Prof. Dr. Mitra Purandare – Applied AI Researcher & Professor at OST

Prof. Dr. Mitra Purandare is an AI researcher and professor at OST – Ostschweizer Fachhochschule, an applied sciences university focused on connecting academic work with realworld practice.

Her work focuses on bridging the gap between AI capabilities and practical deployment. A central theme across her activities is making advanced AI understandable, usable, and deployable in the real world.

She leads the AI Application and Deployment Lab at the Institute for Software, where her team works on applied AI systems including generative AI, AI agents, intelligent assistants, and datadriven decision support. Increasingly, her work also engages with questions of governance and responsible deployment, particularly as AI systems become more autonomous and embedded in critical workflows.

Her applied research spans domains such as social work, digital democracy, and medtech,reflecting a focus on societal as well as industrial use cases. Across these areas, the emphasis remains on building systems that can be integrated into real workflows rather than remaining at the level of prototypes.

At OST, she is also involved in shaping the Bachelor’s program in Artificial Intelligence, with an emphasis on practical, hands-on education aligned with the needs of industry and society. She is also engaged in continuing education at OST, contributing to MAS (Master of Advanced Studies) and CAS (Certificate of Advanced Studies) programs in AI-related topics, supporting professionals in applying artificial intelligence in practice.

She holds a PhD from ETH Zurich and a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from theUniversity of Colorado Boulder. Before joining OST, she was a Research Staff Member at IBM Research in Rüschlikon, where she worked on cloud computing, hardware acceleration, and cognitive systems. Her experience includes 22 patents and 21 scientific publications in applied AI and systems research.

Her work consistently focuses on one goal: ensuring that AI systems are not only advanced, but also usable, deployable, and responsible in practice.