Prof. Hemangee Kapoor Chosen as the Recipient of ACM India Outstanding Contributions in Computing by a Woman (OCCW) 2024 Award

January 13, 2025

ACM India Council is delighted to announce Prof. Hemangee Kapoor from IIT Guwahati as the recipient of the ACM India Outstanding Contributions in Computing by a Woman (OCCW) award for 2024.

The ACM India OCCW award is presented to women professionals who have made outstanding contributions to the computing field and to empowerment of women in computing while primarily working in India. The award will carry a prize of ₹7 Lakhs and is sponsored by Google.

Prof. Hemangee Kapoor is being recognized “for her contributions to emerging nonvolatile memory technologies and her active leadership and involvement in the mentoring of women in the field.”

Hemangee Kapoor has served Indian academia with distinction for close to two decades in an extremely important and under-represented area of computer science. She has made fundamental contributions to the design of memory architectures, and specifically in the management of emerging non-volatile memories (NVM). Although great utility is expected from NVMs, the inherent physics results in slower data writes and reduced cell longevity. She has made significant progress on these challenges via a novel multi-pronged approach. Her work has been extensively published in premier journals (40) and conferences (74). Further, she has graduated 8 PhD students and 40 masters students.

Hemangee has also served as a praiseworthy role model for Indian women in computing through both her own personal achievements as well as through sustained mentorship and outreach activities. Her passion and effort towards service activities is inspiring. As examples, at IIT Guwahati, she has served as both Associate Dean of Students and Associate Dean of Alumni Affairs. She has also organized a regional ACM-W celebration in the North-East, which was greatly appreciated by the women researchers working in the region. Further, she has been instrumental in mentoring undergraduate students from the region through summer internships in her lab.

Hemangee Kapoor is a full Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Guwahati. She received her Masters degree from IIT Bombay in 2000 and her PhD from the London South Bank University, UK in 2004.

Selection Process: The OCCE award recipient is chosen by a jury comprising eminent personalities in the computing community. The jury follows a rigorous process wherein each nomination is individually reviewed by all the committee members, then collated and deliberated upon in multiple evaluation rounds, and finally decided in the presence of a Steering Committee-appointed observer.

Please join us in congratulating Prof. Hemangee Kapoor.