Rahul Panicker

I’m a technology leader and entrepreneur. My current mission - to use AI to help the next 5 billion.

I head AI research at the Wadhwani Institute for AI. We are an applied-AI research lab with the mission of AI for social good, building AI solutions to help underserved populations in developing countries.

I love spending time with my users, and working with awesome teams of designers, engineers, and product managers. I'm proud that, through my role as Co-founder of Embrace, since 2012, we have helped over 500,000 vulnerable babies in over 25 developing countries.

I love deep technology and good design. My PhD at Stanford was at the interface of machine learning and optics - we trained spatial light modulators to break transmission-speed records by 100x. I previously worked at a SLAC subatomic-particle-accelerator lab, using neural networks to control particle beams. And, I'm an alum of the design school at Stanford, where our work at Embrace is a frequent case study.

I've had recognition along the way for what we pulled off - MIT Technology Review 35-Innovators-under-35, Industrial Design Society of America Gold, World Economic Forum Social Entrepreneur of the Year. Our work has been featured in The Economist, National Geographic, Time Magazine, and books including Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley.