clerk at the Supreme Court of India under Justice DY Chandrachud, where she assisted on landmark cases including among others the right to privacy as a fundamental right under the Indian constitution, the constitutional validity of euthanasia and living wills, the constitutionality of provisions criminalizing homosexuality and adultery, the constitutionality of the Aadhaar project and the Sabarimala Temple entry prohibition. After graduating with an LL.M. from Harvard Law School in 2020, she was selected as a Harvard Public Service Venture Fund Kaufman Fellow in recognition of her commitment to public interest work. She currently works at the International Service for Human Rights in New York, assisting on strategic litigation and advocacy at the UN headquarters to support human rights defenders.

Manasi Sharma

manasi_sharma@hotmail.com Harvard University PhD in Public Health

Dr. Manasi Sharma is currently working as Faculty Group Lead – Global Mental Health at Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Germany. She is also a Research Director at RAHAT Charitable and Medical Research Trust, New Delhi. She previously worked at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as Faculty Research Associate. Previously, she worked as Research Consultant with UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office (EAPRO), Bangkok, Thailand . She was also a Visiting Scientist with Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health. She pursued her Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School. She is a Doctor of Science (Sc.D) from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, where her research encompassed mixed-methods studies of trauma and mental health in South Sudan, Liberia, Somalia, and Sierra Leone; increasing adherence to antiretroviral treatment for HIV+ adolescents in Rwanda; and impact evaluations of hospital systems strengthening programs in Liberia. She has Masters’ in clinical psychology and human rights law, and her research interests include global mental health, complex interventions in humanitarian contexts, child and adolescent health, psychiatric epidemiology, psychometrics, human-centered design and medical anthropology.

Manish Chauhan

manishchauhan.bits@gmail.com London Business School MBA

Manish is a co-founder and COO of Arboreal Bioinnovations – an awardwinning global plant biotechnology platform. Arboreal is India’s first Industrial Scale Organic Producer of High Purity Stevia (the new generation zero-calorie sweetener that comes from a plant source) out of India. A little earlier, he co-created and co-managed a top-tier hedge fund out of London and earned his post-graduation in Management from London Business School and a B. Engg. (First Class Honors) from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani.

Manisha P. Rajkumar

manishapr@gmail.com University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign MS in Computer Science

Manisha worked as Consultant at Hasbro before working as Senior Software Engineer at Baxter International Inc. Prior to this, she worked as a Member of Technical Staff at Tableau for developing business systems software and services for the product sales. Post her B.Tech from Indian Indian Institute of Technology Allahabad (IIT-A), Manisha went on to do her Masters’ in Computer Science, from the University of Illinois, Chicago and successfully completed it in 2007. After getting recruited by Microsoft, during her Masters’, she worked in the Windows division, in Redmond, WA, for 7 years. She then shifted focus to developing software and services, for ‘A Place for Mom’ for 3 years. A Place for Mom is the largest senior living referral service in the United States.

Manoj Ghuhan Arivazhagan

manojghuhan@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University Master of Computational Data Science

Manoj Ghuhan is currently working as an Applied scientist at Amazon AWS, USA. His research interests include Natural Language Processing, Multimodal Learning, Question Answering and Federated Learning. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Master’s degree in computational data science. He is a B.Tech Computer Science graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati and worked as a Research Associate at Adobe Research, India. He has multiple publications and US Patent applications from his work. He envisions himself as an Applied ML researcher working on real-life problems that can impact the lives of millions in future. Manoj is a very big cricket enthusiast. He regularly plays racquetball, pickleball, table tennis and also does a bit of cooking in his spare time.

Manoj Kumar Mahto

m.kumarmahto@hotmail.com University of Essex MSc in Tropical Marine Biology

Manoj is currently working as a Electron Microscopy Senior Technician at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK. He pursued his Masters’ in Tropical Marine Biology from the University of Essex. He holds a postgraduate degree in Biology from Pondicherry University where his master’s thesis abstract has been selected for the International Indian Ocean Science Conference 2020. He has also completed undergraduate in Zoology from Delhi University. He has previously worked as an aquaculture consultant with CPF India in Kakinada. In the near future, Manoj aspires to pursue a PhD that bridges biology with advanced electron microscopy. His long-term goal is to become a go-to expert helping India push the boundaries in cutting-edge electron microscopy. Outside of work, Manoj enjoys videogames, cooking, and sketching and is a regular swimmer and freediver.

Mayank Sharma

mayank.sharma.bits@gmail.com Harvard Kennedy School of Government MPA in International Development

Mayank was awarded a full tuition scholarship for the Masters in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) at Harvard Kennedy School where he studied economics and development. Prior to HKS, he worked on financial inclusion and digital transformation of national welfare programs. Since graduation, he has been based in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he is a leadership coach at Harvard, coaching professionals on group dynamics and adult development. He is also an AI product manager at a government technology startup called Holly helping city governments across the US. Prior to graduate school, Mayank trained as an electrical and electronics engineer at Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani and was a part of the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University.

Mehfuz Basar Mollah

mehfuz.mollah@gmail.com London School of Economics LLM

Mehfuz specializes in subject matters that involve the interface of law and economics – and its application to policy making. He has a Masters’ degree in Economics from Delhi School of Economics and a Masters’ degree in law from London School of Economics. His practice involves advising clients on policy and regulatory issues

Mihir Kulkarni

mihir.kulkarni@gmail.com IIM Kolkata MBA

Mihir is currently an independent Business and Marketing Advisor/ Consultant. He is also a CEO at Wisdmlabs. He previously worked as the Head of Marketing at Tata Digital. Prior to this, he was Vice President and held various leadership positions at Pepperfry and was a part of the founding team. Primarily, he has been Head of Marketing responsible for scaling Pepperfry to become India’s biggest and most well-known Furniture brand over the last 7 years. Mihir completed his Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta in 2007 post which he worked with Nokia for 3 years in Sales and Marketing. Mihir was also part of the key team which launched Hotstar in 2015 by setting up the Data analytics function at Hotstar.

Monil Singhal

monilsinghal21@gmail.com Stanford University MBA

Monil graduated from Shri Ram College of Commerce with a BA (Hons) Economics in 2015. She enjoys macroeconomics and finance, and also pursued actuarial science along with her degree. After working with Deutsche Bank, she joined Central Square Foundation in 2016, where she took up various roles as a Program Manager. Her work focussed on government-focused education projects in Delhi and Andhra Pradesh, supporting the strategic expansion of the foundation and venture philanthropy for early stage non-profits. She has completed her Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Post MBA, she has set up a venture studio, Meraki Labs, aimed at building impactful companies in India. Previously, she was a partner there. Monil is currently Co-founder at TRUVA. She is also passionate about food – she loves cooking and writing culinary blogs, and is currently doing a project for a global food start-up, Deliveroo.

Mrinal S. Rammohan

mrinal.rammohan@gmail.com The Bartlett, University College London MA in Architectural History

Having completed his MA in Architectural History from The Bartlett, University College London (UCL), Mrinal is now working as the Communications and Content Manager, Associate Partner at Foster + Partners in London. His research has been exhibited at various prestigious venues including the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Venice Biennale 2014. He is also the founding editor of LOBBY, the new architectural journal of the Bartlett School of Architecture. He is currently working with Fosters + Partners, London.

Mukund Poddar

mukundpoddar1@gmail.com Harvard University MS in Health Data Science

Mukund is currently working as Senior Data Scientist at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Seattle, Washington, USA. Previously, he was working as Data Scientist for BCG X New York to help clients unlock value across the organisation using data science. He completed an MS in Health Data Science from Harvard School of Public Health and previously worked as a Software Engineer at Amazon. He enjoys playing badminton, board games, and swimming.

Mustafa Bootwala

mustboot@gmail.com University of California, Berkeley MS in Chemical Engineering

Mustafa is a Chemical Engineer working at the cutting edge of climate change remediation technologies. He is currently a Lead Project Engineer at Lilac Solutions Inc., (named as the 2021 Cleantech Early stage company of the year). He has previously worked in the biotech space developing carbon-neutral fuels and discovering a novel polymer recycling technology. He is based in the Bay Area and on the weekends you can find him hiking, biking or skiing.

Naga Lavanya Desiraju

lavanyakat123@gmail.com University of Chicago MA in Social Sciences (Economics Major)

Lavanya is a PhD candidate in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master’s in Social Science with a special focus in Economics. She has a bachelor’s degree in Economics (hons.) from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. With a particular interest in macroeconomics and development economics, she pursued the Applied data fellowship at Harris school of Public Policy, University of Chicago. She also worked as a learning specialist with Proximity Learning Inc., focusing on building and teaching curriculum in economics and mathematics for high school and early undergraduates. Lavanya is trained in Kuchipudi dance, Veena, Carnatic and Hindustani music. She enjoys reading and writing poetry.

Nakul Nayak

nakul92@gmail.com London School of Economics PhD in Law

Nakul is currently pursuing his PhD in Law at the London School of Economics (LSE). His research focuses on technology’s impact on legal and political systems. Before joining the LSE, he was an Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law School. He has also worked as a Google Public Policy Fellow at the Global Network Initiative in Washington DC, clerked at theDelhi High Court, and practised law at the Supreme Court of India. After his PhD, Nakul wishes to continue in academia at a leading international university. Nakul completed his BA-LL.B. (Hons.) from National Law University, Jodhpur and LL.M. from the University of Pennsylvania, graduating as the class valedictorian. He enjoys cooking, hiking, and playing sports in his free time.

Namrata Maheshwari

1.namratamaheshwari@gmail.com Columbia Law School LLM

Namrata Maheshwari is Senior Policy Counsel and Encryption Policy Lead at Access Now. She works with policy organizations, technology companies and government representatives around the world towards strengthening data privacy, security, free speech and access in the digital age. Prior to this, she worked at a premiere corporate law firm in India where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions, and then as a litigator before Indian courts in the area of civil and commercial law. Namrata completed her LL.M. from Columbia Law School, New York, as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar in 2020. She received her BA-LL.B. (Hons) in 2016 from Jindal Global Law School where she was a recipient of the Shallu Jindal Scholarship for Outstanding Women.

Nandagopal Vidhu

nandgopalv@gmail.com University of Pennsylvania Robotics Master of Science in Engineering

Nandagopal completed his B.Tech (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) in 2022. He is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Engineering (Robotics) from the University of Pennsylvania. He previously worked as a Systems Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover Technology & Business Services India (TBSI). During his time at IIT-B, he explored diverse areas, including Stereolithography Apparatus (SLA) 3D printing and autonomous underwater vehicles. In the long run, he envisions launching his own robotics venture focused on rehabilitative technologies. He is also a recipient of the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Undergraduate Engineering Scholarship (2022). He enjoys weightlifting, sports, travel, and reading.

Nandan Phadke

nandanphadke@gmail.com The Ohio State University MS in Computer Science

Nandan graduated with a Masters’ in Computer Science, specializing in High Performance Computing, from The Ohio State University. He is currently working as Staff Engineering Manager at Stripe based out of Seattle, Washington. In his current role, Nandan leads engineering for the teams building stablecoin products at Stripe. Previously, he worked as senior software development engineer at Amazon. Throughout his academic and professional journey, Nandan has been involved with and headed various social service organization with a personal focus on grass root development and environment conservation.

Nihar Mhatre

niharsm@yahoo.com University of Minnesota, Twin Cities MS in Electrical Engineering

Nihar Mhatre is a Principal Power and Performance (PnP) Architect at Arm Inc., San Jose, USA with over 16 years of experience in server PnP, heuristic modeling, EDA software, and SoC development. He holds a master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. An industry expert in performance and power optimization, Nihar previously led PnP initiatives for the 6th Gen Xeon Server at Intel, where he developed frameworks for PnP projections, thermal modeling, and architectural exploration. Known for identifying bottlenecks and delivering impactful solutions, he is passionate about building efficient systems from concept to delivery.

