Global Indian – Dr. Joy Thomas

Dr. Joy Thomas was an Indian American expert in information theory, author and data scientist at Google. Dr. Thomas was born in Kerala, he did his schooling at St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School in Bangalore. He did his graduation from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He later migrated to the US to do his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1984.

Profession

At Stanford he collaborated with Professor Thomas Cover, an authority on information theory to co-author the book- Elements of Information Theory (1991) which is considered as a definitive book on this abstract subject.

He joined IBM research as a staff member in 1990 where he worked at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. After this he was involved with the founding of two startups- Stratify and InsightsOne.

Dr. Thomas’ research at IBM contributed to the development of MXT memory doubling technology. He was adjunct professor at Columbia University and Stanford University. He also held a number of patents. He was working as a data scientist in Google till his death on September 28 this year.

Achievements

Dr. Joy Thomas was an achiever right from his student days, he got first position in the All India Rank in the IIT Joint Entrance Exam and got a perfect score in GRE for his admission to a US university.