KnowDis AI Founder Saurabh Singal Announces Recipients of the KnowDis Machine Learning Awards

VMPL
New Delhi [India], December 26: KnowDis AI, an AI company founded by IIT Delhi CS&E BTech alumnus Saurabh Singal, is proud to announce Mitesh Khapra and Anoop Kunchukuttan as the recipients of the prestigious KnowDis Machine Learning Award for 2024. Their remarkable contributions to AI, particularly in the domains of Indian language processing and AI applications in various industries, are reshaping the landscape of technology in India and beyond. Anoop Kunchukuttan completed his PhD in 2018 at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay, under the guidance of Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya at the Center for Indian Language Technology, where his research focused on machine translation and transliteration between related languages. Mitesh M. Khapra also conducted his research under Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya at IIT Bombay, with expertise in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning, further contributing to advancements in AI.
Dr Anoop Kunchukuttan, a Principal Applied Researcher in the Microsoft Machine Translation team and co-lead of AI4Bharat, is recognised for his groundbreaking contributions to AI and Indian language NLP. His work focuses on multilingual learning, machine translation, and instruction tuning of large language models (LLMs), addressing the unique challenges of India's diverse linguistic landscape.
Dr. Kunchukuttan has been instrumental in building large-scale tools and resources such as the Indic NLP Library, IndicTrans, Samanantar Corpus, and IndicLLMSuite. These initiatives have bridged critical gaps in Indian language NLP, enabling AI systems to understand and process regional languages in a more effective way. His efforts have significantly advanced AI applications for machine translation, transliteration, and sentiment analysis, fostering inclusivity and accessibility for millions of Indian language speakers.
Dr Mitesh M. Khapra is an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras. He leads research in natural language processing (NLP) and deep learning, focusing on Indian languages. As part of the AI4Bharat initiative, Dr Khapra has developed scalable models and tools to bridge the linguistic divide in AI, enabling natural communication in India's diverse multilingual landscape.
His work has laid the groundwork for more inclusive AI applications, ensuring that technology serves speakers of India's regional languages. Beyond academia, Dr. Khapra advocates for robust and scalable AI solutions that benefit industries such as healthcare, education, and e-commerce.
KnowDis Machine Learning Award 2023 Recipients: Dr Sayan Ranu and Dr N.M. Anoop Krishnan
The recipients of the 2023 KnowDis Machine Learning Award were Dr Sayan Ranu and Dr N.M. Anoop Krishnan for their outstanding contributions to AI research.

Dr Sayan Ranu is an Associate Professor at IIT Delhi, holding the prestigious Nick McKeown Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence. His research focuses on machine learning, data mining, and graph-based techniques, with significant applications in healthcare and biomedical research. His pioneering work on graph data mining has enabled a better understanding of complex biological systems and molecular interactions, which has profound implications for drug discovery and disease modeling.
Dr. Ranu has received several prestigious awards, including the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Associate Fellowship (2023) and the Mrs. Veena Arora Early Career Faculty Research Award of IIT Delhi (2023). He has been recognised for his research excellence at conferences like WSDM and SIGMOD, receiving Best Paper awards and Outstanding Reviewer Awards. With five US patents to his name, Dr. Ranu continues to drive advances in AI for healthcare, solidifying his position as a leader in AI-driven solutions for biomedical applications.
Dr N.M. Anoop Krishnan, an Associate Professor at IIT Delhi's Department of Civil Engineering, is a leader in the application of machine learning for materials discovery and process optimisation in civil engineering. Dr. Krishnan has been a trailblazer in developing AI technologies that improve efficiency, sustainability, and innovation in the civil engineering industry.
His work focuses on using AI to optimise processes and create sustainable solutions for modern engineering challenges. His research contributions extend to over 100 publications and numerous patents that are revolutionising the way materials science is approached.
Dr. Krishnan's achievements have earned him several prestigious awards, including the Google Research Scholar Award in 2023 and the W.A. Weyl International Glass Science Award in 2022. His work significantly impacts the global materials science community, advancing AI-based technologies for better engineering solutions.
Previous Recipients of the KnowDis Machine Learning Award
The KnowDis Machine Learning Award has recognised outstanding AI researchers since its inception, celebrating their contributions to various fields, including natural language processing, machine learning, and computational biology. Previous recipients of the award include Prof Mausam and Dr Manik Verma (2019), Dr Parag Singla (2020), Dr Partha Talukdar (2021) and Prof Pushpak Bhattacharya (2022).

These distinguished researchers have made invaluable contributions to machine learning, shaping the future of AI applications in diverse domains.
About KnowDis AI
KnowDis AI is an innovative AI startup founded by Saurabh Singal, a former hedge fund manager and an alumnus of IIT Delhi and Carnegie Mellon University. KnowDis is well known for its world-beating NLP products, including recommendation systems and machine translation software. KnowDis AI models power IndiaMART's B2B platform. KnowDis is also involved in drug discovery using Artificial Intelligence. Find out more at: https://www.knowdis.ai/
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