Contribution by alumnus, Mukund Padmanabhan ('87), awards seven intl. internships to KGP students
IITKGP Foundation (June 2022)
For the second time the Guru Krupa Foundation (GKF), a non-profit created by IIT-KGP alumnus Mukund Padmanabhan ('87), has awarded international internships for KGP students to attend top global universities. This year's awards were bestowed on seven students and provided up to $5,000 in support per student.
The selection of the scholars for these internships is handled by IIT-Kharagpur and GKF, using a merit cum means based model. The students can be pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees, including PhD's and can be from any department, school, or center of IIT-Kharagpur with an additional criterion that one of the recipients must be chosen from the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communications, Mr. Padmanabhan's department of study while at IIT Kharagpur.
Said Mukund, "Attending summer programs at renowned international universities is a wonderful opportunity for students to add to their skill sets, develop connections and explore future courses of study and careers. It makes the KGP experience all the more invaluable, and also improves the KGP brandname. I feel privileged to be able to give back to the institute by providing support for this initiative."
The selected students and their institutes are listed below:
Aishik Mandal--Inria Paris Centre, Sesetty Shanmukha Sai Vardhan--Queen's University, Samik Mukhopadhyay--University of Tokyo, Yashvi Jain--University of Waterloo, Dhatri Raghunathan--Xiamen University, Malaysia, Apoorva Vashisth--National University of Singapore, and Raghav Aggarwal--City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
PAST SUPPORT OF IITKGP
GKF has been a generous supporter of many programs at IIT-KGP, including the Academy of Classical and Folks Arts (ACFA), which is a branch of the Science and Heritage Initiative (SandHI). SandHI aims to introduce IITKGP architecture and engineering students to the classical and folk arts, and encourages use of such artistic talents to supplement the highly competitive technical education. Learn more about the ACFA and Mukund's contributions.
Recently, Mr. Padmanabhan provided a significant boost to the Nehru Hall Ka Tempo renovation project. His contribution will completely renovate, refurbish and modernize all the rooms in D-Top West Wing of the Nehru Hall of Residence. You can learn more about the project by clicking here and the support provided by Mukund here.
ABOUT MUKUND
After graduating from IIT KGP, Mukund got his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, in signal processing and circuits. Subsequently he worked in IBM's Research Division on speech recognition algorithms, before pivoting to Wall Street, where he is currently a Partner and Researcher at hedge fund Renaissance Technologies.
Mukund was bestowed with the "Distinguished Alumni Award” from IIT-Kharagpur in 2021, and a "Professional Achievement Award" from the Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA in 2019.