https://en.bharatpedia.org/w/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Pushpak_BhattacharyyaPushpak Bhattacharyya - Revision history2026-10-22T04:52:06ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.43.6https://en.bharatpedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pushpak_Bhattacharyya&diff=527462&oldid=prevKrishnakumarsinhji Gohil: new2026-02-26T13:56:06Z<p>new</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>{{Short description|Indian computer scientist (1962–2025)}}<br />
{{Use Indian English|date=October 2025}}<br />
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2025}}<br />
{{Infobox scientist<br />
| name = Pushpak Bhattacharyya<br />
| image = PushpakBhattacharyya.png<br />
| birth_date = {{birth date|1962|07|03|df=y}}<br />
| birth_place = [[Shillong]], Meghalaya, India<br />
| death_date = {{death date and given age|2025|10|05|63|df=y}}<br />
| death_place = <br />
| citizenship = India<br />
| website = {{URL|https://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~pb/|Official website}}<br>{{URL|https://www.iitp.ac.in/index.php/the-institute/administration/administrators/directorate/1821-directors-profile.html|Director's Profile}}<br />
| fields = [[Computer science]], [[Artificial Intelligence]], [[Natural Language Processing]]<br />
| workplaces = [[IIT Patna]]<br>[[IIT Bombay]]<br />
| alma_mater = [[Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur|IIT Kharagpur]]<br>[[Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur|IIT Kanpur]]<br>[[IIT Bombay]]<br />
| known_for = [[Director (education)|Director]] at IIT Patna, [[Machine translation]], [[Word-sense disambiguation]], [[Sentiment analysis]], [[Psycholinguistics]], [[IndoWordNet]], [[Information Retrieval]]<br />
}}<br />
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'''Pushpak Bhattacharyya''' (3 July 1962 – 5 October 2025<ref name="obit">{{Cite web |title=Obituary. Prof Pushpak Bhattacharyya|url=https://www.inae.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Obituary_Prof.-Pushpak-Bhattacharyya.pdf|publisher=Indian National Academy of Engineering|access-date=9 October 2025}}</ref>) was an Indian computer scientist and professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the [[Indian Institute of Technology Bombay|IIT Bombay]]. He served as the Director of the [[Indian Institute of Technology Patna|IIT Patna]] from 2015 to 2021.<ref name="iitp">{{Cite web |title=Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Director IIT Patna |url=https://www.iitp.ac.in |publisher=Indian Institute of Technology Patna |access-date=21 November 2018}}</ref><br />
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He was a past President of the [[Association for Computational Linguistics]] (2016–17),<ref name="acl">{{Cite web |title=Executive Committee |url=https://www.aclweb.org/administration/executive-committee |access-date=21 November 2018}}</ref> and held the Vijay and Sita Vashee Chair Professorship at IIT Bombay.<ref name="chair">{{Cite web |title=Chair Professors 2015 |url=https://www.iitb.ac.in |access-date=21 November 2018}}</ref> Bhattacharyya led the [[Natural language processing|Natural Language Processing]] (NLP) research group at the Centre for Indian Language Technology (CFILT) at IIT Bombay until his death.<br />
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At the inauguration of the Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat, IIT Madras, [[Nandan Nilekani]], Co-founder and Non-Executive Chairman of [[Infosys]], referred to Bhattacharyya as the "Godfather of Indian NLP".<ref name="ai4bharat">{{Cite web |title=Nilekani Centre @ AI4Bharat IIT Madras, Inauguration |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxx |website=AI4Bharat |date=12 August 2022 |access-date=24 July 2024}}</ref><br />
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== Early life and education ==<br />
Bhattacharyya was born in [[Shillong]] in 1962.<ref name="shillong">{{Cite news |title=Noted academician, computer scientist from city no more |url=https://theshillongtimes.com/2025/10/06/noted-academician-computer-scientist-from-city-no-more/ |work=The Shillong Times |date=6 October 2025 |access-date=6 October 2025}}</ref> He completed his schooling at Jail Road Boys' High School, Shillong. He obtained a B.Tech. in Computer Science from the [[Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur|IIT Kharagpur]], followed by an M.Tech. from the [[Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur|IIT Kanpur]], and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay in 1994.<ref name="shillong" /><br />
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== Research ==<br />
Bhattacharyya’s research areas includes [[Natural language processing]], [[Artificial intelligence]], [[Machine learning]], [[Psycholinguistics]], [[Eye tracking]], and [[Information retrieval]]. He made contributions to the development of multilingual lexical databases such as [[IndoWordNet]] and other projects related to machine translation and computational linguistics.<ref name="machine">{{Cite book |last=Bhattacharyya |first=Pushpak |year=2015 |title=Machine Translation |publisher=CRC Press |isbn=978-1-4398-9718-8}}</ref><br />
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He authored and co-authored multiple academic works, including ''Investigations in Computational Sarcasm'' (with Aditya Joshi),<ref name="sarcasm">{{Cite book |last1=Joshi |first1=Aditya |last2=Bhattacharyya |first2=Pushpak |last3=Carman |first3=Mark J. |year=2018 |title=Investigations in Computational Sarcasm |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-981-10-8395-2}}</ref> ''Cognitively Inspired Natural Language Processing: An Investigation Based on Eye Tracking'' (with Abhijit Mishra),<ref name="eye">{{Cite book |last1=Mishra |first1=Abhijit |last2=Bhattacharyya |first2=Pushpak |year=2018 |title=Cognitively Inspired Natural Language Processing: An Investigation Based on Eye Tracking |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-981-13-1515-2}}</ref> and ''Machine Translation and Transliteration of Low Resource Related Languages'' (with Anoop Kunchukuttan).<ref name="lowres">{{Cite book |last1=Kunchukuttan |first1=Anoop |last2=Bhattacharyya |first2=Pushpak |year=2024 |title=Machine Translation and Transliteration of Low Resource Related Languages |publisher=CRC Press |isbn=9781003096771}}</ref><br />
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Over his career, Bhattacharyya published more than 350 research papers in journals and conference proceedings and supervised over 300 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students. His projects often addressed computational challenges for Indian languages, such as developing wordnets, building translation systems for low-resource languages, and studying cognitive aspects of language processing.<br />
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He also led government- and industry-funded research initiatives supported by organizations including IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo, and the United Nations.<ref name="sponsored">{{Cite web |title=Sponsored Research Projects |url=https://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~pb/projects.html |access-date=21 November 2018}}</ref><br />
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== Death ==<br />
Bhattacharyya died on 5 October 2025, at the age of 63.<ref name="shillong" /><br />
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== Awards ==<br />
* Patwardhan Award, IIT Bombay, for Technology Development<ref name="awards">{{Cite web |title=Awards and Recognitions |url=https://www.iitb.ac.in |access-date=21 November 2018}}</ref> <br />
* VNMM Award, IIT Roorkee, for Technology Development<ref name="awards" /> <br />
* Fellow, [[Indian National Academy of Engineering]]<ref name="inae">{{Cite web |title=Pushpak Bhattacharyya |url=https://www.inae.in |access-date=21 November 2018}}</ref> <br />
* Eminent Engineer Award, Institution of Engineers (India)<ref name="awards" /><br />
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==References==<br />
{{reflist}}<br />
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== External links ==<br />
* [https://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~pb/ Homepage]<br />
* [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PushpakBhattacharyya Google Scholar profile]<br />
* [https://nptel.ac.in/courses/106101007 NPTEL Lectures on NLP]<br />
* [https://www.cfilt.iitb.ac.in/ Centre for Indian Language Technology (CFILT)]<br />
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{{Authority control}}<br />
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[[Category:1962 births]]<br />
[[Category:2025 deaths]]<br />
[[Category:Indian computer scientists]]<br />
[[Category:Natural language processing researchers]]<br />
[[Category:IIT Bombay alumni]]<br />
[[Category:Academic staff of the Indian Institutes of Technology]]<br />
[[Category:Fellows of the Indian National Academy of Engineering]]</div>Krishnakumarsinhji Gohil