Dr. Viraj Kumar

Research Professor in Computer Science and Engineering
Dayananda Sagar University

Dr Viraj Kumar is a Research Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. His primary research interests are in Educational Technology and Computer Science education. After completing his B.Sc. from St Stephen’s College (1998), M.Sc. from IIT Bombay (2000, Institute Silver Medal), and MS (2004) as well as PhD (2007) in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Dr Kumar taught in the US for 4 years. At UIUC, he was ranked Outstanding on the Incomplete List of Teachers (2010) and received the Rose Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education (2011) before returning to pursue his passion: improving the quality of computing education in India. Prior to joining DSU, Dr Kumar was an Assistant Professor at NIIT University (2011-2013), a Professor at PES University (2013-2018), and a Visiting Professor at IISc Bangalore (2018-2020) where he continues to teach undergraduate Computer Science courses.

In Educational Technology, Dr Kumar has received research funding from the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). He has served as co-chair for IEEE’s Technology for Education (T4E) conference in 2016 and 2018. His research has been published in premier IEEE conferences (ICCE and ICALT). Based on his expertise in educational technology, he was invited to serve on two Task Groups of the Karnataka Knowledge Commission in 2014 and 2016. In 2017, he was inducted into the Technical Secretariat to the MHRD (now Ministry of Education) Committee to draft the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

In Computer Science education, Dr Kumar has received research funding from Microsoft Research India and has collaborated with ACM India, NPTEL, and Google on designing and conducting the National Programming Aptitude Test (2017). Since 2015, he has been an active contributor to ACM India, and was elected to the ACM India Council in 2020. Since 2018, he has served as co-chair for ACM India’s COMPUTE conference for CS education. He has published CS educational research articles in premier ACM conferences including L@S, ITiCSE, and SIGCSE. He presently serves on an AICTE committee to create a Question Bank based on AICTE’s Examination Reforms Policy.

Dr Kumar’s publications can be found at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Viraj_Kumar