Biography

Dr. Himanshu Asnani is an author, translator, and researcher.

His debut work in fiction—Horizons—released in May 2023 by Hachette India, is a collection of short stories on fundamental questions around life and death. His next work—The Forest of Love—a historical novel set in 16th century Mughal India—is expected to be released in 2025 by Fingerprint. It is coming-of-age saga of love, war, escape, and self-discovery against the backdrop of bhakti renaissance.

A connoisseur of literature, linguistics and classical music, Himanshu actively conducts research in the areas of philosophy, social psychology and history. He travels extensively, engaging with community, corporate and university audiences across India and abroad through seminars and workshops. He is also involved in translating ancient wisdom texts into English and regional languages.

Himanshu previously held a full-time faculty position at the School of Technology and Computer Science (STCS) in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. He has also held visiting appointments at the University of Washington-Seattle, Stanford University and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. His research interests included artificial intelligence, machine learning, information theory and statistics. He received his BTech from IIT Bombay (IIT JEE Mains All India Rank 4, IIT JEE Screening All India Rank 1) and his MS and PhD from Stanford University, all in Electrical Engineering. After his postgraduation, he worked at Ericsson Silicon Valley, following which he got involved in some edu-startups, which particularly focused on fostering education in underprivileged areas of developing countries with limited access to the English language, the internet and electricity. His accolades include the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, the Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award, the Amazon Catalyst Fellowship and a Bronze Medal in the International Chemistry Olympiad.