Dr. Venkata N. Padmanabhan
Award Year: 2018 | Degree Year: 1993
Dr. Venkata N. Padmanabhan received a Bachelor of Technology Degree in Computer Science and Engineering in the year 1993 from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, followed by Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy from University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Padmanabhan is currently the Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India. He is a global thought leader in networked and mobile computer systems research. His research has led to influential systems (often anticipating technology trends years in advance), highly-cited papers, 50 U.S. issued patents, dissertation awards for students mentored by him, technology transfer to Microsoft’s products, and industry-wide impact.
A few among Dr. Padmanabhan’s notable inventions are (a) RADAR, the first Radio Frequency (RF) LAN based system for indoor positioning, which has led to commercial offerings and a highly-cited paper that won the inaugural ACM SIGMOBILE Test-of-Time Paper Award in 2016; (b) persistent connections and pipelining for HTTP, ideas that were adopted in the HTTP/1.1 global Internet standard in 1996; (c) the ProbeGap wireless bandwidth estimation technique, which has been part of Microsoft Windows over the past 10+ years, and (d) Nericell, the first smart phone-based system for driving and traffic monitoring, which has spurred much follow-on work in academia and start-ups.
Dr. Padmanabhan received the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 2016, and is a Fellow of the INAE, ACM, and IEEE. He serves in leadership roles in various ACM and IEEE activities, and was instrumental in bringing the flagship ACM SIGCOMM conference to India for the first time ever in the year 2010, when he served as General Co-Chair.
In honouring Dr. Venkata N. Padmanabhan, IIT Delhi recognizes his outstanding contributions to the field of Teaching and Research. Through his contributions and achievements, Dr. Venkata N. Padmanabhan has brought glory to the Institute.
