24th November 2022 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon Civil Engineering Hall
Dr. Suresh Katta
Dr. Suresh Katta was born and brought up in a small town called Hindupur in Andhra Pradesh, and, like many in that generation, he dreamed big, and pursued higher studies in the United States with much naivety. Dr. Katta founded Saama Technologies in 1997 in his children’s bedroom with the vision of turning raw data into actionable, intuitive intelligence that enables leaders to make timely and reliable decisions for complex critical global problems.
Dr. Katta applied his lifelong love of mathematics to solve complex data analysis well before big data became ubiquitous. He built Saama starting with his wife, Radha, as cofounder, but all the while building it meticulously, bringing in key people to guide and govern Saama's journey. When the pandemic hit all of us in the world disproportionately, causing economic and health crises since the beginning of 2020. We all called upon our best of the best scientists at biopharmaceuticals to mitigate it fast in a healthy way via suitable pre and post COVID-19 treatments. In turn, the biopharmaceuticals called Dr. Suresh Katta at Saama to help them with the required AI technology in bringing out treatments super-fast in months vs. long, drawn-out years. Saama's AI platform processed up to 300 million clinical data points per day from COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Katta takes pride with humility in bearing a critical role in bringing out the world's first vaccine and therapy to the market by November 2020. While it is challenging to connect with high-profile people, Dr. Katta has cajoled leaders onto his board or as advisors over the years with his deep belief in learning from them. Today, Saama has about 2,200 intelligent, driven people passionate about math, data, and analytics spread over three continents, with their head offices in Silicon Valley. However, India is a proud home office stationing more than 1,700 Saamaites.
Over the past 25 years of Dr. Katta’s leadership, Saama has earned its right to become a software analytics platform of choice for many Fortune 500 enterprises, in turn generating over a US $1B profitable revenue. Several organizations have recognized Dr. Katta as one of the top 100 most inspirational executives in the pharma industry. He has been a frequent contributor to industry publications and a featured speaker at industry conferences. Dr. Katta has multiple US patents for his innovative approaches. Dr. Katta serves on the board of Stimon Center, one of the top think tanks in the world that promotes international security and shared prosperity. Over the past decade, he has taken up passionately assisting scholastically talented kids from poor neighborhoods to pursue engineering or medical schools through his family's charitable foundation.
He earned his MS in Computer Engineering at the University of Louisiana and his BE in Electronics Engineering at RVCE in Bangalore. He was conferred with an honorary doctorate by MIT ADT University.