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 | Associate Professor, Ganpat University

ACM-W India Committee Chair Rutvi Shah has been volunteering ACMI-W since 2015, and has been instrumental in organizing events, conferences, workshops, and seminars focused on women in computing. She has served as Web Chair for the Ahmedabad Professional Chapter and as Secretary cum Treasurer on the ACMI-W Committee from 2021-23.

She has been in academics for more than two decades and is currently working as Associate Professor at department of Computing Studies, Ganpat University, Gujarat, teaching at UG and PG Computer Applications Courses. She holds a PhD in Computer Science with research area focused on automated systems for medical image processing. She has undertaken research endeavors encompassing the realms of AI/ML, Data Science and their affiliated areas. She hosts sessions for trending research areas, is on the board of many reputed national and international conferences and serving as a reviewer for esteemed journals such as IEEE, Scopus, and Springer, she actively contributes to the advancement of research in computing.

She believes that by leveraging her capabilities in information retrieval, analysis, and communication, she can be pivotal in generating strategic guidance in bridging the gender gap, nurturing talent, and championing diversity in the Indian technology landscape. Her commitment lies in creating an ecosystem where women in computing can thrive, be recognized for their contributions, and have equal opportunities for growth and leadership.