Niharika Satish

niharika.satish@gmail.com University of Oxford MSc in Economics for Development

Niharika is currently a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Cambridge. She recently graduated from the University of Oxford pursuing an MSc in Economics for Development. She was previously a Robert S. McNamara Fellow at the World Bank before which she worked at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development at the Office of the Chief Economist. In 2021 she graduated with high distinction from Shiv Nadar University having completed a BSc (Research) inEconomics. One of her semesters was pursued at the University of Bologna

Nikhil Rao

nikhilcrao@gmail.com University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MS in Computer Science

A B.Tech in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B), Nikhil went on to complete an MS in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Nikhil has also started a company called IDO Technologies which is based out of Mumbai. Nikhil is currently working in India with Moloco as Director of Engineering. Previously, he worked with Google as a Senior Staff Software Engineer.

Nikita Garg

nikitagarg1006@gmail.com University of Oxford Bachelor's in Civil Law

Nikita is currently an Associate with the Disputes and Investigations team at Slaughter and May, London. She holds a Master of Law (LLM) from the University of Cambridge and a BA- LL.B. (Hons.) from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. She has formerly served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of India and worked at the Delhi office of Keystone Partners, a boutique dispute resolution firm. Her areas of focus include civil and commercial litigation and arbitration. Besides the law, Nikita thoroughly enjoys dancing. She is a trained Kathak dancer and is always eager to learn new dance forms. She also enjoys running, trekking, and playing strategy board games.

Nikita Khosla

nikitakhosla@gmail.com University of Oxford MBA

Nikita was part of the founding senior leadership of two fast paced, entrepreneurial INGOs – STIR Education and The Luminos Fund. She oversaw all aspects of organisation growth including strategy, fundraising, program design and delivery and finance and operations. She is currently working as Director of Growth at American India Foundation. Nikita holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from India and a Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from the University of Oxford. She lives in New York with her husband and two spirited little boys and continues to be passionate and optimistic about the education sector in India.

Niranjini Rajagopal

niranjini@gmail.com, niranjini.cmu@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Niranjini was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She got her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and a Bachelors’ degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Trichy, India. Her expertise is in the area of networked embedded sensing technologies. During her PhD, her work won the International Microsoft Indoor Localization Competition in 2015 and 2018. She was a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation at CMU. She received the CMU William S. Dietrich II Presidential PhD Fellowship in 2015 and the Samsung PhD Fellowship in internet of things area in 2016. She was among the MIT EECS Rising Stars in 2018. Currently, She is principal at GridInfinite LLC, USA. Previously, She worked as a Senior Research Scientist at Amazon in the Energy and Electrification domain.

Niti Madhugiri

niti1987@gmail.com University of North Carolina MS in Computer Science

Niti has an integrated dual degree in BE Electronics and MSc Physics from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS)-Pilani(Goa Campus). She has worked on a remote project with University of Liverpool, UK and in the HCI Lab at National University of Singapore. She completed her Masters’ in Computer Science from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill where she worked on a project related to autonomous navigation of micro-aerial vehicles and also received research assistantship for the first year. She has undergone a summer internship with the National Institute of Aerospace Langley Research Center and would like to pursue a PhD in future. She has worked as Senior Mission Systems Design Engineer at Pixxel. Niti is currently working on projects Model Rocket Building, Simulation and Flight & landing and Simulated Rover Mission Workshop Associated with International Space University.

Nitin Tanwar

nitintanwar12@yahoo.co.in University of Cambridge Mphil in Engineering for Sustainable Development

A recipient of 2006 Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Post Graduate Scholarship, Nitin Tanwar is a serial entrepreneur in the climate technology space and is currently the founder of London-based startup EcoLeap.Digital. The startup is developing the world’s first Digital Monitoring Reporting Verification (DMRV) software. This platform uses satellite data to remotely track a newly planted sapling and trees, detect its species, and measure its growth in carbon stock. This technological breakthrough is set to revolutionize the natural capital investments in afforestation and reforestation projects. Previously, Nitin founded, scaled, and successfully exited CaliforniaCarbon.info, a market intelligence company focused on California’s compliance carbon markets. He also founded and scaled Regent Climate Connect, a startup in India that used Artificial Intelligence to forecast weather patterns above solar power plants; it was later acquired by NASDAQ-listed ReNew Energy Global Plc. Nitin began his career at Cargill Corporation’s European Power, Gas, and Emissions Trading desk in London, where he traded various carbon certificates and worked on internal carbon compliance initiatives. He was one of the youngest authors to publish in Elsevier’s journal on Energy Policy and holds a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He resides in London with his two lovely daughters.

Noopur Sen

sen.noopur@gmail.com Harvard Kennedy School MPA in International Development and Juris Doctor

Noopur graduated from Shri Ram College of Commerce with a BA in Economics (Hons.) and completed a post graduate joint degree in law and public policy (i.e. Juris Doctor & Master in Public Administration in International Development) from Harvard University. At present, she is an Associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP where she focuses on international and sovereign litigation. In her career, Noopur hopes to use her background in law, economics, and public policy to understand, and counteract, the drivers of global inequality.

Omkar Mehta

mehta.omkar@gmail.com University of Illinois Urbana Champaign MS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

Omkar completed his Chemical Engineering from Institute of Chemical Technology in 2017 and Masters’ in Industrial Engineering focussing on Advanced Analytics from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign (UIUC) in 2022. He has also worked as Assistant Manager with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd in India. He is currently working as a Senior Software Engineer at Nvidia Corporation in USA. Omkar loves reading different genre of books including fiction, non-fiction and autobiography.

Onkar Deshpande

onkardeshpande07@gmail.com Stanford University Master's in Computer Science

Onkar is currently working at a startup in the Bay Area that specialises in making network hardware for hyper scalers. His work focuses on distributed systems and verified releases. Having received an All-India Rank 8 in his IIT-JEE exams, he completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B). He has worked in Rubrik India for 2 years as a software engineer. He then completed Masters in Computer Science from Stanford university with a focus on systems. In his downtime, Onkar enjoys indulging in sports like swimming and volleyball.

P.S. Nandini

psnandini24@gmail.com University of California - San Francisco and University of California - Berkeley PhD Bio-engineering

Nandini is currently pursuing PhD in Bioengineering (Joint programme) at the University of California – Berkeley & University of California – San Francisco . She is a B.Tech graduate in Biotechnology from SASTRA University, Thanjavur, and completed her Masters in Neuroscience in Germany and Netherlands through the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship. She is interested in developing neurotechnological solutions to neurological and psychiatric disorders. Nandini is the Founder of The Keni Project (2013- Present) which is a student-run organization that sets up libraries in underprivileged schools by collecting used books from the public. She is a trained Carnatic vocalist and plays the instrument, Veena. She is also a painter and artist, for which she received the National Balshree Honor given by the President of India (the second highest civilian award given to youth in India).

Padmini Patnaik

patnaik.padmini@gmail.com Stony Brook University MS in CS

A BE in Computer Science, Padmini worked as a Research Assistant at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) before she went on to do a Masters’ programme in Computer Science from Stony Brook University. After graduating in 2007, Padmini has been working as an Executive Director for Morgan Stanley, New York City, USA and is working in the Prime Brokerage division at present.

Paridhi Maheshwari

1997.paridhi@gmail.com Stanford University Masters in Computer Science with specialisation in AI

Paridhi graduated from Stanford University with a Masters’ in Computer
Science and a distinction in research. She is now working as an applied scientist at Alexa AI, Amazon. Prior to this, she completed her Bachelors’ degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 2018. She also worked at Adobe Research where she focused on identifying and solving impactful research problems and collaborating with product teams to understand their industrial use cases. She has published her work in top-tier conferences and filed 12 patents. Paridhi is a recipient of Adobe Women Technology scholarship and has also received the Academic Excellence Award from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. She enjoys music, travel and food.

Parth Laturia

parthlaturia@gmail.com Princeton University Master in Finance

Parth Laturia is a B.Tech Computer Science graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) (after securing All India Rank 3 and 29 in JEE Mains and Advanced 2018 respectively). He completed his Masters in Finance at Princeton University in May 2026 and was awarded with the Princeton University Academic Fellowship. He worked as a Quantitative Research Strategist in the Fixed Income Division (Electronic Trading) at Morgan Stanley from 2022 to 2024 and will be joining a reputed hedge fund (as a Quantitative Researcher) in New York after graduation. He has published papers on converting Instructional Documents to Explanatory Videos, on Reinforcement Learning using the Notakto game and on Semi Supervised Data Programming (SPEAR). Eventually, Parth plans to establish a quantitative fund in India. An avid mountaineer and trekker, he enjoys reading diverse novels, and playing badminton and chess.

Parth Shah

parth.chemengg@gmail.com Universtity of California Santa Barbara PhD in Chemical Engineering

Parth has completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara in the area of microfluidics, developing novel techniques which can be used for transporting colloids in dead-end narrow pores which have applications in enhanced oil recovery and targeted drug delivery. Currently, he is working as Scientist at Proctor & Gamble, USA. He completed his under-graduate studies from Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) Mumbai where he graduated with a Bachelors’ degree in Chemical Engineering. His long term goal is to come back to India and start a business post working for few years in the US industry.

Piyush Pratik

piyushpratik@gmail.com Stanford University MBA

A gold-medalist from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Piyush holds a B.Tech. & M.Tech dual degree in Biochemical Engineering & Biotechnology. Currently, Piyush is working at Apple as Product Manager where he is a lead for iPhone 16 line up, iPhone 13 line up, and iPhone SE (2nd generation).Piyush is a theatre-enthusiast and has written, directed and acted in several plays through college. He pursued his Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from Stanford University, having gained admission and Fellowship offers from Harvard, Wharton and Kellogg business schools as well. Piyush started as a management consultant at Bain & Company and then led Product Marketing globally with InMobi, India’s first unicorn, rising quickly to become Director. Passionate about mobile technology, Piyush aims to use mobiletech to bridge India’s digital divide, and has joined Apple post-MBA as a Product Manager for iPhone.

Poornash Anandan Sangeetha

aspoornash2355@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Machine Learning

Poornash Anandan Sangeetha (A.S. Poornash) is a Computer Science graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Patna (IIT-P) and currently pursuing a Master’s in Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University. He has interned at top institutions like the University of Southern California, Amazon, and KMITL (Thailand), with publications in leading conferences such as ACL, CIKM, ACM Multimedia, AAAI, and IEEE Transactions. His research centres on trustworthy multimodal AI, focusing on fairness, privacy, and interpretability, with notable projects in toxicity detection, federated learning, and hate speech detection in lowresource languages. His accolades include winning 6th place in the Amazon ML Challenge 2024, gold medal at Inter IIT Tech Meet 2023, and international research fellowships like IUSSTF-Viterbi, MITACS Globalink, and DAAD-WISE. An avid puzzle solver and speedcuber, he co-founded IIT Patna’s puzzle club, Hexachrome. Poornash aims to advance fair and trustworthy AI for realworld impact.

Poorvica Ramanand

rpoorvica2002@gmail.com Imperial College, London MSc in Biomedical Engineering - Medical Physics

Poorvica Ramanand is a B.E. Biomedical Engineering graduate from Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai. She completed her MSc in Biomedical Engineering (Medical Physics) at Imperial College, London. Currently she’s put up as a Vocational Trainee at Perspectum Diagnostics, a spinout company from the University of Oxford focusing on medical imaging solutions. She aspires to specialize in the Radiology sector, particularly in medical imaging, following her Masters. Beyond her academic pursuits, Poorvica is a multifaceted individual with a passion for painting and playing tennis. She enjoys swimming, cooking, and listening to podcasts, reflecting her diverse interests and well-rounded personality.

Pradeep Dheerendra

pradeep.dheerendra@gmail.com Newcastle University Masters cum PhD in Systems Neuroscience

Pradeep received his Bachelors’ of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering from National Institute of Technology Trichy (NITT). He then worked for an Indian Multimedia systems company in the field of audio signal processing which made him deeply interested in auditory neuroscience. He later worked with NIMHANS (Bangalore) to study epilepsy, and schizophrenia. He secured a position on a Masters’-cum PhD program in Systems Neuroscience at Newcastle University, UK. In 2019, he was awarded his doctorate degree in Auditory Neuroscience. He now plans to use his expertise in MEG, EEG, and fMRI that he developed while working at University College London (UCL) to understand the neuropathophysiology underlying Schizophrenia spectrum disorder. He is currently working as Research Associate at University of Glasgow.

