Pethuru Raj, PhD, is the Principal AI Architect at Infocion Inc., Bangalore. Previously, he served as Vice President and Chief Architect at the AI division of Reliance Jio Platforms Ltd., and held roles at IBM Global Cloud Center of Excellence (CoE), Wipro Consulting Services (WCS), and Robert Bosch Corporate Research (CR). He brings over 25 years of experience in the IT industry and nine years of research experience.
He completed his CSIR-sponsored PhD at Anna University, Chennai, and continued with UGC-sponsored postdoctoral research in the Department of Computer Science and Automation at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He subsequently earned two international research fellowships (JSPS and JST) to work as a research scientist for 3.5 years at two leading Japanese universities.
Born in Kanyakumari, where he completed his schooling and college studies, his doctoral research (1997, under Prof. Ponnammal Natarajan) applied mathematical concepts such as finite automata, applied algebra, and formal languages to biological processes — splicing and recombination of DNA sequences — contributing to the field of DNA computing.