Indian-American scientist Rajiv Joshi has received the prestigious Inventor of the Year award for his work in improving artificial intelligence capabilities and advancing the electronic industry. Joshi, who works at the IBM Thomson Watson Research Center in New York, has over 250 patented inventions to his name in the US. The New York Intellectual Property Law Association presented the award to Joshi earlier this month during a virtual awards ceremony. An IIT Mumbai alumnus, Joshi has an MS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a PhD in mechanical engineering from Columbia University, New York.

His inventions including novel interconnect structures and processes for more scaling, machine learning techniques for predictive failure analytics, high bandwidth, high performance and low power integrated circuits and memories and their usage in hardware accelerators are meant for artificial intelligence applications.

"Necessity and curiosity inspire me," Dr Joshi told PTI in a recent interview, adding that the identification of a problem, observing and thinking help him immensely to generate ideas.

Joshi said that while growing up, his parents always told him stories about great, renowned inventors like Guglielmo Marconi, Madame Curie, Right Brothers, James watt, Alexander Bell, Thomas Edison and other great stalwarts. Their success stories and inventions really shaped his thought process and helped develop an interest in science and technology.

Cloud, artificial intelligence and quantum computing not only remain the buzzwords, but their utility, widespread usage is advancing with leaps and bounds, Joshi said in his acceptance speech.