ACM India Council

Arkaprava Basu of IISc has received the ACM India Early Career Researcher Award for 2024 "for creative and impactful contributions towards efficient memory management for GPUs and CPUs through innovations spanning the software and hardware stacks." Honorable Mention goes to Dr. Sayan Ranu of IIT Delhi for “pioneering contributions to graph machine learning, advancing large-scale combinatorial optimization on network data with transformative applications in pollution monitoring, equitable gig economy solutions, and scientific discovery.”

Priyanka Golia is the recipient of ACM India 2024 Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation titled "Functional Synthesis via Formal Methods and Machine Learning." Priyanka’s dissertation combines ideas from many areas from which she built a solver, Manthan, for synthesis of Boolean functions. Honorable Mention for 2024 goes to Abhijeet Awasthi for his dissertation titled "Learning Language Processing Models With Limited Labeled Data."

Prof. Hemangee Kapoor from IIT Guwahati is the recipient of the ACM India Outstanding Contributions in Computing by a Woman (OCCW) award for 2024. She is being recognized “for her contributions to emerging nonvolatile memory technologies and her active leadership and involvement in the mentoring of women in the field.” Kapoor is a full Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Guwahati. She received her Masters degree from IIT Bombay in 2000 and her PhD from the London South Bank University, UK in 2004.

Prof. Meenakshi D'Souza of IIIT Bangalore as the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution for to Computing Education (OCCE) award for 2024. D'Souza is being recognized "for her exceptional contributions to computing education at multiple levels -- through online courses for software education, faculty development programmes, in the ACM India Teaching Partnership Program, in CSpathshala, and also via gender diversity initiatives".

Meenakshi was elected as President of the ACM India Council for the term July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2026. She is a Professor and the Head of the Department of Computer Science at IIIT-Bangalore where she teaches a variety of courses including Automata Theory and Computability, Algorithms, Software Testing and Graph Theory. Meenakshi's Software Testing course offered on the NPTEL platform since 2017 and more than 57000 learners have enrolled for this course over these years. Her primary research interests are on Formal Methods and Software Testing focusing on embedded safety critical applications, she has been working on several sponsored projects in this area. Meenakshi did her PhD from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai and worked for Honeywell, Bangalore, prior to joining IIIT-Bangalore.

Meenakshi has been serving on the ACM India Council since 2018 and was the Secretary cum Treasurer of ACM India from July 2022 to June 2024. During her tenure, Meenakshi was on the Steering Committees of ARCS, CTiS and Annual Event, has co-organized three summer schools, two Grad Cohort events, and has worked on several operational aspects of ACM India.

Chair, ACM India Women Committee | PICT, Pune

Dr. Geetanjali is a distinguished academic and a long-standing champion for women in Computing. She brings with her over two decades of academic excellence and leadership. Currently serving as an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT), she has held several leadership roles at the institute, including her recent tenure as Head of the Department, and currently contributes to student success as the Joint Training & Placement Officer. A respected voice in academic circles, she has served on the Board of Studies in Computer Engineering and in the Vocational Studies Board at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) and as an advisory board member with several institutions.

Dr. Geetanjali has been an active ACM India volunteer for over a decade, contributing significantly in various capacities. She has served as the Secretary-cum-Treasurer of the ACM India-W Committee, Chapter Summit Chair of ACM India, Chair of the ACM-W Pune Professional Chapter, and member of ACM India's Internal Engagement Committee. Her leadership has been instrumental in the success of the PICT ACM Student Chapter, which has received multiple ACM India Outstanding Chapter Awards and the prestigious ACM Global Outstanding Website Award.

She is a Senior Member of both ACM and IEEE, with deep research interests in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Data Science, Generative AI, and innovations in education.

As Chair of ACM India-W, Dr. Geetanjali is committed to fostering inclusive growth, building stronger mentorship networks, and empowering women in computing across all stages of academia and industry.