By Quaid Najmi Mumbai, Nov 30, : There was a lot of excitement in Mumbai after Twitter Inc., a giant microblogging service provider, announced Dr Parag Agrawal as its CEO.He is a hardcore Amchi Mumbaikar’ who will replace Jack Dorsey, the founder-CEO.
The proclamation was received with pride by his alma mater, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), Powai.
He studied between 2001 and 2005 and graduated in B.Tech from the department Computer Science & Engineering.
Professor Subhasis Chaudhari, Director of IIT-B, stated that the importance of a university is often measured by its alumni’s collective achievements and the glory they bring their alma mater.Agrawal is one such alumnus of which IIT is proud.
“The education and environment that IIT-B provided to Agrawal not too long ago helped in bringing out his best.He has achieved the top by hard work and dedication.
We send our congratulations to him, and we hope that IITB will continue to produce such great achievers,” Prof Chaudhari expressed in a warm tribute.
A beaming Prof Supratim Biswas was his teacher at IITB’s Computer Science & Engineering Department.
He taught him a few subjects and recalls Agrawal as the top student of the course in 2005, where he won a coveted Silver Medal.
He was organized, bright, well-behaved, and focused in his life.
He was a typical topper-type person and had all the attributes of an achiever,” he said.
Agrawal pointed out that IIT-B toppers come from all over India, and that to excel them requires “special calibration”, which Agrawal displayed.”It’s no wonder that he was given this immense honour at such an early age.”
This is the second major honor for a Mumbaikar this yea – in January, an University of Mumbai alumnus (1973), Prof Srikant Datar assumed the role of Dean of Harvard Business School.
Agrawal was born in Mumbai to a Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), officer, and schoolteacher.He studied at the Atomic Energy Central School Number.4, at Anushakti Nagar, north-east Mumbai.His schoolmate was Shreya Ghoshal, a well-known playback singer.
After passing the IITJEE in 2000, he was awarded a degree from the IITB.He then moved to the USA, where he received his doctorate in Computer Science at Stanford University in 2011.
He also won the gold medal at 2001’s International Physics Olympiad in Turkey.This was just one of many feathers in his cap.
After collaboration stints with Microsoft Research and Yahoo! After stints with Microsoft Research, Yahoo!
Agrawal, at Twitter Inc.is responsible for the technical strategy.He oversees machine learning and AI across the company’s science, revenue, and consumer teams.
Since 2011, he has been leading efforts to scale Twitter Ads systems and re-accelerating user development by improving home timeline relevance.
Notably, in December 2019, Ex-CEO Dorsey had appointed Agrawal to Project Bluesky.This was “an independent team made up of open source engineers, architects, and designers who will develop a standard open and decentralised for social media that will help improve control over misleading and abusive information on its platform.”
November 29 was a significant day for Agrawal, when Dorsey posted his resignation via Twitter and gave him the powerful handle’.
Agrawal reflects on his special memories with IITB.He says, “Working with friends in order to build shared storage and streaming service over the Hostel intranet, and spending time near Vihar Lake behind Hostel 4 among close friends.”
His unique Mantra for Success is: “The whole can exceed the sum of its parts.”
Vineeta, a general partnership at a California-based VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, is Agrawal’s wife.They have a son.
(Quaid Najmi may be reached at q.najmi@ians.in
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