UCLA Engineering School Names Mukund Padmanabhan Alum Of The Year
India-West News Desk
LOS ANGELES, CA -Mukund Padmanabhan, an engineer and researcher who has also worked in quantitative finance, has been named the 2026 Alum of the Year by the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
Born and raised in India, Padmanabhan earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from UCLA in 1989 and 1992, respectively. The award is the school’s highest honor and recognizes his work as an engineer and researcher, along with his philanthropic support for social and educational programs in the United States and India.
His professional career began at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where he specialized in speech processing and led research and development of speech-recognition algorithms. His work in speech and signal processing has resulted in more than 80 technical papers and more than 20 US patents.
Padmanabhan later moved into the financial industry and is now a partner and statistical researcher at Renaissance Technologies, a New York-based quantitative investment firm. He applies his mathematical and statistical expertise to financial modeling and investment research.
His ties to UCLA have continued through both service and philanthropy. A member of the UCLA Samueli Dean’s Executive Board, Padmanabhan has supported the engineering school in several ways.
His contributions helped fund the construction of the Engineering VI building, including a systems scaling laboratory named in his honor that houses one of the world’s leading groups in semiconductor research.
He has also made several gifts to UCLA’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, including funding for four endowed faculty term chairs in plasma physics, neuroengineering and cyber-physical systems. His support also includes three endowed graduate fellowships and an endowment for undergraduate scholarships.
Through his Guru Krupa Foundation, Padmanabhan has supported initiatives in education, social welfare, culture and environmental conservation in the United States and India.
In 2021, the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, honored him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award.