Pranav Sudhir Pandit

pranav.vet@gmail.com Universtity of California, Davis Masters in Preventive Vetinerary Medicine

Dr. Pranav Pandit, BVSc & AH, MPVM, PhD, is an assistant professor of veterinary epidemiology at the Department of Population Health and Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis. His research centers around the ecology of emerging infectious diseases, with a particular focus on developing climate-based models to forecast the risks of emerging zoonotic diseases. Dr. Pandit leads the development of a surveillance platform for the early detection of wildlife outbreaks across the United States.
His research investigates the environmental drivers of zoonotic pathogen distribution and transmission, aiming to optimize mitigation strategies. Collaborating with livestock veterinarians, Dr. Pandit develops predictive tools to assist producers in better managing endemic livestock diseases. Within his lab, there is a dedicated focus on the development of AI models for veterinary science and epidemiology. Dr. Pandit is a proponent of data stewardship, particularly in the field of One Health. His overarching goal is to contribute to building resilient food and agriculture systems through technological innovations that safeguard ecological and public health.

Prapti Kumar

praptijkumar@gmail.com MIT Sloan School of Management Master of Finance

Prapti holds a B.Tech. Chemical Engineering degree with a Minor in Computer Science from Indian Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) and is currently studying Master of Finance at MIT Sloan School of Management . Before this, she was working as an Analyst at Deutsche Bank, where she contributed her expertise in the investment banking division for a year, following a successful internship with the same organization. Post-Masters, Prapti aspires to work as a Quantitative Analyst, focusing on investment strategies and leveraging data to solve real-world problems innovatively. Her long-term ambition is to establish a positive impact fund, driving sustainable and meaningful change. Outside of her professional pursuits, Prapti enjoys playing badminton, reading fiction, listening to music, and traveling, reflecting her diverse interests and dynamic personality.

Prarthana Agrawal

prarthana@students.iisertirupati.ac.in University of Oxford DPhil in Theoretical Physics

Prarthana is currently pursuing DPhil in Theoretical Physics at University of Oxford. She completed her Master’s in Physics from Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER) Tirupati, hailing from Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh and aspires to become a leading scientist in the future. She has been a recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Gates Cambridge Scholarship (2023) and DAAD WISE Scholarship (2022) for a research internship and awards from Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER) Tirupati for her outstanding academic performance during her undergraduate years. Outside of academia, Prarthana writes blogs and enjoys reading and playing badminton in her free time.

Prashanth Bhupendera Ramakrishnan

prashanth.rb1@gmail.com University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MS in Mechanical Engineering

Prashanth is a gold medallist graduate in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal. Currently, he is working as Senior Product cost engineer at Amazon Web Services in Austin, Texas. Previously, he worked as Operations Research Engineer with Intel Corp., USA. He received a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan (UoM), Ann Arbor, where he was a recipient of the William Mirsky Memorial Fellowship for academic and research excellence. At UoM, he worked on engineering laser-aided lightweight methods for various applications.
He hopes to leverage this experience to develop cutting-edge manufacturing solutions for the semiconductor industry. He is also an accomplished tennis player and an avid aviation enthusiast.

Prateek Gupta

prateek.gupta002@gmail.com London Business School MBA

Prateek is passionate about the technology sector and currently working as a Head of Sales Strategy and Operations at Stotles, London, UK. Before this, he worked as a Senior Manager, Sales Strategy & Operations at Airwallex and as Senior Analyst with McKinsey & Company. Outside work, Prateek actively contributes to NGOs working towards solving learning disabilities, youth unemployment and Bhopal gas tragedy rehabilitation. Because of his projects, he was amongst the youngest selected as One Young World ambassador from India. Prateek holds a B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and also completed his Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from London Business School.

Prathamesh Mandke

mandkepk15.extc@coep.ac.in Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University MS in Computer Engineering

Prathamesh currently works as a Machine Learning Engineer at Apple. Previously, at Qualcomm AI Research he contributed towards developing software infrastructure for LLM personalization. He enjoys working at the intersection of applied AI research and machine learning infrastructure. Prathamesh obtained his bachelor’s degree at College of Engineering Pune before moving to the United States for graduate school at Virginia Tech. In his free time, he enjoys playing football and reading.

Pratyush Anand

panand2257@gmail.com ETH Zurich MSc in High Energy Physics

Pratyush completed his B.Tech in Engineering Physics from Indian Institute of Technology Madras and MSc in Physics from ETH Zurich, and he also did his final Master’s project from Harvard University. He is currently pursuing PhD in Quantumn Phonotics and AI from Maasachusetts Institute of Tehchnology (MIT) doing research in the field of quantum engineering. He has previously worked at some prestigious institutions like Harvard, ETH Zurich, and CERN.

Pratyush Maini

pratyush.maini@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. in Machine Learning

Pratyush is currently pursuing his PhD program in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He is also a founding member at Datology AI. He completed his B. Tech in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. His career goal is to make Machine Learning systems trustworthy to the extent that they can be safely and reliably deployed outside the comfort of research labs. He is a recipient of the Khorana scholarship which funded his internship at CMU. Pratyush enjoys writing poems, reading couplets in Hindi, listening to music, public speaking and debates. Being a sport enthusiast he enjoys playing table-tennis, tennis and cricket.

Preksha Jain

prekshasmailbox@gmail.com Yale University MA in International and Development Economics

Preksha is currently a second-year doctoral student in Public Policy at New York University where she plans to explore the potential of technology in accelerating poverty alleviation. Most recently, she spent two years working as an Economist in the South Asia Region’s Chief Economist’s Office (SARCE) at the World Bank, where she managed field experiments around gender, informality, and the digital economy. After completing her Masters in International and Development Economics from Yale University in 2020, she worked as a Research Associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for two years, affiliated with a poverty-alleviation thinktank Innovations for Poverty Action. Here, she worked on projects around gender and social protection in Kenya. She completed her undergraduate studies in Economics from Hans Raj College, Delhi University and also worked in management consulting at Bain & Company for two years before heading to Yale. Preksha’s interest lies in using data to provide innovative solutions to socio-economic problems faced by developing countries, and through her work, she would like to catalyse the shift towards evidence-based policymaking. Outside of academics, she dabbles in music, enjoys coffee, and exploring the outdoors.

Prineeta Kulkarni

prineeta.kulkarni@gmail.com Harvard Business School MBA

Prineeta serves as the Senior Director of Strategy and Corporate Development at Vedanta Biosciences a clinical-stage biotech developing microbiome therapies. She has previously worked at Regeneron and Genentech, where she supported drug development efforts in oncology and immunology. Prineeta began her career in life sciences consulting and later worked in Corporate Strategy at Cipla. She holds a Master’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Pune and an Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from Harvard Business School. She also studied liberal arts at the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University, where she developed an entirely tangential interest in foreign policy and international relations. She is excited to help bring cutting-edge scientific research to market, and aspires to radically improve health and wellness for emerging-market consumers in the long run.

Pritesh Chajjed

chhajedpv11.extc@coep.ac.in, priteshchhajed@gmail.com University of Texas, Austin MS in Electrical Engineering

Pritesh graduated with Masters’ in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas, Austin. Currently, he is working as GPU RTL Designer at Apple Inc.,Cupertino, California, United States . Originally from Nashik, Pritesh completed his B.Tech, in Electronics and Telecommunication from College of Engineering, Pune. As an undergraduate, Pritesh was involved in development of “Swayam” student satellite which was launched in space by ISRO on 22nd June 2016. After his B.Tech, he worked as an RTL design engineer in semiconductor industry for two years. In future, he plans to develop a fabless semiconductor company in India. Pritesh is also a part of Guinness world record for maximum people solving the Rubik’s Cube at one time. He has organized blood donation drives and is fond of music and stargazing.

Prithvi Dake

prithvidake@gmail.com University of California – Santa Barbara PhD in Chemical Engineering

Prithvi is currently a Mitsubishi Chemical PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering at University of California – Santa Barbara, working in the field of advanced process control, developing structural insights for hybrid models that could be reliably optimised even for dynamic control systems. His efforts have been recognized by Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation as high risk-high reward. He has completed his BTech in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai. Upon completion of his PhD, Prithvi intends to return to India and pursue an academic career driven by his passion for research. Outside of academics, Prithvi is an active art enthusiast, nurturing his passion in this creative field.

Rahul Singh Chauhan

rksc1997@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Rahul graduated from the London School of Economics in 2019 with an MSc in Economics. He is currently pursuing Joint PhD in Financial Economics at the University of Chicago and the Chicago Booth School of Business. He previously worked at CAFRAL, RBI and the Fama Miller Center for Research in Finance, at the Booth School of Business. He actively collaborates with Prof. Raghuram Rajan (former Governor, RBI), Prof. Viral Acharya (former Deputy Governor, RBI) and other finance faculty at Booth on projects covering banking, monetary policy and corporate finance.

Rajhansa Ramasubba Sridhara

rajhansa88@gmail.com The Wharton School of Business MBA

A voracious reader and a great fan of P. G. Wodehouse, this dual degree holder in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay completed a Masters’ in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University in April 2014. At Stanford, Rajhansa was a consultant for Stanford Consulting. He was also a member of the University’s Judicial Affairs panel and tutored learning-disabled students. It was at Stanford that he became interested in the use of technology in education, especially in the Indian context, and he would love to work in and contribute to this sector in the future. Rajhansa worked as consultant with the Berlin office of the Boston Consulting Group. He completed his Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from Wharton Business School in 2019 and joined BCG as consultant again. Currently, he leads the Strategy and Business Operations at Kodiak Robotics in San Francisco.

Ram Smaran Suresh

rs358@snu.edu.in London School Of Economics MSc in Economics

Ram Smaran Suresh Kumar is a PhD student in Economics at Columbia University. Before his PhD, he worked as an Economist at Compass Lexecon in London for around three years, advising on antitrust and competition matters across the UK and Europe. He later worked as a Pre-doctoral Research Assistant at the Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (POID) at the London School of Economics (LSE). He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the LSE and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR. Outside of work, he enjoys running, yoga, squash, and trying out new vegan recipes – often all in one day!

Raunak Singh

raunak2012@gmail.com Columbia University MS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

Raunak was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to complete his Masters’ in Industrial Engineering from Columbia University, New York. He later joined Sabre Airline Solutions, an airline technology company, as an Operations Research Analyst. Raunak is currently working at Keystone AI in New York, USA as their Vice President of Science. Previously, he worked with Amazon for 12 years and held roles as Director of Experimentation, Customer Targeting, and Supply Chain Optimization where he led teams that deploy mathematical models and algorithms to improve Amazon’s business efficiency, profitability and customer experience.

Rishabh Malhotra

rriishabh@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Rishabh was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue MSc in Economics at The London School of Economics and Political Science. Currently he is pursuing PhD in Economics at New York University and aims to research on questions of growth and development of India. Rishabh graduated with a B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, where he developed an inclination for economics and social policy.

Rishika Mehavarnam

rishikamehavarnam1117@gmail.com University of Pennsylvania MSE in Materials Science and Engineering

Rishika Mehavaram is a B.Tech graduate in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Tiruchirappalli and is currently pursuing MSE in Materials Science and Engineering at University of Pennsylvania. She gained valuable research experience as a Research Assistant under Dr. Daolun Chen at Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada, through a prestigious MITACS Globalink Research Internship in 2023. A distinguished scholar, Rishika is a two-time recipient of the OP Jindal Engineering and Management Scholarships (OPJEMS). After completing her Masters, Rishika aspires to work in the metal battery and sustainable energy industry. Her long-term goal is to contribute to the R&D sector, focussing on developing advanced energy storage devices for critical and commercial industries such as aviation. In her personal time, Rishika enjoys listening to Western music and reading historical fantasy books. She is also an avid sports enthusiast, actively playing basketball, throwball, and badminton.

