Dr. Vigyan Singhal
(BT/CSE/1989)
Dr. Vigyan Singhal is Vice President of Hardware Engineering at NVIDIA, where he leads engineering efforts in hardware design and verification. He is a pioneer of formal verification - the use of mathematical methods and automated reasoning to prove the correctness of complex digital systems. Over more than three decades, his career has combined foundational research in formal methods with entrepreneurship, translating academic ideas into technologies that have shaped modern semiconductor design.
Dr. Singhal received his B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1989, and went on to earn his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral research, carried out under the guidance of Prof. Robert K. Brayton, focused on the formal verification of digital systems and contributed early methods for formal reasoning about hardware.
He began his professional career as a Research Scientist at Cadence Design Systems. He then founded Jasper Design Automation, serving first as Founder and CEO and later as Vice President of Engineering and CTO. His technology made Jasper the leading provider of formal verification tools for the chip design industry. Jasper was acquired by Cadence Design Systems. Dr. Singhal subsequently founded Oski Technology to build deep human expertise in applying formal verification, so that critical chip design problems beyond the reach of automated tools could be solved. Oski merged with Chip Design Pvt. Ltd., founded by Mr. Rahul Joshi (BT/EE/1988), and built teams of experts in Gurugram, India, and Budapest, Hungary - a large fraction of them being IIT Kanpur graduates across departments. Most major chip design companies became Oski customers, and NVIDIA, after working with Oski for more than a decade, acquired the company in 2021.
Dr. Singhal's technical and entrepreneurial contributions made formal verification practical for the chip design industry. He has authored numerous research papers in the field, including influential work presented at major conferences. At NVIDIA, the acquisition of Oski brought his team's formal verification expertise into the company's hardware engineering organisation, strengthening its investment in verification as its products have grown increasingly complex across accelerated computing, networking and autonomous systems.
Beyond industry, Dr. Singhal has maintained a strong connection with academia. He regularly teaches formal verification at UC Berkeley, Princeton and Stanford. In July 2026, he joined the Board of Trustees of the University of California Berkeley Foundation, adding an institutional leadership role to his longstanding relationship with the university.
His career represents a rare combination of research, technological innovation and entrepreneurship. By carrying formal methods from academia into practical tools and solutions, Dr. Singhal has advanced the state of the art in verifying increasingly sophisticated chip designs, leaving an enduring mark on both the semiconductor industry and the academic development of formal verification.
Honouring his pioneering contributions to formal verification, electronic design automation and semiconductor engineering, and his distinguished impact as a researcher, technology entrepreneur and leader in advancing reliable chip design, IIT Kanpur confers upon Dr. Vigyan Singhal the Distinguished Alumni Award 2026 under the category of Entrepreneurship & Management.