Anant Agarwal
Born 1959 · Age 66
Indian computer architecture researcher, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT; founder/CTO of Tilera; founder and CEO of edX; leader in MOOCs and scalable multicore architecture research.
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Life & Career Timeline
Born in Mangalore, India
Anant Agarwal was born in Mangalore (then Mysore State, now Mangaluru, Karnataka).
Completed schooling at St. Aloysius Mangalore (approx.)
Attended and completed school at St. Aloysius, Mangalore (year of completion not given; estimate based on later university dates).
Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering (IIT Madras)
Received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
MS in Electrical Engineering (Stanford)
Completed Master of Science in electrical engineering at Stanford University.
PhD in Electrical Engineering (Stanford)
Received PhD from Stanford; thesis titled 'Analysis of Cache Performance for Operating Systems and Multiprogramming' under advisor John L. Hennessy.
Joined MIT faculty (approx.)
Began academic career at MIT (listed as professor of electrical engineering and computer science; exact hire year not stated—inferred to be shortly after PhD).
Led development of Alewife multiprocessor (approx.)
Led the Alewife project, an early cache-coherent scalable distributed shared-memory multiprocessor (explicitly mentioned; year not given; mid-1990s inferred).
Maurice Wilkes Award (ACM SIGARCH)
Received the Maurice Wilkes Award for contributions to computer architecture.
Worked on Raw tiled multicore processor (milestone)
Leader of the Raw project — an early tiled multicore processor with 16 cores (Raw is explicitly mentioned; the date is approximate in relation to other projects).
Guinness World Record: largest microphone array (LOUD project) (approx.)
Held a Guinness World Record for the largest microphone array related to the LOUD beamforming microphone array project (record is mentioned; date not provided; placed here as early-2000s estimate).
Published textbook 'Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits'
Co-authored with Jeffrey Lang; published by Morgan Kaufmann (ISBN 1-55860-735-8).
Founded Tilera Corporation (founder & CTO) (approx.)
Founder and CTO of Tilera, a fabless semiconductor company focusing on scalable multicore embedded processor design (founding year not given in sources; 2005 is an inferred founding timeframe).
Elected Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Inducted as an ACM Fellow in recognition of contributions to computing.
Appointed Director of MIT CSAIL
Named Director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
Organic Computing selected by Scientific American
Work on Organic Computing was selected by Scientific American as one of '10 World-Changing Ideas' (selection year given as 2011 in MIT page).
Co-founded/Launched edX (approx.)
edX was created as a joint partnership between MIT and Harvard to offer free online learning; Anant Agarwal is a founder (exact founding year not directly cited in the provided text; commonly known as 2012).
Taught first edX course in Circuits and Electronics; drew 155,000 students
Agarwal taught the first edX circuits and electronics course which drew ~155,000 students from 162 countries and had ~7,200 students pass (figures given on MIT/2U pages; course date implied to be at edX launch).
Named by Forbes among top 15 education innovators (2012)
Included in Forbes' list of top 15 education innovators (mentioned on MIT page with year 2012).
Appointed CEO of edX
Named CEO of edX (the Wikipedia entry and other sources list 2013 as the year he was appointed CEO).
Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
Elected as a member into the NAE for contributions to shared-memory and multicore computer architectures.
IIT Madras Distinguished Alumnus Award
Received the Distinguished Alumnus award from IIT Madras (reference dated 10 February 2015).
Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education
Awarded the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Higher Education (March 2016) for leadership in development of the MOOC movement.
Awarded Padma Shri by the Government of India
Received Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India (2017).
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (listing on MIT page)
Listed as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on MIT biography page (year not provided in source; placed in late-2010s as a likely timeframe).
Received the Yidan Prize for Education Research (USD 4M)
Awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research — described as the world's largest education award with a prize of USD 4,000,000.
edX learner milestone: over 40 million learners
In the 2U profile/interview, Agarwal stated edX had over 40 million learners on the platform (milestone reported when he joined 2U).
Formal combination of edX and 2U (company milestone/integration)
2U and edX officially joined together (the 2U article references this combination in November 2021; Agarwal joined 2U in a leadership role following the combination).
Joined 2U as Chief Open Education Officer
Announced as 2U's first Chief Open Education Officer following 2U's combination with edX; role includes stewarding the edX mission and serving on Open edX Technical Oversight Committee.
Continued leadership of Open edX technical direction (role)
Serves as a representative on Open edX's Technical Oversight Committee to guide the open-source platform's technical direction (role described in 2U profile; ongoing work into 2022+).
Ongoing public engagement and writing on education (milestone)
Authored opinion pieces, blogged on platforms like The Evolllution and Huffington Post, and regularly spoke publicly about reimagining higher education and modular credentials (activities are ongoing; dates span 2012–2023).
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