Odisha Engineer Pranav Khaitan Plays Vital Role In WFP’s Noble Peace Prize

Bhubaneswar: Odisha has all the reasons to be proud following the announcement of Nobel Peace Prize 2020, which was awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts in combating hunger.

Odisha resident Pranav Khaitan played a prominent role as WFP’s Advisory Council member and Artificial Intelligence technology leader.

Khaitan is a 2009 BTech in Computer Science & Engineering from NIT Rourkela. He also has a Masters from Stanford University, USA and is currently a Senior Engineering Lead at Google USA. His family is from Rourkela.

Soon after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, the WFP thanked Pranav and recognised his leadership in pioneering the development of artificial intelligence to revolutionise humanitarian operations.

The WFP has been doing outstanding work for decades and has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of hunger.

The partnership between Google and the WFP started about two years ago with Khaitan partnering with them to ask “How can AI help reduce global hunger?”

Khaitan then led his team to build AI technologies to assess the disaster damage within the crucial 24 to 72 hours, to make the delivery of the aid, timely and efficient.