Indian American Professors Honored With Carolina Teaching Awards

Chancellor Lee H. Roberts and interim Provost Jim Dean announced 27 campus-wide honorees selected from more than 1,000 nominations submitted across academic units. Snehalkumar “Neil” S. Gaikwad and Montek Singh were among those recognized with the Tanner Award, which celebrates exceptional commitment to student instruction and mentorship.

Gaikwad is an assistant professor in UNC’s School of Data Science and Society and holds an appointment in the Department of Computer Science. Born in India and raised in Indonesia, Singapore, Austria, and the United States, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and later completed master’s degrees and a doctorate in society-centered artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At UNC, Gaikwad serves as founding director of the Society-Centered AI Lab, where his research focuses on human-AI collaborative systems, machine learning, algorithmic fairness, and technological policy.

Singh is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science. He received a Bachelor of Technology in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, followed by a master’s and doctorate in computer science from Columbia University. He joined the UNC faculty in 2001 and specializes in high-speed asynchronous pipelines, digital circuit design, microelectronic timing, and computer architecture.

The two educators are among several Indian-origin academics recognized for their contributions to American higher education, highlighting the impact of rigorous research and dedicated teaching in data science and computing at Carolina.