Dr. Ramesh Chandra Agarwal completed his B. Tech. from the Electrical Engineering Department in the year 1968 and was the first Electrical Engineering graduate to get a gold medal. He obtained his Ph.D. from Rice University in the area of Digital Signal Processing and was given the Best Paper Award (1974) by the Signal Processing Society the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), for his doctoral papers published in their transactions.

His post doctoral position at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center saw him working on mathematical problems underlying research in molecular structures. The computing methods he developed are still being used in laboratories. He had a brief stay later, at IIT Delhi as an associate professor.

Dr. Agarwal was appointed IBM Fellow in the year 1997, which is the highest technical recognition given by IBM. Currently there are approximately 50 IBM fellows worldwide and the appointments are made “in recognition of their distinguished and sustained technical achievements in engineering, programming, science and technology.” As an IBM fellow, freedom is provided to select and pursue work in the areas of one’s own interest.

During his research career, Dr. Agarwal authored about 100 papers, received about a dozen patents and several awards. His current research activities are in the areas of databases, data mining and computational biology and he is excited by the “gene expression” problem in computational biology.