Sanjay Ghemawat
Google engineer who co-designed MapReduce, Bigtable and the Google File System
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- Honours
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- Most recent 2012
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Sanjay Ghemawat is an American computer scientist at Google who, with Jeff Dean, designed many of the systems behind Google’s infrastructure, including the Google File System, MapReduce, Bigtable and Spanner. They shared the 2012 ACM Prize in Computing.
Biography
Background
Ghemawat was born in Indiana and grew up in Kota, Rajasthan, India, where his father was a professor. He studied at Cornell and earned his PhD at MIT under Barbara Liskov.
Google systems
After working at DEC’s Systems Research Center, he joined Google in 1999. He co-authored the Google File System (2003), MapReduce (2004) and Bigtable (2006) papers, which shaped big-data computing worldwide.
Later projects
He worked on Spanner, a globally distributed database, and on TensorFlow, and helped create LevelDB.
Recognition
He and Jeff Dean received the ACM Prize in Computing in 2012, and he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009. In 2026 he co-founded the AI research start-up Discovery Loop with Dean.
Timeline
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1999
Joins Google
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2003
Google File System paper
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2004
MapReduce paper
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2006
Bigtable paper
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2011
LevelDB released
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2012
ACM Prize in Computing
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2015
TensorFlow
Notable works
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2003
The Google File System Paper
With Gobioff and Leung.
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2004
MapReduce Paper
With Jeff Dean.
Awards and honours
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ACM Prize in Computing
2012
Did you know?
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1
The New Yorker profiled his partnership with Jeff Dean in 2018.
-
2
He grew up in Kota, India.
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3
He and Dean often program together at one computer.
Connections
Frequently asked
Who is Sanjay Ghemawat?
Sanjay Ghemawat is an American computer scientist at Google who, with Jeff Dean, designed many of the systems behind Google’s infrastructure, including the Google File System, MapReduce, Bigtable and Spanner. They shared the 2012 ACM Prize in Computing.
Where is Sanjay Ghemawat from?
Sanjay Ghemawat was born in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States.
What is Sanjay Ghemawat known for?
Sanjay Ghemawat is best known for Google File System; MapReduce; Bigtable; Spanner; TensorFlow.
What awards has Sanjay Ghemawat received?
Notable honours include ACM Prize in Computing (2012).
References
- Sanjay Ghemawat — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Sanjay Ghemawat (Q32751373) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Sanjay Ghemawat”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more
External links
About this profile
- Researched by the TrackFame editorial team; reviewed by Sanjay Sokal under our editorial policy
- First published 4 November 2026
- Last updated
Cite this page
“Sanjay Ghemawat.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/sanjay-ghemawat
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