Shivkumar Kalyanaraman
CEO, ANRF, New Delhi
Shiv has been appointed by Hon'ble Prime Minister of India as CEO, Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF). He was previously CTO, Energy Industry, Asia at Microsoft. Previously he was Executive General Manager of Growth Offerings at GE Power Conversion responsible for new Line of Business development in e-Mobility, Commercial & Industrial Solar and digital/AI innovations. Earlier he was at IBM Research - India, and the Chief Scientist of IBM Research - Australia. Before IBM, he was a tenured Full Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, USA. Shiv has degrees from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (B.Tech, CS), Ohio State University (MS, PhD) and RPI (Executive MBA). Shiv is a Distinguished Alumnus Awardee of IIT Madras (2021, recognizing 0.3% of IITM's alumni over the years) & Ohio State University (2021), Fellow of the IEEE (2010), Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering (2015), ACM Distinguished Scientist (2010), Microsoft Gold Club (2024), MIT Technology Review TR100 Young Innovator (1999).
Session 1B
Chairperson: Raghavan Varadarajan, IISc, Bengaluru
ANRF AI for science and engineering
ANRF Mission on AI for Science and Engineering (AI-SE) aims to accelerate the journey from deep science to deep tech by building a composable stack of scientific AI models, datasets, and workflows that can be combined like modular components. The talk explores how domain-centric neural operators, hybrid AI-HPC methods, multimodal scientific foundation models, and large-scale digital twins can unlock accelerated discovery in vast combinatorial spaces spanning materials, molecules, climate systems, biology, and engineered structures. A core theme is the shift from isolated, single-task models to interoperable, composable model ecosystems that enable AI agents to autonomously navigate design spaces and propose highvalue candidates at machine speed. The talk outlines how traditional scientific processes can be reimagined through tightly integrated AI pipelines, and how India can build the collaborative, cross-institutional data / modelling infrastructure needed for national-scale scientific acceleration.