Sunita Sarawagi
Sunita Sarawagi is a computer scientist known for research in databases, data mining and machine learning. After completing her doctorate at UC Berkeley in 1996, she joined IIT Bombay as an assistant professor in 1999. With William Cohen, she published semi-Markov conditional random fields for information extraction at NIPS 2004. In 2019 she received the Infosys Prize, and in 2021 she was elected an ACM Fellow. As of October 2026, she is Institute Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay.
- Now at
- IIT Bombay
- Works
- 248
- Citations
- 10,500
- h-index
- 46
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026.
Timeline
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1993–1996
Graduate study with Stonebraker
She goes to UC Berkeley for graduate study with database expert Michael Stonebraker, earning a master's degree in 1993 and completing her PhD in 1996.
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1999
Assistant professor at IIT Bombay
After working as a researcher at IBM's Almaden Research Center, she joins IIT Bombay as an assistant professor in 1999.
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2004
Semi-Markov conditional random fields
With William W. Cohen, she publishes semi-Markov conditional random fields for information extraction at NIPS 2004.
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2014–2016
Visiting scientist at Google
She joins Google in Mountain View as a visiting scientist in July 2014, where she works on deep learning models for personalizing and diversifying YouTube and Play recommendations.
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2019
The Infosys Prize
She wins the 2019 Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Science for research in databases, data mining, machine learning and natural language processing.
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March 2020–June 2023
Founding head of CMInDS
She becomes founding head of the Center for Machine Intelligence and Data Science at IIT Bombay in March 2020, a role that runs until June 2023.
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2021
Elected an ACM Fellow
She is elected a 2021 ACM Fellow for contributions to statistical machine learning for information analysis, extraction, and integration.
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As of October 2026
Institute Chair Professor at IIT Bombay
She is Institute Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay.
Sources and credits
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