Timothy A. Gonsalves

In 2022, Prof. Gonsalves was named AICTE Distinguished Chair Professor. In this capacity, he visits engineering colleges in different parts of India to deliver expert lectures and to mentor faculty and students. His first visit, in November 2022, was to the G. Narayanamma Institute of Technology and Science (for women), Hyderabad.

After over 10 years of his contribution as founding Director of IIT Mandi, he stepped down on 30 June 2020, leaving IIT Mandi with a strong foundation.  Thereafter, Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi, Director of IIT Roorkee, took additional charge as Director of IIT Mandi temporarily. Prof. Gonsalves continues his association with IIT Mandi as Professor Emeritus (Honorary) since 1 July 2020.

After his retirement as Director, IIT Mandi in June 2020, Prof. Gonsalves has been active in improving education in engineering colleges in India. He founded the LEAP (Learning Engineering by Activity with Products) programme in 2021. LEAP brings project-based learning to students in the first and second year of their BTech programme.

In the National Framework Institute Ranking of the Government of India (2019), IIT Mandi was ranked 20th among engineering colleges in India, and best Institute among all categories in Himachal Pradesh. In the ARIIA 2020 it was ranked 7th in a nationwide survey.  Within a decade of its establishment, IIT Mandi has earned praise, including from the Indian Vice-President, and the Governor and Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, for establishing its unique identity in the education map of the country.

In 2019, IIT Mandi became the first IIT to introduce a B. Tech. programme in Data Science.  Prof. Gonsalves has mentored other educational institutes in Himachal Pradesh by serving on their board. He has served as the Vice-Chairman of the State Higher Education Council, Himachal Pradesh (2014 – 2017), and as the Chairman, Board of Governors, Jawaharlal Nehru Government Engineering College, Sundernagar, Himachal Pradesh (2012 – 2017).

In 2017 he chaired the Joint Admissions Board (JAB) sub-committee for increasing female enrollment in B.Tech. in IITs. The committee recommended increase in female enrollment in IITs from 8% in 2016 to 14% in 2018-19, 17% in 2019-20 and 20% in 2020-21 by creating supernumerary seats. As a result of this effort, and additional efforts at IIT Mandi including schola`rships for female students and the setting up of a help-desk, IIT Mandi admitted 20.22 percent female students to its B. Tech programme for the Academic Year 2019-20. That is, there were 53 female students among a total of 262 BTech students admitted that year. This is the highest proportion of female students in a BTech programme in any of the 23 IITs. This effort has been a national success as well: Female enrollment in BTech in all IITs more than doubled from 8% in 2016 to 18% in 2019.

Prof. Gonsalves was instrumental in setting up IIT Mandi Catalyst, the first technology business incubator in Himachal Pradesh, in 2016. He also serves as the Chairman of its Board of Governors. Catalyst has helped over 75 startups since 2017, and is changing both the industry profile and entrepreneurial mindset in Himachal Pradesh.  So far, Catalyst has secured external funding of Rs. 24 Cr from various funding agencies.

Since 2016, under Prof. Gonsalves' leadership, IIT Mandi has organized a unique, fully faculty-mentored induction or orientation programme for its new BTech students. The aim of this five-week programme is to provide training to the new students and help them in the transition from school to college, to improve their respective skills and proficiency, and to help them to appreciate the significance of engineering’s societal connect.

During the decade following 2010, he started to apply machine learning and data science to diverse fields such as computer networks and agriculture. He developed an interest in data-driven speculations on the future.

Prof. Gonsalves took charge as the first full-time Director of IIT Mandi in January 2010. Under his leadership, IIT Mandi has grown to from an Institute with only 97 students in 2009 to one with 1655 students (2019–20) and has graduated over 1500 alumni. It has a vibrant research culture, with 125 faculty who have brought in external research funding to the tune of Rs. 110 Cr. among others.

From a green-field project initiated in 2009, IIT Mandi today has 1.4 lakh sq. mt. constructed space with residential, academic and recreational facilities at par with the best higher education institutions in the world.

From about 2006 onwards, he worked on financial systems as a consultant to SBI and SEBI. He led the development of the first standards for mobile payments in India as a member of the Mobile Payment Forum India (MPFI).

To deliver useful applications based on the Internet, he was a co-founder of n-Logue Communications and the IIT-M RTBI. In 1998-2000, on leave from IIT Madras, he founded Nilgiri Networks (P) Ltd. In the small town of Ooty. He trained local talent to develop telecom software for the TeNeT Group. This included Minnow, a Linux-based server for small ISPs, and BlueBill, a low-cost telecom billing package. Based on many years of research in network management systems he co-founded NMSWorks Software (P) Ltd and designed its flagship product, CygNet. Working with several companies incubated by RTBI on Internet-based products for rural India, his research interests further broadened to include distributed systems.

In the early 1990s, Gonsalves with two colleagues Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Bhaskar Ramamurthi decided to focus their research on technology for mass use in India. They founded the TeNeT Group with its motto “World-class technology at an affordable price”. Gonsalves worked on the software design of a number of telecom products. These include the corDECT Wireless in Local Loop system, a product of Midas Comm, the DIAS Direct Internet Access System, a product of Banyan Networks, with its patented soft-switching design among others.

After receiving his PhD, Gonsalves served as an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at WPI, Massachusetts from July 1986 to December 1988. He returned to India and joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras as Assistant Professor in January 1989.

Timothy Aloysius Gonsalves (born 20 June 1954) is a computer scientist and professor. During his academic career, he has been founder/co-founder of several institutions and companies. These include founder of Nilgiri Networks (P) Ltd, co-founder of NMSWorks Software (P) Ltd, co-founder of the TeNeT Group and RTBI at IIT Madras, and IIT Mandi Catalyst. Most notably, he was the founding Director of IIT Mandi in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh from Jan. 2010 to Jun. 2020. He is currently Professor Emeritus (Honorary) at IIT Mandi. His academic interests include education for engineers of the future, computer networks, distributed systems, telecom software and performance evaluation among others.

Gonsalves, born on 20 June 1954, is a native of Ooty, Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu. He graduated from Breeks Memorial School, Ooty in 1969. He completed B.Tech. (Electronics), IIT Madras, 1976. He went to the US for graduate studies, receiving an M.S. (Electrical Engineering) from Rice University, Houston in 1979 and Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1986.