Vinayaka Pandit
IBM Research - India
Senior Technical Staff Member and Senior Manager
Vinayaka Pandit leads the Blockchain and Supply Chain research department at IBM Research India. He also leads the blockchain solutions and multi-enterprise supply chain networks research strategies for IBM Research globally. His current work brings advanced techniques from operations research, cryptography, security, machine learning, and blockchain together to enable privacy preserving collaboration on multi-enterprise business networks. Vinayaka has led the creation of some of the first blockchain networks in the India South Asia region. The research work by the IBM Research India team has resulted foundational contributions to IBM products like TradeLens, IBM Food Trust, and Hyperledger Fabric. Prior to this role, Vinayaka led the mathematical modelling and optimisation research group that delivered state of the art mathematical modeling innovations in traditional industries like Oil &Gas and Metals and Mining. His work has been recognised with many outstanding technical accomplishment awards and Best Of IBM award in 2018. He began my career in IBM Research in 1999 as a research staff member with a focus on approximation algorithms and combinatorial optimization. His work during this time resulted in some of the classic results in facility location, local search heuristics, scheduling, and network designs. I enjoy building world class research teams that can deliver state of the art research and innovative products. His core technical expertise is in Approximation Algorithms, Mathematical Programming, Combinatorial Optimization, Randomized Algorithms, Applications of Cryptography in Privacy and Security, Blockchain, and Distributed Databases. Over the years, I have developed industry expertise in Oil & Gas, Metals/Mining, Financial Services, and Supply Chain Management. He has been a frequent speaker at leading conferences, academic workshops, industry forums, and has participated in numerous panels on the topics of blockchain and supply chain.
