Divy Thakkar

About

I am a Staff Program Manager at Google where I drive strategic research engamenets and investments. 

I am the global lead for academic investments to advance research using Gemini - Google's family of large language models (LLMs).  

Alongside, I lead Google's academic research strategy and investments in India, Southeast and South Asia. I am one of the founding members of Google Research India (now: Google Deepmind India)

My interests and work sit at the intersection of Program + Product strategy and research. 

Some of the areas my work covers are: 

I graduated with a Ph.D in Computer Science at City, University of London, advised by Alex Taylor (now at University of Edinburgh) and Anoop Sinha (Google). I hold a Masters in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Delhi and received my undergraduate degree in Computer Science at DA-IICT, Gandhinagar. I interned at eBay prior to joining Google. 

Note on collaborations and mentorship: 

I am passionate about helping people find their dream jobs and run a YouTube channel where I talk about careers beyond software engineering and how to get them. Check it out! 


Some Collaborators 

I am blessed to have worked with some of the most amazing researchers and practitioners in this domain whom I look up to. There are a tonne of colleagues who inspire me - you know who you are :)  

Most important collaborators are my parents, my big brother and my awesome set of friends who shape my thinking and continue to tolerate me. 

Contact 

I love to talk to people who have ideas on research and/or practice in the aforementioned domains and I am up for interesting conversations and collaborations. Email me at: divy[dot]thakkar[at]city[dot]ac[dot]uk. 

Follow me on Twitter (@divy93t) or add me on LinkedIn (@divythakkar)