Ritika Mazumdar

ritikamazumdar@gmail.com University of Oxford MPhil in Economics

Ritika is currently working as Consultant with Bain & Company in London. She has completed her MPhil in Economics at Oxford University and her Bachelors’ in Economics (B.A) from the University of Delhi. At Oxford, her research looked at innovations in the field of micro finance. She is a keen badminton player, loves reading and enjoys debates.

Ritwick Chaudhry

ritwickchaudhry@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Computer Science

Ritwick Chaudhry is currently working as an Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon in Santa Clara, California. He completed his Masters’ in Computer Science at the Carnegie Mellon University and bachelors from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay with a degree in B.Tech (Hons.) in Computer Science & Engineering in 2018. He has earlier worked at Adobe Research for a year, with focus on understanding semantics of visual content. Being broadly interested in the field of Computer Vision and Machine Learning, he has worked in visual question answering and 3D reconstruction, with 9 publications in top conferences, 2 issued and 4 filed patents. He is especially passionate about improving how machines perceive the 3D world around us. Ritwick aims at transforming how machines interact with humans by giving them the ability to “see” and reason.

Ritwika Sen

ritwika.sen@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc and Diploma in Economics

Ritwika was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Ritwika obtained a PhD in Managerial Economics and Strategy from Northwestern University (Kellogg) in 2024. Prior to her PhD, she worked as a Country Economist for the International Growth Centre in Uganda and as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow at the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources in Rwanda.

Rohan Sharma

rohansharmaburner@gmail.com Harvard University Master's in Computational Science

Rohan has completed Masters in Computational Science and Engineering at Harvard University, with a background in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. His work spans geometric deep learning, representation learning, and equivariant neural networks, with research experience at MIT, the Vector Institute, and Carnegie Mellon University. In past, He focused on building Reverie (https://reverie.one), a generative encyclopedia designed to make research and exploration more seamless and engaging. Most recently, Rohan serves as the CEO & Co‑Founder of Almanac since October 2025 at Cambridge, MA, where he is leading the development of the next Wikipedia — https://thealmanac.ai. Prior to this, he worked as an LLM Engineer at Give, a TIFIN Company in New York, contributing to applied large‑scale language model systems. He also spent over a year as a Machine Learning Researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focusing on advanced methods in machine learning and AI.

Rohit Pandharkar

rohit.pandharkar@gmail.com, rohitp@media.mit.edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology Masters in Media Technology

Rohit earned his B.Tech in Electronics & Telecommunication from College of Engineering, Pune. He went on to complete the Masters’ course in Media Technology, Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received the Starting Bloc Fellowship and the Center for Future Storytelling Fellowship. During his days in grad school, he founded the MIT Media Lab India Initiatives. He was later handpicked out of MIT by Anand Mahindra to join the Mahindra Group. At Mahindra, he led new business development at the Cleantech business and later became the Group Head of Data Science for the Mahindra Group. Post that Rohit has worked at multiple companies in the capacity of Head of Data Science like OLX Autos and Circles.Life (Singapore). Presently Rohit is a Partner in Technology Consulting at EY India focusing on Generative AI technology and is based out of Mumbai, India.

Romit Arun Mehta

romitwenger@gmail.com University of Cambridge PG Diploma in Economics

Romit Mehta is a VP of investments at Lightspeed Venture Partners – a global multistage venture capital fund with $ 20B in AUM. He graduated as the 1st ranker in B.A. in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. He worked as a consultant at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, advising governments, multilateral agencies, corporates and foundations on international development across India and Africa. He subsequently joined the Prime Minister’s Office in Ethiopia where he led priority projects from the PMO including accelerating cereal exports and national storage strategy for the country. He moved back to India in 2018 and joined Lightrock, a growth-stage investment fund leading investments in agritech, supply chains, and commerce. Currently, he oversees Lightspeed’s investments in consumer and commerce companies in Bengaluru, India.

Ronak Mehta

ronak.mehta31@gmail.com The Wharton School of Business MBA

Ronak Mehta is currently a principal at Warburg Pincus where he is focused on investments in India. Previously, Ronak worked at Elevation Capital (previously known as Saif Partners) where he looked at early and growth stage investments in India. He started his career as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Ronak holds a Dual Degree (B.Tech + M.Tech) in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and he received an Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from The Wharton Business School, where he was a Palmer Scholar.

Roshan Sumbaly

rsumbaly@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Computer Science

After completing his Computer Science degree from Stanford, Roshan went on to work at LinkedIn and Coursera where he led various AI products. He is now Senior Director of AI at Meta in the Superintelligence Lab focusing on applied research in the media space

Ruchita Pawar

20chers.pawar@ug.ictmumbai.edu.in Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) MSc in Chemical Engineering

Ruchita Pawar is a B.Tech Chemical Engineering graduate from Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai. She is currently pursuing MSc in Chemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Netherlands. She has practical experience working with Aspen Plus during her Aarti Industries internship. After completing her Masters, Ruchita aims to join the R&D department of a chemical engineering firm to see her research applied practically. Outside of her professional interests, she loves dancing, playing the piano, and reading fictional novels.

Sachin Jog

sachinjog11@gmail.com ETH Zurich MSc in Process Engineering

Sachin was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue MSc in Process Engineering from ETH Zurich, which he successfully completed in 2021. He defended his PhD in September 2025 at the Sustainable Process Systems Engineering Laboratory, ETH Zurich, where his research focused on the design and optimization of sustainable chemical processes and supply chains. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich. Originally from Pune, Sachin earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai in 2019. He has also completed German language training upto level B2.

Sadiah Zahoor

sadiahzahoor@gmail.com University of Cambridge Master of Advanced Studies (MaSt) in Pure Mathematics

Sadiah was awarded the prestigious Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue a Master’s in Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and later completed a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Sheffield, focusing on Number Theory: Elliptic Curve, and Modular Forma. She transitioned into AI and has spent the past two years as an AI Research Engineer. Sadiah is currently Member of Technical Staff at Tomoro and AI Research Engineer at BondingAI. She is a founding engineer at a start-up— lesson22.ai, an advanced video engine platform that transforms any text into concise, summarised videos, enabling impactful micro learning experiences.

Sagnik Dhar

sagnik.dhar@gmail.com Stony Brook University MS in Computer Science

Sagnik was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to study Master of Science in Computer Science at Stony Brook University in New York. Sagnik currently lives in California and works as Director, Software Engineering – Interior, Infotainment & Digital Experience at Cariad, a VW Group company building automotive software. In the past, Sagnik has worked at Honda Research Institute and Sportvision.

Sai Gautham Ravipati

sgauthamr2001@gmail.com Stanford University Masters in Electrical Engineering Masters

Sai Gautham is a PhD student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He completed his Master’s degree from Stanford University in 2025 and Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) in 2023. He is passionate about building next-generation AI systems. His goal after completing his PhD is to join the industry, with a particular interest in developing systems that simplify the deployment of algorithms to hardware. Outside academics, he enjoys playing squash, cooking, running and travelling to new places.

Saloni Goel

salonigoel.ssc@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Saloni is MBA from Stanford Business School and founder of a venture-backed AI startup (in stealth). Before her MBA, she was a private equity investor with a $13B+ US-based fund and a consultant with PwC in their London Office. She holds a MSc Economics (Quant track) from the London School of Economics & Political Science and Bachelors in Economics from St. Stephen’s College.

Sanyam Dugar

dugarsanyam@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

A BSc Economics (Hons) graduate from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, Sanyam secured a Distinction in MSc in Economics programme at London School of Economics & political Science (LSE). Sanyam has been a Legislative Assistant to a Member of Parliament (LAMP) Fellow. Post his MSc, he interned with an early-stage tech VC (a UK-India cross-border fund) and worked in investment banking with BNP Paribas’ UK Corporate Broking and EMEA Equity Capital Markets teams. He worked as BFSI sector and UK country specialist with Invest India, the Government’s National Investment Promotion Agency. Currently, he is CEO and Co- Founder of x10x capital venture which focusses on investment and operations.

Sarah George

sarah.capricornangel@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Sarah was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science ( LSE). Sarah earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2022. Her research was focused on the market for IPv4 addresses. She is currently working at Microsoft as a Senior Data Scientist. Sarah holds a BA (Hons) in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

Sarath Venkatesh Kumar

sarathvc@gmail.com University of California, Irvine MS in Electrical Engineering

Sarath is currently the Founder & CEO of a stealth mode startup Vetavrix AI in the EdTech space, and is based out of Texas. He is also an advisor at PenumbraMactrics. Previously, he worked in product leadership roles at technology companies such as Google, Amazon, and Apple. Sarath graduated from the IGNITE program in entrepreneurship at Stanford Business School, and holds a Master’ degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California Irvine, and a Bachelor’s in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Anna University.

Satish Polisetti

polisetti.satish@gmail.com, polisettisatish@gmail.com University of California, Berkeley MS in Information Management and Systems

Satish is currently the Director, Product Management at Walmart, San Francisco. He holds a Masters’ in Information Management & Systems from the University of California, Berkeley. A Mayfield Fund Fellow, awarded 30 Under 30 by alumni of Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, credited for image-based human verification work in Google patents, started advertising software company that was bought by Walmart.

Saumya

saumya39@gmail.com Kellogg School of Management MBA

Saumya has been a social entrepreneur in India for the past 11 years. Saumya is the co-founder & Chief Program Officer of Kheyti, an agritech nonprofit helping smallholder farmers in India become climate-resilient through protected farming. She currently leads Program Design and has won various awards such as the Common Bond Social Impact Award, Kellogg Social Entrepreneurship Award and Mass Challenge Israel Diamond Award for her work. She is also a Zell Fellow, an Ashoka Emerging Innovator and was also selected as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur in 2019. Prior to Kheyti, Saumya spent three years in the vocational training sector in India through YellowLeaf and B-ABLE. Saumya has done her undergrad from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and has an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

Saurav Ghosal

sauravghosal@gmail.com IIM Ahmedabad MBA

After completing a Bachelors’ degree in Chemical Engineering from D. J. Sanghvi College of Engineering in Mumbai, Saurav completed his Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA)programme from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad in 2008. He subsequently interned with Lumis Partners. Currently, Saurav is working as Head of Commercial and Strategy at APIX based in Singapore.

Saurav Neel Patyal

saurav.neel.patyal@gmail.com Harvard Business School MBA

Saurav is currently the Business Unit Director – Oncology at MSD HumanHealth Asia Pacific, Mumbai. Prior to this, he served as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company in Boston and New York, where he focussed on biopharma and medical technology. In the past, he has served as the Chief of Staff to the MD & CEO of Abbott India Limited, run Commercial Operations for Abbott India Limited’s Nepal business, and been a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company in India. He graduated from the Harvard Business School (with Distinction), received a B.E. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and an M.Sc. in Economics from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani, and was also in the Founding Class of Ashoka University’s Young India Fellowship, where he studied Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Savni Dutt

duttsavni@gmail.com Stanford University LLM

Savni completed her LL.M. in Law, Science & Technology at Stanford Law School in May 2017. After two years as a Partner at one of India’s leading law firms, Saikrishna & Associates, based in Delhi, she has moved to the role of Counsel handling litigation and regulatory affairs at Netflix’s legal team in India. Savni is registered to practice law in India and California.

Sayan Bhattacharya

sayan.bhattacharya198@gmail.com Harvard Law School, Harvard University LLM

Sayan is currently pursuing a Master of Laws (LL.M.) at Harvard Law School and holds a BA- LL.B. (Hons.) from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Prior to joining Harvard, he served as a Judicial Law Clerk to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) at the Supreme Court of India. He is passionate about litigation and dispute resolution and, upon returning to India, intends to practise as an arguing counsel before the constitutional courts. Beyond the law, Sayan is connected with various social impact initiatives. He co-founded the Stronger Kolkata Initiative, a non-profit organisation focused on improving access to education and supporting relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sayan is also a professionally trained tabla player and enjoys sprinting, playing football, and squash.

