IIIT-Bengaluru director prof Sowmyanarayanan Sadagopan retires after 22 years

BENGALURU: Prof Sowmyanarayanan Sadagopan on Sunday handed over charge of the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B), to his longtime colleague Prof Debabrata Das. Sadagopan led the institution for 22 years.
He was the founder-director of the institution which started in June 1999 and was among the first of the infotechspecific institutions envisioned by the government. IIIT-B was funded by the Karnataka government, with support from the IT industry, and has functioned as a deemed university, awarding Master's and doctorate degrees in engineering.
Sadagopan also taught for over 25 years, including at IIT Kanpur, IIM Bangalore, IIT Madras and IIIT-Bangalore. During his tenure at IIIT-B, the external affairs ministry gave him a lead role in helping set up the Myanmar International Institute of Information Technology in Mandalay.
Anand Parthasarathy, who has reported on the tech academic scene for decades, said Sadagopan’s tenure is arguably the longest stint of an infotech academic in India as the head of an institution of professional higher education. The professor, he said, was always soft spoken, and his sincerity and zeal in helping to turn out the next-gen Indian world beater was infectious. “You couldn’t say no to him,” he said.
Debabrata Das joined IIIT-B as an assistant professor in 2002. He was the dean of academics and R&D from 2014 to 2017. Before joining IIIT-B, he had served at IIT Kharagpur, and later at Kirana Networks in New Jersey, US.