Prasad Ram

Ram was born in Tiptur of Karnataka state in southern India. He obtained his B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1987. He then went on to pursue his master's degree (M.S) and Ph.D. in Computer Science, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Ram led Google Books for Education in Mountain View, CA. Prior to that he was CTO Google in India where he led projects on Maps, News, Translation Technologies, Search and Ads. Prior to Google, Pram led engineering teams at Yahoo! where he led the creation of products (Yahoo! Audio/Image search, Yahoo! 360, and Yahoo! Hotjobs) and platforms (Spam Filtering, Behavioral Targeting, Mobile Data Analysis, Vertical Search, Content Management). He started his career as a research scientist at Xerox Research where he worked on Digital Rights Management. Pram is Council Member and Chair of the Education Committee at California Council of Science and Technology, and he is a Board Member at Leadership Public Schools.

While working at Google, Ram devised a prototype of the Learning Navigator as a 20% Project while at Google. Navigator is a "GPS" for learning, that empowers students with real-time data about their proficiencies and choices of learning activities, so they can choose their learning path and pace. What began as a "20% effort" evolved into a year-long pilot in India that included 1,000 students across 25 classrooms. Ram subsequently left Google to found Gooru[2] as a non-profit to develop the free Learning Navigator with a mission to honor the human right to education. In August 2016, it was announced Gooru would be partnering with the LMS developer itslearning to create 35 curriculum courses using Gooru's extensive open content catalog.[3]

• "Gooru". Retrieved 16 June 2013.