Shailee Jain

shaileejain1995@gmail.com University of Texas, Austin PhD in Computer Science

Shailee Jain is a computational neuroscientist who applies machine learning to study how the human brain processes language, from the level of single neurons to largescale circuits. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Neurosurgery in the University of California San Francisco. In August 2023, she completed her PhD in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin and previously, was a gold medalist at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka. Her PhD research was awarded the Best Dissertation Award by the Society for the Neurobiology of Language and her collaborative work has been widely featured in the press, including Al Jazeera, The New York Times, BBC, Scientific American, Cold Fusion YouTube channel and NBC news. She was also awarded fellowships by the William Orr Dingwall Foundation and UT Austin to support her PhD. Shailee’s research has been published in top Neuro-AI venues including NeurIPS, ICML, Journal of Neuroscience and Nature Neuroscience. She has organized multiple international symposiums on Neuro-AI and in 2021, was named as an MIT EECS Rising Star. Outside of research, Shailee enjoys biking, reading, gardening and chai.

Sharanya Subramaniam

17.sharanya@gmail.com University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign MS in Mechanical Engineering

Sharanya holds a B.Tech degree in Mechanical Engineering from Veermata Jijabai Technlogical Institute (VJTI), Mumbai, and has worked as a Senior Engineer at the R&D of Bajaj Auto Limited, Pune. She received an MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializing in computational modeling of highspeed re-entry flows. While at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she received the Amelia Earhart Fellowship from Zonta International in 2017 and has gotten a chance to present and published her research at numerous avenues. She is currently a Software Research Engineer/Scientist at Intel Corporation, working on the optimization of photomask designs for Silicon chip manufacturing.

Shashank Gowda

shashankng13@gmail.com Universtity of California Los Angeles MS in Mechanical Engineering

Shashank hold’s a Bachelors’ degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Karnataka Surathkal and a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of California-Los Angeles with a focus on smart energy grids. He is currently a Senior Quantitative Analyst at Nextera Energy, the world’s largest producer of solar and wind energy. He is interested in the intersection of energy and AI, and tackling the global climate crisis.

Shashank Nitundil

nitundil@yahoo.co.in University of Manchester MSc in Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Reconstruction

Shashank was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue MSc in Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Reconstruction from the University of Manchester which he completed with a distinguished achievement award. He is a Quaternary scientist interested in the changes of past climates and its effect on landscape and biodiversity. He is currently pursuing PhD in Physical Geography at the University of Manchester. His ongoing doctoral research aims to reconstruct the palaeo-environmental and palaeo-glacial conditions over the last 15,000 years in high altitude eastern Himalayas. He is also involved in a project studying sand dune activity
in the Thar Desert, as well as its response to palaeomonsoonal regimes. His research involves frequent field trips to collect samples for laboratory analysis and dating, which aligns well with his love to explore and observe nature with a keen interest in birds, butterflies and dragonflies. He has completed B.Tech in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. He has previously worked as a scientist-engineer at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO on various projects in the field of experimental fluid mechanics, propulsion and thermal characterisation.

Shashwata Sinha

f2014573p@alumni.bits-pilani.ac.in University of California San Diego MS in Nano Engineering

Shashwata graduated with distinction from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani in 2018 with a major in Chemical Engineering. Following graduation, she pursued research at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras under the guidance of Prof. Pushpavanam. Her work on the self-assembly of inorganic nano-crystals was selected for presentation at Elsevier’s International Colloids Conference in Sitges, Spain and was awarded second place in the poster-presentation competition at AIChE’s ChemPlus-’19 at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. At University of California, San Diego, she completed MS in Nano Engineering on materials research geared towards semiconductor device fabrication and development. Currently Shashwata is working with The Indus Valley as a Manager, R&D. Previously,she worked as Research Engineer with Saint Gobain, Chennai.

Shefalika

shefalika1994@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Shefalika completed MSc in Economics (2015-16) from London School of Economics and Political Science and subsequently worked as an Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Fellow at the Treasury in Vanuatu (2016-18). She worked as a Senior Analyst at the New Zealand Treasury on macroeconomic and fiscal policy issues (2019-23). She is presently working at the Bank of England as Lead Policy Analyst.

Shenaya Pochkanwalla

shenaya_p@yahoo.com London School of Economics Masters in International Employment Relation and Human Resource Management

Shenaya completed her Masters in International Employment Relations and Human Resource Management from the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). She is currently Global head of talent solutions at Kenvue, the Planned New Consumer Health Company of Johnson & Johnson. Prior to this, she was India Head of the Strategic Planning Group at Johnson & Johnson India, a global, agile, and flexible team that supported strategic priorities by providing HR solutions and partnership to drive business impact. She has led her team in HR Transformation projects in the areas of HR Strategy Enablement (Planning, design, deployment) Change Management, Organization Design and HR Advisory. Additionally, Shenaya is also the Chairperson of the Company PoSH Committee. In her previous organization, The Indian Hotels Co. Ltd. she was responsible for Talent and Performance Management, Leadership Development and Ethics. Shenaya completed her graduation in Psychology from St. Xaviers’ College and obtained a Masters in Organizational Psychology from University of Mumbai. She has won several awards in the field of Human Resource Management including The NHRDN & Prof Ram Charan Young HR Icon Award and the Bombay HR 40 under 40 Award.

Shree Shyamalee Vanmani Ramesh

shyamalee93@gmail.com Johns Hopkins University Masters in Epidemiology

After graduating with a Masters’ in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Shyamalee is currently working as Senior Analytics Engineer at Upstart, San Francisco. Previously, she was with Collective Health focussing on smarter alternative to traditional health plans. She would like to work on abolishing the existing health inequity in our country. Shyamalee enjoys reading, travelling and volunteering.

Shreepad Gunge

shreepadr23@iitk.ac.in University of Delaware PhD in Chemical Engineering

Shreepad is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. He earned his M.Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K) and completed his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Laxminarayan Institute of Technology (LIT), Nagpur in 2022. Prior to graduate school, he gained valuable industrial experience as a Production Engineer at Cairn Oil and Gas, Vedanta Ltd. His research interests lie in heterogeneous catalysis and chemical reaction engineering, with a particular focus on catalytic processes for clean and sustainable fuels. Following his PhD, Shreepad aims to pursue postdoctoral research in advanced catalytic systems and ultimately transition to academia, where he hopes to lead impactful research in catalysis for energy applications. Outside of research, he enjoys swimming and trekking.

Shreeyash Lalit

office@lalitchambers.com; shreeyash.lalit@gmail.com University of Cambridge LLM

Shreeyash is a litigating lawyer from New Delhi. He is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Delhi University and University of Cambridge. For his masters degree at Cambridge, he was awarded with the Cambridge Trust Scholarship, Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship and the JN Tata Scholarship. At Cambridge, he secured the Pegasus Scholarship from Inner Temple and had the opportunity of working with a few barristers’ chambers in London. After returning to India and completing his apprenticeship with a few distinguished senior counsel, he now practises independently at the Supreme Court of India and Delhi High Court. He is also an assistant editor at e-DHCR project. Recently, he was among a few lawyers from India to be awarded with the India-UK Achievers Award by NISAU-UK and the British Council. Outside of work, he is a chess and football enthusiast.

Shreshtha Mishra

shreshtha.mishra2@gmail.com University of Oxford MPhil in Economics

Shreshtha graduated from the University of Oxford with an MPhil in Economics in 2020 (Merit). Prior to this, she completed a Bachelor’s in Economics from Miranda House, University of Delhi (Distinction). She is currently working at Watershed as climate data advisor in London, UK. Previously, she worked with McKinsey & Company as a Climate Specialist. She has also worked with Vivid Economics, an environmental economics consulting firm in London where she worked on Climate Strategy and Growth & Development pillars at the company.

Shrey Verma

shreyverma.2000@gmail.com Stanford University Masters in Mechanical Engineering

Shrey graduated in Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. He has completed his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur(IIT-KGP). In his second year, he changed his department from the Department of Geology and Geophysics to the Department of Mechanical Engineering as he was interested in Robotics-related projects. Shrey is passionate about creating agriculture robots which will lead to upliftment of marginalized farmers in India. His long-term goal is to start a company which will provide employment to youth in the country and aid research at Indian Institute of Technology in robotics field. He likes swimming or playing keyboard in free time.

Shreya Jain

shreyajain69@gmail.com Harvard Law School LLM

Shreya is a Partner in the dispute resolution practice at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, Mumbai (SAM), where she focuses on domestic and international arbitrations. Her experience includes complex arbitrations under the major international arbitration rules (ICSID, ICC, SIAC, LCIA, UNCITRAL, etc.) for a diverse range of clients in industries, such as private equity, energy, commodities, construction, information technology and financial services. She is qualified to practice in India and New York. Shreya is a graduate of the National Law School of India University, where she was awarded a Gold Medal for Best Student Advocate. She completed her LL.M. from Harvard Law School as a Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholar. While at Harvard, Shreya practiced in Boston courts as an accredited mediator and was an editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. After graduating, Shreya worked in the international arbitration team at Cooley LLP, New York and later returned to Mumbai to join SAM. Shreya is currently serving as an Assistant Editor for the Kluwer Arbitration Blog, a regional representative at the Young ICCA and the Secretary of the Harvard Club of Mumbai. She also sits as an arbitrator and is empanelled with institutions such as Singapore International Arbitration Centre and the London Court of International Arbitration.

Shreya Malik

shreya.malik@outlook.com University of Oxford MS in Financial Economics

Shreya is a Managing Director at KKR, a leading global investment firm. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Zenobe and was previously a member of the Board of Directors of Refresco. Prior to joining KKR, Ms. Malik spent over a decade at Partners Group, most recently as senior vice president of Partners Group’s infrastructure team, where she was responsible for originating and executing transactions across Europe. She was previously served on the board of Partners Group’s portfolio companies Gren, Telepass and Greenlink. She began her career as a consultant at boutique infrastructure consultancy firm Oxera. Ms. Malik holds a BA in Statistics and Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and an MSc in Financial Economics from University of Oxford.

Shruti Jagirdar

shruti89@gmail.com Johns Hopkins University MS in International Relations and Economics

Shruti Jagirdar is a Programme and Impact Measurement Officer with World Food Programme (WFP)’s Changing Lives Transformation Fund, a multi-million dollar trust fund strengthening the organization’s ability to address root causes of hunger and food insecurity. Her experience is in research, strategy, advocacy, and monitoring and evaluation to enable stronger programmes . She has been a Policy and Training Manager at J-PAL South Asia, a research network headquartered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and has worked closely with decision makers, donors and implementers to ensure policy is driven by evidence, and effective programmes are scaled up. Shruti has worked at the office of former Lok Sabha MP Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda, at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. and wrote a daily update on politics and economics for Foreign Policy magazine. She currently lives in Rome, Italy.

Shubham Lohiya

shubhlohiya.14@gmail.com Georgia Tech Masters in Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence

Shubham was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Post graduate Scholarship to pursue Masters in Computer Science at Georgia Tech with a Machine Learning Specialization. He is currently working with Adobe as machine learning engineer. He was also a part of the Pathology Dynamics lab at Georgia Tech, where he worked on Information Extraction and Natural Language Processing technologies in the biomedical domain. He previously completed his B.Tech. (Hons.) at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) in 2022 with a Major in Mechanical Engineering and Minors in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. He was ranked 1st in his department and was awarded the Institute Silver Medal. In the long term, he aspires to be engaged in AI research impacting Healthcare or bridging the interaction gap between humans and computers, as a research professional and an entrepreneur. In his free time, he enjoys reading, swimming, hiking, and cooking.

