Dr. G. Venkatesh
Dr. Venkatesh is a Professor of Practice at IIT Madras. He is also a Fellow and Director of Sasken Communication Technologies Ltd, a leading Indian R&D services provider.
Dr Venkatesh is a graduate in electronics from IIT Madras, PhD in Computer Science from TIFR, Mumbai and was a faculty member of the Computer Science & Engineering Dept of IIT Bombay for 8 years where his research interests revolved around declarative languages and their application to the design of embedded systems. He moved to the industry when Sasken was being formed, where he was the Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for over two decades, and was responsible for Sasken’s IP licensing business that has generated a cumulative licensing/royalty revenue of over 200M$ – fetching Sasken the DSIR innovation award in 2007 and the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association’s Technovation award in 2011. He was a visiting/adjunct faculty at IIM Bangalore for 10 years where he taught technology management and the applications of game theory to strategic thinking. He was a Chair Professor in the department of EE at IIT Madras for 3 years exploring complex embedded systems. His experience in the education and business fields led him to co-found Mylspot Education Services in 2015 and Agami Fintech Solutions in 2022. Since 2017, he has been appointed as a Professor of Practice at IIT Madras, where he teaches courses on technology & policy and computational economics. He is also closely involved with the activities of IITM’s Centre for Technology and Policy, where he works with state governments on policy related issues in the areas of education, health and technology. He is part of the founding team that created IITM’s online BSc degree in programming and data science, in which he teaches two courses -- computational thinking and managing businesses using data.
Dr. Venkatesh was elected as a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers in 2006 and the IETE in 2012. In recognition of his activities linking academics and industry, he won the Technomentor award of the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association in 2013 and the Vasvik award for industrial research in 2015.
Dr. Venkatesh serves on a number of government, industry and investor committees and boards in the areas of microelectronics, telecommunications and education. He is a director on the board of five companies, including the Section 8 companies IITM Pravartak and IIITDM MadeIT, both of which commercialise technology ideas through startups. He is also a founder of the Communications Systems and Networks Association which runs two premier international conferences in India - Comsnets (focused on network technology) and AIML systems (focused on AI and ML systems). He is a member of the governing council of the Centre for Excellence in Wireless Technology (CeWiT) at IIT Madras, board of governors of NIT Nagaland and Dhirubhai Ambani University, faculty selection & promotion committee of IIIT Bangalore, and has served as the chairman of the government’s Uchhatar Avishkar Yojana (UAY) expert committee on electronics, computing and telecommunication.