Viral B. Shah

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Viral B. Shah
Viral B Shah .jpg
Born
Mumbai, India
NationalityIndian
Alma materUniversity of California, Santa Barbara
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
Computational science
ThesisAn Interactive System for Combinatorial Scientific Computing with an Emphasis on Programmer Productivity (2007)
Doctoral advisorJohn R. Gilbert

Viral B Shah is an Indian computer scientist, best known for being a co-creator of the Julia programming language.[1][2][3][4] As of 2017 he is the CEO of Julia Computing, which he co-founded with Alan Edelman, Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, Keno Fischer and Deepak Vinchhi.[5]

Education[]

Viral received his B.Engg in Computer Engineering from the Padmabhushan Vasantdada Patil Pratishthan's College of Engineering.[6] He went on to study Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received his Ph.D. in the field of Combinatorial Scientific Computing.

Policy contributions[]

He was actively involved in the Aadhaar project, which provided a 12-digit unique-identity number to Indian residents based on their biometric and demographic data. Based on his experiences implementing Aadhaar and other complex technology projects in the Government of India, he co-authored the book Rebooting India with Nandan Nilekani.[7]

Research[]

He has contributed in the fields of Scientific Computing, Parallel Computing and Programming Languages.[8] He is also the co-creator of Circuitscape

Professional[]

After completing his PhD in 2007, Viral joined Waltham based Interactive Supercomputing (ISC) as a Senior Scientist, working on Star-P, which aimed to make parallel scientific computing accessible for scientists and engineers. The company was acquired by Microsoft in 2009.[9]

In 2010, he came back to India and after meeting Nandan Nilekani who was then the Chairman of UIDAI, Viral decided to stay back in India and help design the policy and technology framework for Aadhaar-based applications, including authentication, financial inclusion, subsidies (Aadhaar Enabled Payments Systems, AEPS), eKYC platform and GST's early formative documents.[10]

In 2015, Viral co-founded Julia Computing with three co-creators of Julia (Prof. Alan Edelman, Dr. Jeff Bezanson and Stefan Karpinski) together with Deepak Vinchhi and Keno Fischer to develop products that support Julia programming language.[11] Viral Shah is currently the CEO and Co-Founder at Julia Computing.[12] Julia Computing's flagship product is JuliaHub,[13] a software-as-a-service offering that provides engineers and scientists to develop, deploy and scaling Julia to thousands of nodes. In addition to data science workflows, JuliaHub also provides access to cutting-edge products such as Pumas [14] for pharmaceutical modeling and simulation, JuliaSim [15] for multi-physics modeling and simulation, and JuliaSPICE [16][17]

In July 2021, Julia Computing raised $24 Million in Series A round led by Dorilton Ventures, with participation from Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, and HighSage Ventures.[18]

Awards[]

  • In 2013, he received The Spatial Ecology and Telemetry Working Group (SETWG) award for co-creating Circuitscape with Brad McRae.[19][20]
  • In 2019, he was awarded the J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software, for his work on the Julia Programming Language.[21] The prize is awarded every four years to honor outstanding contributions in the field of numerical software.

References[]

  1. ^ Krill, Paul. "New Julia language seeks to be the C for scientists". InfoWorld.
  2. ^ Finley, Klint. "Out in the Open: Man Creates One Programming Language to Rule Them All". Wired.
  3. ^ Thomas, Maria (20 April 2017). "An Indian computer scientist helped build an alternative programming language in Bengaluru". Quartz.
  4. ^ PK, Jayadevan (19 October 2016). "Julia is killing it in the programming world. Meet its co-creator from India". FactorDaily.
  5. ^ "Julia Computing: About Us". Julia Computing. Retrieved 22 Sep 2019.
  6. ^ Thomas, Maria. "Not just "IT coolies": An Indian computer scientist built a new programming language in Bengaluru". Quartz India. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
  7. ^ Nilekani, Nandan; Shah, Viral (2015). Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations. India: Penguin Group. p. 340. ISBN 9780670087891.
  8. ^ "Viral B. Shah Google Scholar Page". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  9. ^ "Microsoft acquires the technology assets of Interactive Supercomputing (ISC)". Microsoft Windows Server Blog. 21 September 2009. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  10. ^ "Government needs to think beyond building websites: Viral B Shah, coder and author". The Economic Times. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  11. ^ "About Us - Julia Computing". juliacomputing.com. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  12. ^ "About Us - Julia Computing". juliacomputing.com. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  13. ^ "JuliaHub". juliahub.com. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  14. ^ "Pumas - Julia Computing". juliacomputing.com.
  15. ^ "JuliaSim - Julia Computing". juliacomputing.com. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  16. ^ "Julia Computing Receives DARPA Award to Accelerate Electronics Simulation by 1,000x - Julia Computing". juliacomputing.com. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  17. ^ Segal (dan@seg.al), Dan. "SPICE.jl". Julia Packages. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  18. ^ "Julia Computing raises $24 mln in funding round led by Dorilton Ventures". Reuters. 19 July 2021. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  19. ^ "SETWG Awards 2013" (PDF). Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  20. ^ "Conservation through Coding: 5 Questions with Viral Shah". Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  21. ^ "Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, and Viral B. Shah - James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software". Retrieved 16 September 2019.

External links[]

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