Shubhankar Seth

sethshubhankarmihir@gmail.com Stanford University MS E-IPER (Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources) and MBA

Shubhankar Mihir Seth, a gold-medallist mechanical engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, is currently at Stanford University for his MS E-IPER (Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources) and MBA. He leads Climitra, a biofuels start-up backed by leading VCs like InfoEdge and Theia to decarbonize India’s steel sector. Before moving to the US, he worked for McKinsey & Company, where he drove sustainability for the world’s largest emitters, helping global materials and energy players decarbonize. A passionate entrepreneur, he co-founded S6 LLP to enhance learning outcomes for first generation students and set-up Krishimitra to operationalize his field research and address farmers’ water and energy challenges. Post his Master’s, Shubhankar aims to continue fighting climate change, with a long-term vision of ensuring the voices of vulnerable stakeholders are heard in decision-making processes. A fitness and endurance enthusiast, Shubhankar is known for his balanced approach and deep interdisciplinary understanding of his projects, and is committed to building a more resilient planet.

Siddhant Dhingra

siddhant.chembee@gmail.com University of Oxford DPhil in Organic Chemistry

Siddhant Dhingra is a final-year DPhil candidate in Organic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, working at the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research under Prof. Christopher J. Schofield. His research focuses on 2-oxoglutarate–dependent oxygenases, spanning mechanistic enzymology, protein engineering, structural biology, and directed evolution. Siddhant’s doctoral work has advanced fundamental understanding of the ethylene-forming enzyme (PsEFE) and plant detoxification enzymes such as HIS1/OsHSL1, with applications in biocatalysis, sustainable chemistry, and agricultural biotechnology.
Alongside his research, Siddhant has held several leadership roles at Oxford, serving as President of the MCR at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, where he has contributed to academic community-building, welfare initiatives, and college representation. His interests extend to peptide-based drug discovery and ultra-high-throughput screening technologies using mRNA display, areas he plans to pursue further as an incoming postdoctoral researcher at the National University of Singapore.
Supported by the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation, Siddhant aims to build a multidisciplinary scientific career that integrates enzymology, chemical biology, and translational research to address global challenges in health, sustainability, and biotechnology.

Simran J. Singh

simran86@gmail.com The Wharton School of Business MBA

Simran graduated from the Wharton School of Business in 2015 as a Palmer Scholar, the highest academic achievement at Wharton. His Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) specialised in Entrepreneurship and Non-profit Management. He has also started an initiative called the 22s to provide a platform for men who support women in business. He has a dual degree in Computer Science & Maths from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Simran was hired as Senior Product Manager at VMware out of business school and was the Head of Business Development and Strategy at a fintech called Hyperwallet which was acquired by PayPal. Simran currently is the Head of Financial Institutions at Plaid in San Francisco. Previously, he worked with Pagaya as as Global Head of Revenue.

Smita Vijaykumar

architect.smita@gmail.com Illinois Institute of Technology MS in Architecture

This Jerold Ruth Loebl scholar completed her Master’s in Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2008. While Smita has the honor of being nominated for the Schiff Scholarship, she has the distinction of receiving the women’s architect honorary mention. This was followed by the completion in Green Building Certification LEED (AP) in 2009. She is currently the Director at reNNovate Interiors. A complete -hassle free-end to end interior solution.

Sneh Jagwani

snehjagwani2000@gmail.com Harvard Business School MBA

Sneh completed her BS in Economics degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) in 2021. She is currently pursuing her Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School. She previously worked as an Investment Analyst at A91 Partners and as an Associate Consultant at Bain & Co. Passionate about sustainability, her interest was ignited during a student exchange at the University of Geneva, exploring the unchecked costs of industrialization. This passion fuels her ambition to develop decarbonization strategies and circular economy models. Post MBA, she aims to join McKinsey or Bain’s sustainability practice. Ultimately, she envisions establishing her own fund to invest in scalable, triple-bottom-line ventures. She enjoys organizing and participating in the University cultural events and workshops.”

Sneha Rao

sneharao85@gmail.com Johns Hopkins University MS in Biotechnology

Sneha Rao was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship for a MS in Biotechnology from The Johns Hopkins University. After obtaining her Masters’ degree, Sneha carried out her doctoral research in Neuroscience at Stony Brook University, New York and her postdoctoral research at Columbia University, New York. She now works at Arc Institute, Palo Alto, as a Senior Scientist, building in vitro brain models to research disease mechanisms and therapeutic avenues for neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Sonali Deshpande

d.sonali20@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Robotic Systems Development

Sonali graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2015 with a Master’s degree in Robotic Systems Development. Since then she’s worked on self-driving cars with General Motors, adorable home robots with Mayfield Robotics and is currently working as Staff Robotics software engineer at Relay Robotics in San Francisco. She loves to read, dance and watch animated movies.

Sreeram Reddy Vennam

vennam404@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Computer Science

Sreeram is a recent Computer Science graduate from the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad and is headed to pursue Masters in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. He has worked on advanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning projects with the University of Maryland, Baltimore and Czech Technical University. He has also interned with Google. Post his Masters, he wants to eventually launch a startup focused on efficient AI solutions tailored to India’s needs. He enjoys origami, exercising, and sport climbing.

Sreyashi Sen

sreyashi18@hotmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Sreyashi is an Economist, having completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) respectively. Following her Master’s, she worked at Credit Suisse, London in the Fixed Income Research division. She went on to work in the consulting sector after that as part of Deloitte, India. Sreyashi also earned her PhD in Economics at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES), Stockholm University.

Srujan Penta

srujanpenta254@gmail.com Georgia Institute of Technology Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Srujan is a 4th-year Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on innovating die-to-die interfaces of chiplet systems for AI and HPC applications. During the Ph.D. program, he pursued a minor in Technology Innovation: Generating Economic Results (TI:GER) from the Georgia Tech Scheller School of Business. Srujan was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation scholarship to pursue his graduate studies at Georgia Tech in 2022. Previously, he graduated with a B.E. (Hons.) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, and pursued his undergraduate thesis as a visiting student at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Recently, he was named as one of the fifty global 2024 QUAD Fellows by the Institute of International Education (IIE). As part of the fellowship, he was invited to the White House and the U.S. Department of State in October 2024 to represent India. Beyond his academic pursuits, he mentors students through the Office of Graduate Education and volunteers in the Department of Belonging and Student Support at Georgia Tech.

Srujana Katta

srujana0105@gmail.com University of Oxford Mphil in Development Studies

Srujana was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Mphil in Development Studies from University of Oxford. She has completed her PhD in Information Communication and Social Sciences from University of Oxford. Currently, she is Research co-lead at Oxford university. Alongside, she is also a Information Technology Consultant at Crasfield partners. She has completed her BA (Honours) Economics at Lady Shri Ram College, University
of Delhi and subsequently completed an MPhil Development Studies (2015) and MSc Social Science of the Internet (2019) at the University of Oxford (2019).

Sruthi Dharuman

sruthi.dharuman@gmail.com Harvard Graduate School of Education Ed.M in Education Leadership, Organisations and Entrepreneurship

Sruthi completed her B. Tech in Fashion Technology from Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore in 2019 and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Education Leadership, Organisations and Entrepreneurship at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was the Principal at YUWA School in Ranchi. Her passion lies in transformative
education for marginalized communities. She has worked on projects exploring education technology and AI in education through Prepy-AI with Adra Product Studio and has led initiatives on digital literacy in rural Jharkhand with Vital Voices Global Partnership. Her long-term goal is to establish an organization delivering contextualized, alternative education in the Nilgiris’ tribal belt, while influencing education policy to improve literacy among marginalized girls. Sruthi enjoys reading and playing frisbee.

Subhadra Banda

subhadra.banda@gmail.com Harvard Kennedy School Masters in Public Policy

On graduating in law from NALSAR University with excellent scores, Subhadra worked as a judicial clerk at the Supreme Court of India. While working as a Research Associate at the Centre for Policy Research, Subhadra has also been a Guest Faculty at TERI and a Consultant with the Ford Foundation. She completed her Masters’ in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, on a full tuition fellowship. On coming back, she was a specialist consultant with the Boston Consulting Group on issues of public health and education with the government of Rajasthan and NITI Aayog respectively. She has headed partnerships with Etsy’s India office which is focused on becoming the platform of choice for creative micro and nano entrepreneurs. Currently, she is working as Director and Head, Strategic Partnerships and Growth (Setu by Pine) at Pine labs and also is a part of YouTube Product Partnerships at Google. Previously, she worked as strategic partner manager at Facebook.

Sudeep Tandon

sudeep.tandon@gmail.com Stanford University Masters in Management Science and Engineering

Sudeep Tandon was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation scholarship to pursue a Master’s programme in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He was the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Student Award in 2009. After graduating in March 2009, he joined DHL Consulting in Germany as a Management Consultant. He currently is the Vice President, Global Head of Sales Transformation & Governance at DHL Global Forwarding. He also is a Adjunct Lecturer at Hochschule Fresenius, Germany.

Sudeshna Dasgupta

sudasgupta1992@gmail.com University of California, Berkeley MS in Industrial Engineering

Sudeshna gained a B.Tech degree from National Institute of Technology, Nagpur. After working with Hindustan Unilever Limited as Supply Chain Manager, she joined the University of California, Berkeley to pursue Masters’ Degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. She graduated in May 2017 and currently working with Apple as Manager, Data Analytics Engineering Program Manager. Reading, writing, travelling and photography are what she enjoys. She also holds a ChitraVisharad, a 7 year diploma in fine arts.

Sujith Jose

sujithjose5@gmail.com Universtity of California Los Angeles MS in Electrical Engineering

Sujith is the founder and CEO of Candle AI. Candle’s mission is to use AI to simplify client communication in law firms. Sujith is also the founder of Austin Desi Entrepreneurs, a community of Indian-born entrepreneurs in Austin, TX. He has a BTech from National Institute of Technology Calicut and an MS from University of California- Los Angeles. His hobbies include chess, travelling, and photography.

Sumeet Katariya

sumeetsk@gmail.com University of Wisconsin-Madison PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Sumeet is currently a Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon Search in Palo Alto. A B.Tech in Electronics & Telecommunications from the College of Engineering, Pune, he completed his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research lies in the area of multi-armed bandits and its applications to learning user preferences. He was a post-doctoral researcher at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago.

Supreet Jeloka

supreetjeloka@gmail.com University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Masters in Electrical Engineering

After a B.Tech in Electronics & Communication Engineering from National Institute of Technology Warangal, Supreet successfully defended his PhD thesis in January, 2017 from the University of Michigan. After working as a Staff Research Engineer in Arm, Austin for the last 5 years, he joined Apple in August 2022, as a Circuit Design Engineer.

Surabhi Shastri

shastri.surabhi@gmail.com Columbia Business School MBA

Surabhi completed her Bachelors’ in Computer Engineering from Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, Mumbai University. She advised private healthcare clients at Deloitte Consulting LLP after graduating. Subsequently, her passion for healthcare led her to join the Smoke-free Mumbai Campaign, an initiative of the Tata Cancer Hospital and Bloomberg Philanthropies, as the General Manager. The campaign was instrumental in increasing compliance to the national smoke-free law in Mumbai by over 80%. She completed her Masters’ in Business Administration ( MBA) from Columbia Business School with a focus on Technology and Social Enterprise. She headed the data product and reporting at the music-tech company Saavn, where she built analytical tools for teams and artists and algorithmic playlists. Surabhi is a trained classical singer, a state level handball player and an avid reader. She is currently working at Salesforce as Senior Director of Product, AI. Previously, she worked with SiriusXM as Head of Product, AI Recommendations & Personalization.

