Meet IIT Madras Associate Professor who is on TIME’s AI 2025 list alongside Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman; his name…

New Delhi: IIT Madras Associate Professor Mitesh Khapra has been included in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the AI ​​field for 2025. With this, he has joined the list of global leaders like Elon Musk and Sam Altman.

Work on AI for India’s linguistically diverse population

Known for his work in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning, Mitesh Khapra has made significant contributions to advancing Artificial Intelligence for India’s linguistically diverse population. His work focuses on building AI systems that understand India’s 22 official languages ​​and solve challenges that English-centric AI models often overlook.

Studied at IIT Bombay

Mitesh Khapra’s AI journey began at IIT Bombay, one of India’s premier engineering institutes. He completed both his MTech and PhD degrees from there and received his doctorate in January 2012. His PhD thesis focused on resource reuse for multilingual computing, to develop efficient methods to process multiple languages ​​simultaneously. This work laid the foundation for his later focus on multilingual AI and language-specific datasets, which are important for education, governance and sound technology applications in India.

Before entering research and academics fully, Khapra gained practical experience as a software engineer at Pune-based Infosys Technologies (2002-2004). During this time, he worked on the development of web services and large-scale software systems and experienced the practical challenges of implementing technical solutions.

Mitesh Khapra joined IBM Research India after his PhD

After completing his PhD, Khapra joined IBM Research India, where he worked for more than four years. His research spanned across areas such as machine translation, deep learning, multimodal learning and argument mining, which were important areas for natural language understanding and AI reasoning.

At IBM, he published widely in top-level international conferences and journals, building his reputation as a thought leader in the field of AI for language technology. His research contributed not only to academic knowledge but also to practical solutions for text and speech processing in multiple languages.

Mitesh Khapra is an Associate Professor at IIT Madras

Mitesh Khapra is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Data Science and AI (DSAI) at IIT Madras, which is a part of the Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI. His research group focuses on neural machine translation, speech recognition, multilingual AI models and natural language understanding. Khapra teaches students and collaborates with researchers around the world, helping shape the next generation of AI scientists in India.

Has been honoured with these awards

Mitesh Khapra has received many prestigious awards for his contributions, including the Microsoft Research India Rising Star Award and the IBM PhD Fellowship. Furthermore, his inclusion in Time’s 2025 AI 100 list not only highlights his personal achievements but also reflects India’s growing global influence in AI research.

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Meet IIT Madras Associate Professor who is on TIME’s AI 2025 list alongside Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman.
  • Mitesh Khapra has been included in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the AI ​​field for 2025.
  • He has joined the ranks of global leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman.
  • He is recognised for his contributions to Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning.

Mitesh Khapra’s AI journey began at IIT Bombay, one of India’s premier engineering institutes. He completed both his MTech and PhD degrees from there and received his doctorate in January 2012. His PhD thesis focused on resource reuse for multilingual computing, to develop efficient methods to process multiple languages ​​simultaneously.

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