Anima Anandkumar has spent much of her career trying to bring two worlds closer together: artificial intelligence and science.Now, that work has earned her a spot on TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in AI. The Indian-born scientist has worked on using AI to tackle some seriously complex problems, from predicting the weather and understanding nuclear fusion to developing medicines and exploring quantum technology.Following the recognition, Anandkumar shared the news on X, saying she was honoured to be included. She also pointed out that bringing AI and science together has been the focus of her work for the past decade, particularly using AI to make it faster to simulate and understand the physical world.
From Mysore To The World Of AI
Anandkumar was born in Mysore, Karnataka, and grew up in a family where education was taken seriously. Her parents were engineers, her grandfather was a mathematician and her great-grandfather was a Sanskrit scholar.But academics weren’t her only interest. She also trained in Bharatanatyam and performed the classical dance for several years.She went on to study electrical engineering at IIT Madras, completing her BTech in 2004. She then moved to the US for her PhD at Cornell University, which she completed in 2009. During her doctoral studies, she was also an IBM Fellow.After completing her PhD, Anandkumar worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, where she focused on machine learning and complex systems.Her career later took her to Amazon Web Services, where she became a Principal Scientist and was involved in the creation and launch of Amazon SageMaker.In 2017, she joined Caltech as a professor. The following year, she became Senior Director of AI Research at NVIDIA.
Using AI To Solve Scientific Problems
A major part of Anandkumar’s research has been Neural Operators. Put simply, they allow AI models to learn and simulate complex physical processes at different scales.That may sound highly technical, but the potential applications are surprisingly broad.Her work has been used in areas including weather forecasting, nuclear fusion, quantum chemistry, medicine and chip design. In some cases, these AI-based approaches can help tackle calculations that would otherwise require enormous computing power.Her research has also contributed to medical technology. One example is a catheter designed to reduce bacterial contamination by around 100 times. Neural Operators have also been explored for improving chip masks and optimising gate layouts for quantum dots.Over the years, Anandkumar has received several honours, including an IEEE Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and the NSF CAREER Award.And her work isn’t limited to academia or the technology industry. In March this year, she was appointed to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board.From Bharatanatyam and engineering in Mysore to some of the biggest questions in AI and science, Anandkumar’s career has taken a rather unusual path. Her latest recognition by TIME adds another milestone to a career built around one central idea: using AI not just to build better technology, but to understand the world around us a little better.