Surabhi Shukla

surabhishukla2@gmail.com Universtity of California Los Angeles LLM

Surabhi was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue LLM in Public Interest Law, Gender and Sexuality from University of California- Los Angeles (UCLA). While at UCLA, she interned with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. Thereafter, she worked at the Supreme Court of India before joining Jindal Global Law School as an Assistant Professor of Law and an Assistant Director of the Centre for Health Law, Ethics and Technology for three years. She was awarded the IASSCS- Ford Emerging Scholars’ International Research Fellowship 2014. Through this fellowship, she has conducted the first-ofits- kind study on the experiences of queer students during their school life in India. This project has since won the Jack Collins Social Action Bursary of the Oriel College, Oxford in 2017. She earned her PhD from the University of Oxford, UK in 2022 and is admitted to the Bar in India and New York. She holds a BA-LL.B. (Hons) in Law from National School of Law University, Bengaluru. Currently she is a lecturer in law at the University of Sheffield, UK

Surabhi Talele

surabhi.talele@gmail.com University of Minnesota, Twin Cities MS in Pharmaceutics

Surabhi was awarded the scholarship to pursue MS in Pharmaceutics from the University of Minnesota in 2017. She is currently working as Senior Scientist with Bristol Myers Squibb in New Jersey, USA with the Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics department where she helps guide the first-in-human dose determination for drugs going into clinical trials. She also holds a PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Minnesota and Bachelor in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

Surya Kapoor

suryarajukapoor@gmail.com Georgetown University LLM

Surya Kapoor is currently practising advocate at Chambers of Mr. Surya Kapoor and at the Arbitration Bar of India. He regularly appears before the Supreme Court of India along with other Courts and specializes in International Dispute Resolution, including international investment and commercial arbitrations. Before starting his independent practice, he worked as a Principal Associate in the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) arbitration team of a Delhi based law firm. He had previously worked at the chambers of Mr. L. Nageswara Rao, Senior Advocate (prior to his elevation) and Mr. Jayant K. Mehta, Senior Advocate. After working on several commercial disputes and clerking at the Supreme Court of India, Surya decided to pursue his LL.M. at Georgetown University Law Center in International Arbitration. He has also served as a Judicial Fellow with Judge Charles N. Brower (international arbitrator) in Washington DC after his LL.M. He strives to grow his sphere of influence and make a meaningful contribution through his profession.

Suvrat Chakradeo

suvrat23@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University MS in Computer Science

 A CFA Charter holder, Suvrat was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Post Graduate Scholarship in the year 2005 for pursuing his Masters’ in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). After graduating in 2007, Suvrat joined Citadel Investment Group in Chicago as a Quantitative Developer. He completed his MBA in Analytic Finance, Econometrics & Statistics, Managerial and Organizational Behavior from the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. In 2019, he joined LSV Asset Management in Chicago as a Systems Analyst and currently serves as a Partner at the firm.

Swapnil Mane

im.smane19@gmail.com University of Bristol Ms in Robotics

Swapnil is currently a Doctoral Researcher MBZUAI (Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence) Designing and developing robotic systems that support sustainable farming and food security. Previuously, he was engaged in pioneering research in agriculture robotics as a founding engineer in a young startup on revolutionizing agricultural practices in the United Kingdom. He has successfully completed his Master’s degree in Robotics from the University of Bristol. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Instrumentation and control engineering from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune. Driven by a profound passion for leveraging technology to revolutionize the agricultural landscape in India, Swapnil is dedicated to minimizing human intervention in farming processes. In coming years, Swapnil is determined to pursue a PhD in Agri-Robotics, with the ambition of establishing a pioneering research lab in India. This lab will serve as a catalyst for driving innovation in agriculture through the integration of cutting-edge robotics and automation systems. Swapnil boasts an impressive track record, having clinched victories at various national and international hackathons and project competitions. Additionally, he holds multiple patents and has been recognized as the IEEE Pune section Research Person of the Year for the year 2021. He remains actively engaged in social work and mentoring initiatives, reflecting his commitment to giving back to society.

Tansi Fotedar

tansi.ftsrs@gmail.com University of Oxford Bachelor of Civil Law

Tansi Fotedar graduated from National Law University, Delhi in 2022 as a triple gold medalist, after which she joined the chambers of Mr. Nakul Dewan, Senior Advocate Supreme Court of India and King’s Counsel. She appeared in international arbitration trials and litigations involving multiple systems of law, landmark Constitution Bench cases on arbitration and the ongoing constitutional challenge to the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act 2021 before the Supreme Court of India. Her experiences demonstrated the impact of strategic litigation and the importance of diverse international perspectives in developing law. In the long term, she aims to combine her multi-jurisdictional academic and professional experience to set up her own practice, and eventually transition to roles that allow her to directly shape Indian policy and legislation. To this end, she is now reading for the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) at the University of Oxford. Outside of the law, Tansi enjoys running, sports, sampling new restaurants and perfecting her iced coffee recipe.

Tejas Yadav

ytejas@gmail.com University of Oxford MSc in Biology (Integrative Bioscience)

Tejas Yadav was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue a MSc in Biology (Integrative Bioscience) from the University of Oxford, UK. He completed his PhD program in Molecular Biology from Weill Graduate School of Cornell University, New York, USA in 2016. He carried out his doctoral thesis research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, New York. In 2017, he joined Institut Curie, Paris as a postdoctoral researcher. Currently, he is working as Scientific Innovation Project Manager at Institut Carnot CALYM. Previously, he worked as Mental Healthcare digital services coordinator at Rainbow mind in London.

Treta Purohit

treta.purohit@gmail.com Johns Hopkins University Masters in Public Health

Treta completed her Masters’ in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University. She then pursued an MD in Internal Medicine from the New York Medical College, followed by a fellowship in Gastroenterology. During her training she received various accolades for teaching and research and is now a well cited author. She is currently the Executive Medical Director of Oshi Health and President of San Jose Gastroenterology. She is also Advisory board member at Provation and limited partner at Scrub Capital. She is a busy clinician in the community, helping solve and prevent gastrointestinal issues. She is also a medical advisor for a health care start up, BigDieta. The start up aims to use data analytics and machine learning to help people with chronic GI issues. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and enjoys traveling, hiking and Netflix! She is looking forward to connecting with the future members of the Narotam Sekhsaria family, especially those who end up in San Francisco Bay area.

Tushar Parashar

tush3ume@gmail.com, parashartushar@yahoo.com University of Cornell MSc in Mathematics

Tushar currently works as an Associate at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett LLP in United States. He finished his undergraduate studies in India from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee; Masters’ degree in Mathematics from Cornell and a JD-MBA from Northwestern University in Chicago. In his free time, Tushar likes to play golf and tennis and explore the Houston food scene.

Unnati Akhouri

unnatiakhouri@yahoo.co.in, uja5020@psu.edu University of Oxford MSc in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics

Unnati was awarded Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue an MSc in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics from Oxford University. After graduating, she briefly worked as a science communicator at Cactus Communications where she pursued her desire to decipher current research and share them with the world in creative and curious ways. Unnati is currently working as Product Solutions Physicist at Quantum Machines. She has completed her PhD. in high energy theoretical physics as a Mildred Dresselhaus fellow at Penn State University to delve deeper into the mysteries of the universe, in particular, open quantum systems applied to the early universe and extreme systems like black holes. She is also the President of Physics and Astronomy for Women+ at the University. She graduated from Miranda House College of Delhi University with a Bsc in Physics. Unnati has multiple educational films that are uploaded on YouTube and Physics-comics (Physics) on her website – “Fatal Physics”. In the future, she hopes to contribute to the field of fundamental science as well as education; to use her knowledge and excitement to impart the same in others.

Unni Velachery

unni.alm@gmail.com Indian School of Business MBA

Unni is a management graduate from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. After completing his postgraduate programme in Marketing, he joined Johnson & Johnson Medical India Ltd. as a Regional Sales Manager. Currently, Unni is the Sr. Director & Business Unit Lead -Orthopedics India at Johnson & Johnson MedTech in Mumbai.

Utkarsh Saxena

saxena.utkarsh@gmail.com Harvard Law School MPA in International Development

Utkarsh was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID). He is the co-founder of Adalat AI, a legaltech non-profit building technology solutions for district courts in India and Africa to support courts reduce delays and backlogs. He also holds a BA Economics and LL.B. from the University of Delhi, an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, and is completing a PhD in public policy from the University of Oxford. Before graduate school, Utkarsh practised law before the Supreme Court of India and worked as a Consultant to the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, the World Bank, and the Boston Consulting Group.

Utkarsh Yadav

utkarsh_yadav@berkeley.edu utkarshyadav100797@gmail.com University of California, Berkeley MS in Structural Engineering

Utkarsh completed his undergraduate studies in Civil Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Masters’ in Structural Engineering at the University of California Berkeley. Currently, he is working as a Project Consultant with Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH) in San Francisco. Utkarsh was a visiting researcher at Purdue University and worked with the research group on steel-concrete composites. He loves reading fiction, autobiographies, historical accounts and news snippets. A fitness enthusiast, he has won several medals in aquatics and is also a regular runner.

Uttara Gharpure

uttarag@gmail.com Harvard Kennedy School MPA in International Development

Uttara has led the category team at Supr Daily – a Swiggy backed grocery delivery startup based out of Bangalore. She is a former Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Company – where she worked with leaders in the technology, healthcare and development sectors. Uttara returned to India after completing her Masters’ in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2015. Passionate about public and social sector work globally, she has previously worked in urban development, education and health financing with the Fitchburg City Government (USA), Instiglio (Colombia), the Public Health Foundation (India) and Clinton Health Access Initiative (Malawi). Currently, she is the Head of Enterprise Operations at Stepful in New York.

Vaibhav Chidrewar

vaibhav.chidrewar@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Electrical Engineering

Vaibhav has completed his BE in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Pune Institute of Computer Technology College, University of Pune. After his Bachelors’ he has worked with Cisco and also started his own startup. After graduating from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering, he worked at Citrix Systems, USA as a software engineer. Currently, he is working with Google as a Staff Software Engineer, Google Classroom

Vaibhav Nangia

vaybhuv@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Mechanical Engineering

Vaibhav has completed his BE in Mechanical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College University of Technology, Chandigarh. He graduated with an MS in Mechanical Engineering degree with a specialization in Mechatronics from Stanford University. He is currently working with Waymo as a Staff Systems Engineer & Technical Lead.

Varun Srivastava

varunsrivastava.v@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Electrical Engineering

Varun completed his B.Tech Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Varun is currently working with Pulsar as Director of Technology at Florida, USA. He worked as an AI researcher with Stanford University. His aim is to obtain a Doctoral degree and do state of the art research in the following subfields of Electrical Engineering i.e. information theory and deep learning, in a way that meaningfully impacts human lives. He has been a recipient of the Merit Award for all semesters at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and the
Qualcomm Research Innovation Fellowship.

Vasudha Khare

khare.vas@gmail.com Kellogg School of Management MBA with MS in Innovation Design

Vasudha has compeleted Master of Business Administration (MBA), Artificial Intelligence (joint MBA and AI degree) from Kellogg School of Management. An Electronics and Communication Engineer from Netaji Subhash University of Technology, Delhi. Vasudha currently working with Confluent as Product manager. Previously, Vasudha worked at Microsoft, leading Artificial Intelligence projects for clients across India. Thereafter, she joined Wadhwani Institute of Artificial Intelligence, where she built AI products for farmers and public health workers. She aspires to start a social-enterprise and build technology solutions to uplift the underserved populations, help them make data-driven decisions, thereby increasing their incomes. Vasudha is also a certified meditation and yoga instructor, trained dancer, and enjoys trekking and playing the ukulele.

Vatsal

vatsal1005@gmail.com University of Cambridge Master of Advanced Study (MASt) in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics

Vatsal graduated with a dual degree (BS-MS) in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B). He is now at the University of Cambridge to pursue a Master of Advanced Study in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. Over the past few years, he conducted research in theoretical physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, where he developed a deep interest in mathematical physics and chose to pursue it further. He has presented collaborative work at leading conferences, including Strings 2023, String-Math 2024, and Strings 2025. He has already published a paper in theoretical high-energy physics, with several more in progress. Vatsal’s long-term goal is to become an independent researcher and join the faculty at a leading research institute in India. In his spare time, he enjoys reading non-fiction—both academic and accessible—on topics such as history, politics, sociology, and anthropology, and occasionally engages in creative writing.

