ϲ

Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • ϲ Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • ϲ Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM

Varshney Graduate Scholarship Established in the College of Engineering and Computer Science

Thursday, May 2, 2019, By Matt Wheeler
Share
College of Engineering and Computer SciencefacultyGraduate SchoolscholarshipsStudents
man and woman standing

Pramod K. and Anju Varshney

For the first time this fall, the Pramod K. and Anju Varshney Endowed Graduate Scholarship will be awarded in the . The scholarship will provide financial assistance to graduate students pursuing a doctoral degree in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

 is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, director of ϲ’s , and an adjunct professor of radiology at Upstate Medical University.

He and his wife, Anju, have been members of the ϲ community ever since Pramod joined the college as an assistant professor in the seventies. He has spent his entire professional life as a faculty member at ϲ, and in their 43 years in Central New York, their devotion to students in the classroom, and in life, has produced a worldwide community of alumni with a strong affinity for their alma mater.

As an educator and researcher, Pramod is renowned for his seminal contributions in the area of information fusion. His body of research also focuses on distributed sensor networks and data fusion, detection and estimation theory, wireless communications, physical layer security, image processing, and radar. Over the years, he has supervised the dissertations of over 60 Ph.D. students. His instruction and mentoring have launched and boosted the careers of many.

Throughout the years, the Varshneys’ support of students has extended far and beyond academic success. They commonly welcome students into their home and help ensure that they feel a sense of belonging, something the Varshneys think is especially important for international students. Pramod credits Anju with fostering these connections. He says, “She creates a family environment. Because of that special connection, we can go to any part of the world, and my former students are there to welcome us, including in industry here in ϲ.”

Anju adds, “Pramod’s students are like adopted sons and daughters. When our sons were young, they called them aunts and uncles. All these years later, the students are like nieces and nephews to them. We call them our academic family.”

She says that she and Pramod were inspired to establish this scholarship as a way to “give back to the establishment that has supported them all these years.” Its goal is to promote research by supporting a student in the midst of completing a ǰ  doctorate program.

“These fields have defined the societal changes that have taken place, and all of us are beneficiaries,” says Pramod. “These fields will continue to evolve very rapidly. Our scholarship provides fuel to this technological evolution. When I first came to ϲ in ’76, there were no personal computers. It was all mainframe. Then came laptops, smartphones, autonomous vehicles, sensors everywhere, the internet of things. That is all because of research in these fields.”

The scholarship will further establish the Varshneys’ legacy on the ϲ campus, but don’t mistake this as a signal of the end of their contributions to the community. They both have much more to give and no immediate plans to retire. Their current “academic family” includes seven current Ph.D. students, two master’s students and many other research contributors, with more joining this fall.

“It’s important to us that we can give back while we are here, not after we move on to the next stage in our lives,” says Pramod. “We want to see the impact firsthand. We are here to stay.”

The Varshneys hope that they will be able to increase the scope of their scholarship through the additional support of alumni gifts. If you would like to contribute to the Pramod K. and Anju Varshney Endowed Graduate Scholarship Fund, .

  • Author

Matt Wheeler

  • Recent
  • Vintage Over Digital: Alumnus Dan Cohen’s Voyager CD Bag Merges Music and Fashion
    Monday, July 7, 2025, By John Boccacino
  • Empowering Learners With Personalized Microcredentials, Stackable Badges
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Hope Alvarez
  • WISE Women’s Business Center Awarded Grant From Empire State Development, Celebrates Entrepreneur of the Year Award
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Dawn McWilliams
  • Paulo De Miranda G’00 Received ‘Much More Than a Formal Education’ From Maxwell
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Jessica Youngman
  • Law Professor Receives 2025 Onondaga County NAACP Freedom Fund Award
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Robert Conrad

More In STEM

6 A&S Physicists Awarded Breakthrough Prize

Our universe is dominated by matter and contains hardly any antimatter, a notion which still perplexes top scientists researching at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but now nearly everything—solid, liquid, gas or plasma—is…

Setting the Standard and Ensuring Justice

Everyone knows DNA plays a crucial role in solving crimes—but what happens when the evidence is of low quantity, degraded or comes from multiple individuals? One of the major challenges for forensic laboratories is interpreting this type of DNA data…

Student Innovations Shine at 2025 Invent@SU Presentations

Eight teams of engineering students presented designs for original devices to industry experts and investors at Invent@SU Final Presentations. This six-week summer program allows students to design, prototype and pitch their inventions to judges. During the program, students learn about…

WiSE Hosts the 2025 Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Undergraduate Research Prize Award Ceremony

This spring, Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) held its annual Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Award Ceremony. WiSE was honored to host distinguished guest speaker Joan-Emma Shea, who presented “Self-Assembly of the Tau Protein: Computational Insights Into Neurodegeneration.” Shea…

Endowed Professorship Recognizes Impact of a Professor, Mentor and Advisor

Bao-Ding “Bob” Cheng’s journey to ϲ in pursuit of graduate education in the 1960s was long and arduous. He didn’t have the means for air travel, so he voyaged more than 5,000 nautical miles by boat from his home…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

For the Media

Find an Expert
© 2025 ϲ. All Rights Reserved.