Two Telugu professors associated with IIT Hyderabad elected Fellows of Royal Society

Prof Chennupati Jagadish and Mallikarjun Tatipamula, both from small Telugu villages, have been elected Fellows of the Royal Society. They work in semiconductor and telecommunications and were honoured by IIT-Hyderabad

Sangareddy: In a remarkable achievement by two Telugu people, both born in small villages, Prof Chennupati Jagadish and Mallikarjun Tatipamula have been elected as Fellows of the prestigious Royal Society (FRS).

Prof. Jagadish was born at Vallurupalem in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, while Dr. Mallikarjun was born in a village in Warangal district. Both were associated with the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H) as visiting professors, and work in the semiconductor and electronics and communications fields respectively. In honour of their election, IIT-H Director Prof BS Murty organised an interaction with both of them virtually on Wednesday.

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While Prof Jagadish joined the interaction from Australia, Mallikarjun joined from Silicon Valley, USA. Speaking on the occasion, Prof Jagadish, who was brought up at Arekiyalapadu in Khammam district of Telangana, said the memory of reading under kerosene lamps in his village in the 1960s was still fresh in memory. Terming it an honour to get elected to the FRS, Prof Jagadish credited his students, scholars, institutes and family for the achievement.

Dr Mallikarjun, an NIT graduate in Electronics and Communication Engineering, said he had waited for 10 years to get a landline connection at his home in the 1980s, talking about the state of telecommunication in India when he was a child. When he left India in the 1990s, he said there were no mobile phones at all. Now, Mallikarjun is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Ericsson, a global leader in the field.

This early experience led to a career spanning more than 35 years in the telecommunication field, during which he has contributed to every major wave of telecom transformation — from the advent of the mobile internet, to scaling the global internet backbone, to architecting the foundations of 5G networks. Today, he is helping shape the next generation of connectivity: AI-native 6G networks built for intelligence, inclusivity, and sustainability.