In every era, there are great personalities to whom much of the progress of civilization during that period can be attributed. Krishna C. Mukherjee is one such distinguished personality. He is a computer scientist, software engineer, business leader and an Artificial Intelligence (AI) expert. His pioneering work has helped to usher in the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0.
Where It All Started
Krishna C. Mukherjee was born in India. Since his early life, he has had a keen interest in technology. After completing his high-school education from Don Bosco School in Kolkata with flying colors, he studied at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) which are some of the most prestigious engineering institutes in India. Mukherjee earned his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and his Master of Technology degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur. He wrote his Master’s thesis on AI, planning and temporal logic programming.
With his excellent academic credentials and research abilities, Mukherjee attracted the attention of the leading technology companies in 1987 and 1988. He received prestigious offers from these companies while he was still a young student at IIT Kanpur. He accepted Microsoft’s offer. Soon after completing his Master’s degree in 1988, he relocated to the USA and joined Microsoft at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Success at Microsoft
Krishna C. Mukherjee went on to function as a Chief Software Architect and Engineer for Microsoft. He was the key to the architecture, design and development of Microsoft’s famous products: Windows, Office and Visual Studio. He led the research and development of Office for Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. He built the proofing tools for Office. He oversaw the creation of intelligent features such as AutoCorrect, AutoFormat and Office Assistant. He designed and developed IntelliSense for Visual Studio.
Under Mukherjee’s leadership, Microsoft implemented domain-driven design principles. Mukherjee was the driving force behind Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) technologies which have been facilitating collaboration between diverse teams within organizations. These advanced technologies make it possible for the user experience (UX) designers and the software developers to work together and build functionally powerful applications with rich user interfaces. The UX designers work with the user interface design tool Blend to generate the XAML markup files. The software developers import the XAML markup files into Visual Studio. They bind the XAML user interfaces to the business logic components which they program in languages like C# and Visual Basic. The WPF and XAML applications have superior performance and are easily maintainable.
Organizational Efficiency and SaaS
In 1996, Krishna C. Mukherjee started working with the global information services company Wolters Kluwer to automate workflows. At that time, filling out and filing paperwork was exclusively a manual activity.
Mukherjee stepped up to the challenge and invented the electronic filing system popularly known as Intelligent Filing Manager (INTELLIFM). The INTELLIFM software is an AI system which combines specifications stated by the domain experts, dynamic graphical user interface generation, logic programming and forms technologies to automate workflows and high-volume forms processing. It incorporates an adaptive Question and Answer (Q&A) system to expedite paperwork in a highly efficient manner which is unprecedented in any industry.
As the Chief Information Officer, Mukherjee transitioned Wolters Kluwer from paper-based to automated electronic systems. He leveraged AI to pave the way for performing business transactions on the Internet or the cloud. In the 2000s, Mukherjee popularized cloud computing and established the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. His distributed architectures were used for building the award-winning SaaS applications: CTAdvantage.com, hCue.com, MediRegs.com and LienSolutions.com. Mukherjee selected Microsoft server-side technologies to build these applications. In 2010, Microsoft released the cloud computing service Windows Azure which is presently known as Microsoft Azure. Microsoft launched its SaaS product Office 365 in 2011.
Scientific Valuations and FinTech
Krishna C. Mukherjee started working with the finance industry in 2004. He served in leadership positions at three of the largest finance companies: Bloomberg, Citadel and UBS.
During this time, Mukherjee gave the finance industry Bloomberg Valuation Service (BVAL) which was launched in 2008. BVAL is a SaaS product which utilizes AI and quantitative algorithms to facilitate investment decisions. It gives organizations a powerful scientific model for determining prices of financial instruments across multiple asset classes.
E-Commerce and AutoPay
Over the past few years, online shopping has become the most popular way to purchase goods. Data is being increasingly stored on the cloud and is available for analysis. E-commerce has become a necessity for businesses to survive in a highly-competitive market.
Following his success in the finance industry, Krishna C. Mukherjee directed the development of the heavily used e-commerce site IconParkingSystems.com which is used to reserve and pay for parking spaces. He made user-friendly innovations in the bill paying systems. In 2012, he developed the payment platform called AutoPay which allows the customers to pay their bills online by using electronic checks, debit cards and credit cards. The AutoPay platform is secure, reliable and fast. It reduces the probability of making late payments and the penalties thus incurred by the customers.
Further, Mukherjee led the development of applications for Omni-channel retailing. He implemented digital wallet systems to enhance the convenience, security and privacy of in-store and online transactions. He developed AI-based product recommendation systems to provide personalized services to customers. He designed Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and chatbot systems which use natural language processing and machine learning to deliver exemplary customer experience and reduce operating costs for businesses.
A Career Marked by Achievements
During his professional career, the versatile Krishna C. Mukherjee has solved a set of problems and then moved on to address a new domain of challenges. He has done this repeatedly with success. Thereby, he has made significant contributions across a wide range of industries. He has received many awards and recognitions for his stellar work.
