"Some of greatest computer scientists in US are of Indian origin," says Stanford Professor

Feb 18, 2026

New Delhi [India], February 19 : Surya Ganguli, Associate Professor, Applied Physics and Senior Fellow at Stanford Institute said that the best computer scientists in the US are of Indian origin.
Ganguli, while talking to ANI, said that India is now poised to retain a lot of its talent and really grow homegrown, sovereign AI.
"Yeah, it's been a fantastic program. India has exported so much technical talent to the rest of the world. I was born in India, and now I'm in the US. Some of the greatest computer scientists in the US are of Indian origin. What I see is an incredible excitement amongst the young people here in India, incredible talent here. And I think India is now poised to retain a lot of its talent and really grow homegrown, sovereign AI. And I'd be very excited about that," he said.
"I think there's a role for regulation in governing AI for specific applications. But I think in general, as we're innovating early in the stage, it's very important not to bring very, very heavy-handed innovation early on to stifle innovation, I think," he added.
Ganguli said that there is nothing wrong with sensible regulation, and that science should be developed for reliability.
"There's nothing wrong with sensible regulation, but overburdened regulation early on can very much stifle innovation. I think in science, what you want is reliability. So now that we have systems that can verify what's going on in verifiable domains like coding and math, and in some cases physics, you can start to get the levels of reliability you want. But in other domains like law, social interactions, you don't have the reliability that you want. So it's gonna be on a case by case basis," he said.
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is being held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. It started on February 16 and will run up to February 20, 2026. The Summit brought together government policymakers, industry AI experts, academicians, technology innovators and civil society from across the world at New Delhi to advance global discussions on artificial intelligence.