Veena Avadhani

veenashankaravadhani@students.iisertirupati.ac.in University of California - Berkeley PhD in Chemistry

Veena is currently a fully-funded PhD scholar in the Department of Chemistryat the University of California, Berkeley, where she also works as an instructor for undergraduate students. She completed her dual degree (BS-MS) in Science in 2021 from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Tirupati. As an undergraduate, she has been a recipient of DST-INSPIRE-SHE scholarship, Institute Silver Medal, and numerous summer research fellowship awards for academic excellence. During her stint as an intern and a Master’s student, she published her research work in multiple international journals. Veena intends to develop mass spectrometry-based analytical methods for versatile biomedical applications. She aspires to be an academician and start her own research lab in India post her PhD program. She enjoys singing, dancing, watching movies, and playing badminton in her free time.

Veena Shirsath

veenavshirsath@gmail.com Duke University MS in Economics and Computation

Veena Shirsath is in the MS in Economics and Computation program at Duke University, where she studies the intersection of data science, economics, and energy systems. Her research focuses on smart grids, energy access, and supporting clean energy transitions in emerging economies. Veena has worked on projects analyzing utility data for effective demand-side management, residential cooling demand and, load characteristics. She interned at multiple SaaS-based startup working on energy and urbanization and led several student initiatives on climate and energy. She is passionate about applying quantitative tools and interdisciplinary collaboration to advance sustainable and equitable energy solutions. In her leisure time, Veena enjoys immersing herself in music and exploring the outdoors through long treks. Her love for reading fuels her continuous quest for knowledge and personal growth.

Vidul Goenka

goenkavidul@gmail.com Imperial College London MSc in Biomedical Engineering

Vidul completed his MSc in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College London. He is currently working as a research assistant at bit.bio in the United Kingdom. He graduated with B.Tech in Biotechnology from Vellore Institute of Technology and has interned at Viya Enterprise as an Executive Assistant. Going forward, he would like to work on tissue engineered organs and later have his own research group or organization that pioneers labgrown organ synthesis. He enjoys manga comics and Marvel comics. He plays basketball, cricket and badminton.

Vidushi Vashishth

vidushivashishth96@gmail.com Georgia Tech, Atlanta MS in Computer Science

Vidushi graduated from Georgia Tech with an MS in Computer Science in 2023. She has a BE degree from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi. She has worked in the capacity of a software engineer for big tech companies like Samsung, and Adobe, and is currently working for Google’s cloud team in Seattle as ML Software Engineer. She is also working part time as Research assistant at SAIL. Vidushi has also actively contributed to academic research in the areas of Applied Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Systems ML. Her Master’s research work on Mixed-Initiative Co-creativity systems won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Computational Creativity. When not working, you can find Vidushi buried in a sci-fi novel, taking skiing lessons on Crystal Mountain, or chilling with her friends over a cup of chai!

Vidya Sukumar

sukumar.vidya@gmail.com Georgia Institute of Technology MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering

BE in Instrumentation & Control from the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology at Delhi, Vidya went on to complete a Masters’ Programme in Electrical & Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Vidya joined Luton Electronics as a Senior Project Electrical Engineer, and worked there for 5 years. Since then, she moved to Apple in the Hardware Test Engineering group as a System Design Engineer, and then an Engineering Manager. Most recently, she has taken a role as a Member of the technical staff at Open AI.

Viekash Vinoth Kumar

vkviekash.nitt@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University Master of Science in Robotics

Viekash is currently a Machine Learning Engineer at AWS-Amazon in the Bay Area, California (Silicon Valley). He previously pursued a Master’s degree in Robotics from the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute. His unwavering commitment to solving complex real-world Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered automation challenges is coupled with a strong desire to democratize affordable and accessible technology. With a strong academic background, prestigious accolades, over four years of extensive hands-on experience developing industry-relevant solutions across computer vision, deep learning, and machine learning under esteemed global sponsorships, and more than ten publications, he brings both technical depth and practical impact. Alongside his professional work, he has demonstrated strong soft skills through extracurricular involvement and volunteering. Outside of work, he enjoys reading, chess, fitness, athletics, trekking, and cycling.

Vignesh Sundaresh

vigneshps@gmail.com Massachusetts Institute of Technology Masters in Computation for Design and Optimization

Vignesh completed his Masters’ in Computation for Design and Optimization from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. He joined RGM Advisors LLC after completing the course in 2009. He worked as a Quantitative Researcher responsible for developing high frequency trading algorithms. After working with RGM for a little over 7 years, he worked at Graham Capital Management a hedge fund based in CT working on short term alpha strategies for 3 years. He currently works as Senior Execution Quant at Millennium Partners, New York City, USA.

Vikram Khanna

vkhanna3011@gmail.com University of California, Santa Barbara PhD in Chemical Engineering

Vikram is currently a Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group. He is working in the Energy practice area on Climate & Sustainability—unlocking the potential of BCG’s clients who are advancing the world. Before joining BCG, Vikram received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara where he developed digital work flows and toolkits for crystal engineering—leveraging atomistic simulations—in the pharmaceutical space. Outside of research, Vikram got up to speed in business via completing a certification in Technology Management at UCSB and successfully completing a consulting project for the Scientific Advisory Board of Shell along with his PhD advisor, Prof. Michael F. Doherty, on carbon capture. Vikram’s foundation is his Bachelors’ degree in Chemical Engineering from Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai (formerly UDCT). Outside of work, Vikram loves to spend time: i) with his friends over games and food, ii) on video calls with his family and loved ones, and iii) drone flying (his latest hobby).

Vikram Srinivas

iam.vikram.srinivas@gmail.com Harvard Kennedy School MPA in International Development

Vikram is from Bangalore and holds a Masters’ in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard University, and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He currently lives in Delhi and is exploring ways to be active in politics. He is particularly interested in ways to build social and economic systems which enable people to flourish. Earlier, he has worked with the Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi and the Boston Consulting Group in Washington D.C.. Vikram is a public transport enthusiast and tries to cycle everywhere. He reads a lot and is trying to read more books in Indian languages.

Vikranta Barsay

vikranta.barsay111@gmail.com University of Pennsylvania, Carey Law School, Philadelphia Master of Law (LLM), Science & Technology

Vikranta Barsay is a 2025 BA- LL.B. graduate with Economics honors from the National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam. He also holds a B.Tech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology (2018 Batch). Vikranta is now headed for his LL.M. at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School in the concentration of Intellectual Property and Technology Law. He previously worked with Reliance Industries Limited and General Motors TCI-India. Throughout law school, he interned at several reputed law firms, in-house chambers, think tanks, and law journals. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief for several national peer-reviewed legal journals. He is passionate about the intersection of law, operations, and technology, and aspires to work with law firms and policy institutions in the United States, eventually transitioning into an in-house counsel role. His interest lies in topics like business law, legal operations, technology law, and intellectual property. A chess and badminton enthusiast, he also enjoys photography and watching documentaries.

Vinayak Iyer

vinayakiyer44@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Following an MSc in Economics at the London School of Economics, Vinayak spent a year producing research on emerging markets in the macroeconomic research division at Goldman Sachs. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Economics at the Barcelona School of Economics with the aim of becoming a policy advisor focusing on employment generation, sustainable growth and financial stability. Vinayak enjoys playing cricket, reading fiction and bird watching in his spare time.

Vinod Kumar Ramchandran

vinodkumarhere@yahoo.co.in University of Wisconsin-Madison MS in Electrical Engineering

Vinod is currently Head of Commerce AI, Google Cloud in California, USA. He was previously the Founder and CEO of Big Sur AI. He has also worked as a VP of Product Management at Affirm, San Francisco. He is a B.Tech graduate in Instrumentation Engineering from Anna University and completed an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin- Madison with a distinguished graduate fellowship. He completed his Masters’ in Business Administration (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 2010. His prior work experience is with Hewlett-Packard and Google.

Vishakha Singla

vishakhasingla222@gmail.com London School of Economics MSc in Economics

Vishakha is an economics graduate from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and is currently pursuing Masters in Economics from London School of Economics. During her undergraduate studies, she completed a group project investigating the sunk cost fallacy in educational expenditure, which deepened her interest in behavioral and policy-oriented research. Her long-term goal is to work with global organizations like J-PAL or the World Bank and eventually contribute to academia and policy formulation to address structural and social inequities through data-driven insights. An avid painter and swimmer, Vishakha also enjoys reading novels.

Vishesh Vikram Singh

visheshvikramsingh@gmail.com University of California, Berkeley MS in Civil Engineering

Vishesh was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation Scholarship to pursue Masters in Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He has completed his PhD on the topic of a data-driven approach to on-site construction. Currently, he is a Co-founder & Head of Product at Active Estimating in USA. His research is at the intersection of construction project management, applied data science, and operation science. Outside work, he has interests in photography, filmmaking, and exploring places and knowledge. He has completed his Bachelors’ from Thapar University in Civil Engineering and then worked at Larsen & Toubro for two years.

Vishnu Prasad

vishnuprasad89@gmail.com Massachusetts Institute of Technology MS in City Planning and International Development

Vishnu Prasad is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has worked with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) on strengthening the housing, land, and property rights of stateless Rohingya communities in Myanmar. He has previously engaged with the Urban Research and Development Institute (URDI) and UN-Habitat based in Yangon, Myanmar. Before switching to urban planning, Vishnu worked on issues of financial sector regulation and social security for the unorganized sector at the IFMR Finance Foundation. He holds a Masters’ degree in City Planning and International Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Integrated Masters’ degree in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

Vrinda Sharma

1998vrindasharma@gmail.com Paris School of Economics Masters' in Public Policy and Development

Vrinda Sharma is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Paris School of Economics. She holds a Master’s degree in Applied Economics with a specialization in Public Policy and Development from the Paris School of Economics, for which she was awarded the NSF scholarship in 2020, and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. Before starting her PhD, Vrinda worked as a consultant with the World Bank for three years and as a pre-doctoral researcher at École Polytechnique. Her research focuses on the economics of water and climate change, examining how environmental degradation, particularly changes in water quality, affects households and local economies in developing countries.

Yash Bhati

yash.bhati@outlook.com Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University MBA

Yash Bhati, is a B.Tech Civil Engineering gold medallist from Amity School of Engineering and Technology, Amity University, Noida, and is now pursuing Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University . Previously, he worked as a Senior Product Manager at GoKwik Commerce Solutions Private Limited. Prior to this role, he worked with a startup called Atom, bringing his total work experience to four years. He actively volunteered for 2 years with Womenite, a grassroots organization addressing gender issues during his college time as well. After completing his Masters, Yash plans to work in the US to develop his startup idea and gain more experience. His long-term goal is to establish a B2B fintech company focused on simplifying finance and compliance, particularly in cross-border operations. An avid reader, Yash enjoys expanding his knowledge through reading and has a personal library of over 90 books.

Yash Gupta

yashgupta1427@gmail.com Carnegie Mellon University Masters in Computer Science and Machine Learning

Yash is currently working as a Research Developer at Headlands Technologies. He recently graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Masters in Machine Learning (MSML) where the department’s strong research culture allowed him to explore Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) domains in depth. He earlier completed his B.Tech Computer Science with an AI Minor student at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He is currently working towards making learning systems more fair & robust and also applying machine learning in the financial domain. During high school, he was a recipient of the Bronze medal in the Asian Physics Olympiad and a Gold Medal in the International Junior Science Olympiad.

Yash Malviya

yashmalviya94@gmail.com Stanford University MS in Electrical Engineering

Yash graduated from Stanford University with a Masters’ in Electrical Engineering. He is currently working with Apple Inc., Cupertino California as a Power Modelling Engineer. His work focuses on optimizing power for digitally designed sub-blocks in Apple’s chips.

Yashaswini Shekhawat

vasvi.bhishi@gmail.com University of Bonn,Germany MSc in Economics

Yashaswini was awarded the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation scholarship to pursue Msc Economics at the University of Bonn. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Economics at New York University. She is an economics graduate from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. Her primary interests lie in development economics and political economy; she is specifically interested in studying the intersection between social networks, policy and entrepreneurship in developing countries.