LFL PARTNER: JOY THOMAS FOUNDATION

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Joy Aloysius Thomas (1963 – 2020) was an Indian-American STEM Genius. Joy was most recently a leading Data Scientist with Google Cloud. He joined Google Cloud through their acquisition of Apigee where he was Chief Scientist. Prior to Apigee, Joy was Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at two successful tech startups, InsightsOne and Stratify (acquired by Iron Mountain). Joy’s journey into the Silicon Valley technology startup world was preceded by seminal contributions at IBM Research and Stanford in information theory, data analytics and large scale data mining.

Joy’s remarkable journey to Stanford started in 1984, after his schooling at St. Joseph’s Boys High School and college at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, India where he graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering. Stories of Joy’s exploits at IIT are legendary. He was admitted to the IIT as a precocious 16-year old, after securing All-India Rank #1 in the famed Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) which has an admission rate of less than 2% and is arguably one of the most competitive entrance exams in the world. 

Joy completed his PhD at Stanford University between 1984-1990 on the Charles LeGeyt Fortescue scholarship, awarded by the IEEE and the  IBM PhD fellowship.

While Joy’s accomplishments and accolades are too numerous to capture in full,  there’s one common theme about Joy that resonates and emerges across everyone who has had the honor and privilege of knowing him over the years. And that’s Joy’s humility, generosity, presence, and undivided attention to anyone he may be interacting with, at any time.

Joy along with Professor Tom Cover authored the book – ‘Elements of Information Theory’, now in its second edition. It remains a fundamental textbook and an essential read for anyone who seeks to understand the mathematical underpinnings of communications & information theory, and wants to master the building blocks of cryptography, speech communications, and data science. The book is in active use by 10s of 1000s of students world-wide, with over 58,000 citations, and has achieved broad appeal in disciplines from Physics to Biology, and Genomics to Game Theory. 

Joy along with Professor Tom Cover authored the book – ‘Elements of Information Theory’, now in its second edition. It remains a fundamental textbook and an essential read for anyone who seeks to understand the mathematical underpinnings of communications & information theory, and wants to master the building blocks of cryptography, speech communications, and data science. The book is in active use by 10s of 1000s of students world-wide, with over 58,000 citations, and has achieved broad appeal in disciplines from Physics to Biology, and Genomics to Game Theory.