Indian-American IBM scientist bags inventor of the year award for improving AI capabilities

PTI, May 26, 2020, 9:10 AM IST

Washington: Prolific Indian-American inventor Rajiv Joshi has bagged the prestigious Inventor of the Year award in recognition of his pioneering work in advancing the electronic industry and improving artificial intelligence capabilities.

Dr. Joshi, who is a master inventor with more than 250 patented inventions in the US, works at the IBM Thomson Watson Research Center in New York.

He was presented with the prestigious annual award by the New York Intellectual Property Law Association early this month during a virtual awards ceremony.

An IIT Mumbai alumnus, Joshi has an MS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a PhD in mechanical/electrical engineering from Columbia University, New York.

His invention span from novel interconnects structures and processes for more scaling, machine learning techniques for predictive failure analytics, high bandwidth, high performance, and low power integrated circuits and memories and their usage in hardware accelerators, meant for artificial intelligence applications.

Many of these structures exist in processors, supercomputers, laptops, smartphones, handheld and variable gadgets, and many other electronic items. His innovations have advanced day-to-day life, global communication, health sciences, and medical fields impacting the world.

“Necessity and curiosity inspire me,” Dr. Joshi told PTI in a recent interview, adding that the identification of a problem and providing out of the box solution as well as observe and think help him immensely to generate ideas.

Joshi said that while growing up, his parents always told him stories about great, renowned inventors like Guglielmo Marconi, Madame Curie, Right Brothers, James watt, Alexander Bell, Thomas Edison, and other great stalwarts. Their success stories and inventions really shaped his thought process and helped develop an interest in science and technology.

In his acceptance speech, Dr. Joshi said that the cloud, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing not only remain the buzzwords, but their utility, widespread usage is advancing with leaps and bounds.

All these areas are very exciting and I have been dabbling further in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, he said.

Quantum computing, which has offered tremendous opportunities, also faces challenges, he noted, adding that he is involved in advancing technology, improving memory structures and solutions and their usage in AI and contributing to quantum computing to advance the science.