In a freewheeling chat with this woman in tech, her story discovered more about her journey with IBM, working at the forefront of AI and blockchain, and how she has been supporting other women at the workplace.

IBM Research is focused on building trusted AI on IBM’s scalable hybrid cloud platforms and applying it to various domains, including retail and agritech in India. While AI is being leveraged in many ways, Gargi points out that, at IBM Research, they want to move from “narrow AI”, where its use is restricted to single tasks and domains, to “broad AI”.

One area where broad AI will work efficiently is in the field of agritech. IBM Research is combining multiple global satellite-based information sources to “compute actionable agronomic insights (such as crop health stress alert, water stress, pest/disease risk forecast, etc.) for individual farmers at sub-acre level. This combined with data from The Weather Company and Watson has led to the launch of the Watson Decision platform for Agriculture.

As Director, IBM Research India and CTO, IBM India and South Asia, and with more than 15 years at IBM. Gargi has been leading teams, and says her style of leadership is people-centric.

Gargi’s mother was a doctor and her father was an engineer. After completing her computer science and engineering degree from Jadavpur University in Kolkata. Gargi moved to the US where she spent seven years and also worked with a startup. She had finsihed a PhD in Computer Science from University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
In 2011, she moved to Bengaluru where IBM Research was being set up. Her PhD was in networking and distributed systems.

Gargi believes blockchain has been one of the most disruptive technologies. Once in a decade, a technology comes that changes the roadmap and blockchain is it. At IBM Research, blockchain is being applied to build new tech.