Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay

Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay is director of the Indian Statistical Institute and a computer scientist known for her work in computational biology, machine learning and artificial intelligence. She was named for the Padma Shri in 2022 in the field of science and engineering, from West Bengal ^[1].

Education

Bandyopadhyay was born on 17 April 1968 and went to school in several Indian cities ^[2]. She took a BSc in physics at Presidency College, Calcutta, a BTech at Calcutta University, an MTech at IIT Kharagpur and a PhD in computer science at the Indian Statistical Institute ^[2].

Leading the ISI

She joined the ISI faculty in 1999 and became its director in 2015 ^[2]. As director she has built links with outside agencies and industry and started new courses, research programmes and centres in machine learning, artificial intelligence, computational and statistical biology, security and cryptology, and the economics of climate and energy ^[2].

Research

Her research covers artificial intelligence, machine learning, computational biology and multi-objective optimisation, and she has written several books and more than 400 papers ^[2]. She has received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in engineering science, the TWAS Prize and the Infosys Prize, and is a fellow of the main Indian science and engineering academies and of the IEEE ^[2]. She is a member of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council ^[2].