Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is the Trustee of Deshpande foundation and a Life Member of MIT.

Dr. Deshpande has pursued an entrepreneurial career for the last three decades. He is involved in starting several companies including Cascade Communications, Sycamore Networks, Coral Networks, Tejas Networks, Cimaron, Webdialogs, Airvana, Sandstone Capital, A123 Systems and Curata. Dr. Deshpande’s Cascade Communications (founded in 1990) developed packet-switching technology critical to handling growing Internet traffic. His Sycamore Networks (founded in 1998) pioneered intelligent optical networking methods that met the Internet’s need for increased bandwidth.

Dr. Deshpande lives in Boston and serves as a life member of the MIT Corporation, and his generous donations have made possible MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.

Leveraging the experience gained at the MIT Center, Deshpande Foundation has set up three other centers; Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship in India, Merrimack Valley Social Entrepreneurship Sandbox in Lowell/Lawrence Massachusetts and Pond-Deshpande Center at the University of New Brunswick in Canada

Dr. Deshpande holds a B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology – Madras, an M.E. from the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and Ph.D from Queens University in Canada.

Deshpande co-chairs a National Council to support President Obama’s innovation and entrepreneurship strategy.