Chirantan J. (CJ) Desai and Hina Desai Computer Science Fellowship

Chirantan J. (CJ) Desai earned his Master's in Computer Science and an MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995. Desai currently serves as ServiceNow's Chief Product Officer and is responsible for their products, platform, technology, and cloud infrastructure. Prior to joining ServiceNow, Desai was the president of the Emerging Technologies Division (ETD) at EMC from September 2013 until December 2016. From November 2004 to September 2013, he held several leadership roles at Symantec Corporation, including Executive Vice President of Information Management. Mr. Desai currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Zebra Technologies Corp.

“I’m very proud of the fact that the Illinois CS program continues to be [among the] top five in the country,” said Desai. “I absolutely enjoy my ties with CS, and I’m very humbled that I can contribute my small part in attracting future leaders in the CS discipline.” The Desai Computer Science Fellowship is intended to assist the department in recruiting and retaining excellent female graduate students and was endowed by Chirantan and Hina Desai.

Recipients

2023-2024 Dina Albassam
Ananya Appan
2022-2023 Garvita Allabadi
2021-2022 Suyu Ge
2020-2021 Mengyuan Sun
2019-2020 Vidushi Ojha
2018-2019 Pooja Kulkarni