Infosys vice chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan joins IIT Madras board of directors

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infosys co-founder and executive vice chairman and president CII National Council, has been inducted into the board of directors of IIT Madras.

"We are extremely proud to welcome Kris Gopalakrishnan to our board", said, IIT Madras director Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi.

"Kris Gopalakrishnan represents a generation of engineer-scientists who have made India a global player in the software industry. His experience will be a valuable asset to IIT Madras." Prof Ramamurthi said.

"As an alumnus of IIT Madras, I consider it a great honour to be invited to join the board of directors of this esteemed institute. This is an opportunity for me to support the institute's operations as a member of the board. It is important to raise the stature and standard of our education and research institutions and I look forward to contributing towards this," said Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Gopalakrishnan holds an MSc in physics and MTech in computer science.

He started his career as a software engineer with Patni Computer Systems in 1979 and soon rose to be its assistant project manager.

He was responsible for developing the distributed process control system for the LD converter at the Rourkela Steel Plant.

After his formative years, Gopalakrishnan left a successful career in 1981 for the uncharted waters of small-scale enterprise.

That year, along with his friends, he launched the Infosys Technologies Ltd, and Kris, as he is called by his friends, assumed the responsibility in vital areas of design, development, implementation and support of information systems for clients in the consumer products industry in the United States.

He was also instrumental in forming a joint venture, called KSA / Infosys with the KSA group of Atlanta, heading its operations division as executive vice chairman.

In 1994, Gopalakrishnan returned to India as the deputy managing director of his company to head its software services and technology divisions.

His areas of active interest include operating systems, distributed computing and distributed software development. He is currently president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Council. He is also a member of the ACM, IEEE and IEEE Computer Society, and he frequently lectures in India and abroad on software quality and productivity.