Prith Banerjee

Prithviraj Banerjee
Born	1960 Khartoum, Sudan
Occupation(s)	Computer scientist, technology executive
Known for	Chief Technology Officer at ANSYS; former Executive Vice President and CTO at Schneider Electric; Senior Vice President of Research and Director of HP Labs at Hewlett Packard; CTO and Executive Vice President at ABB Group

Prithviraj "Prith" Banerjee (born 1960) is an Indian American expert in computer science, currently holding the position of Chief Technology Officer at ANSYS. He also holds board memberships at Cray and CUBIC. Before this, he was a Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry, where he led the Internet of Things and Digital Transformation Advisory Services within the Global Industrial Practice. His prior experience includes serving as Executive Vice President and CTO at Schneider Electric, Senior Vice President of Research and Director of HP Labs at Hewlett Packard, and CTO and Executive Vice President at ABB Group. Additionally, he managed Global Technology R&D at Accenture and began his professional journey as a professor at both the University of Illinois and Northwestern University.

Early life and career

Banerjee was born in Khartoum, Sudan. He completed his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984 and 1982, respectively, following a B.Tech in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1981.

Spanning 22 years in academia, including a faculty role at Northwestern University, Banerjee took a sabbatical to establish AccelChip Inc. between 2000 and 2002. This enterprise specialized in electronic design automation products and services. Under his leadership as president and CEO, AccelChip secured $2.3 million in funding, expanded to a team of 25 employees, and achieved $800,000 in revenue before being acquired by Xilinx Inc. in 2006. Subsequently, he founded BINACHIP Inc., another company focused on electronic design automation, where he acted as chairman and chief scientist.

Banerjee has provided guidance to numerous technology firms through technical advisory boards such as Ambit Design Systems, Atrenta, and Calypto Design Systems. He has authored approximately 350 research papers covering VLSI computer-aided design, parallel computing, and compilers, written the book Parallel Algorithms for VLSI CAD, and played significant roles in industry conferences as both chairperson and committee member.

HP role

In 2007, Banerjee joined Hewlett Packard as senior vice president of research, leading HP Labs—the company’s central research division with seven locations worldwide. He reoriented the labs to focus on fewer projects with higher potential impact while actively integrating external innovations. Overseeing a team of 500 researchers, his objective was to develop technologies positioned five to fifteen years ahead of HP’s mainstream R&D initiatives.

He advocated for maintaining research facilities globally—not for cost reduction but to harness innovation unique to local markets—with labs situated in countries including India, Russia, China, and Israel.

Banerjee is a member of the Boards of Directors for Cray, Inc. and CUBIC Systems. He has also served on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the United States National Academies.

ABB's Chief Technology Officer

On April 5, 2012, ABB Group appointed Banerjee to its Executive Committee as Chief Technology Officer. In this role, he was responsible for directing the technology strategy across both corporate functions and divisional units while managing over 8,000 scientists and engineers across seven global ABB Research Centers.

Accenture's Managing Director of Global Technology R&D

On June 5, 2013, Accenture named Banerjee as Managing Director for Global Technology Research and Development. In this capacity, he led Accenture Technology Labs, the firm’s worldwide R&D arm focused on emerging technologies, and spearheaded the company’s annual Technology Vision study, providing strategic guidance to organizations on utilizing technology to improve competitive advantage and business performance.

CTO at Schneider Electric

Prith Banerjee held the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Schneider Electric from September 1, 2015, until June 15, 2017. He was responsible for driving innovation and technological differentiation, overseeing research and development operations across five business divisions with a workforce of 8,000 and managing an R&D budget of €1.2 billion. Under his leadership, R&D productivity increased significantly, and he championed the Innovation and R&D Simplification Programs as part of the "Schneider is On" strategy.

Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry

Between June 15, 2017, and September 30, 2018, Banerjee worked as a Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry. His focus was on Internet of Things (IoT) and Digital Transformation consulting within the Global Industrial Practice sector.

CTO at Ansys

Banerjee assumed the role of Chief Technology Officer at Ansys beginning October 1, 2018. He is responsible for shaping the company’s long-term technological vision, emphasizing high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud infrastructure, and digital engineering solutions.

Awards and honors

Banerjee has been recognized as a Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery (2000), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1995), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2005).

His accolades include the Frederick Emmons Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education in 1996 and the Taylor L. Booth Education Award presented by the IEEE Computer Society in 2000.

Additional distinctions he has earned are the University Scholar Award from the University of Illinois (1993), Senior Xerox Research Award (1992), Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (1987), IBM Young Faculty Development Award (1986), and the President of India Gold Medal from IIT Kharagpur (1981).

External links

• Banerjee on LinkedIn