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Pratiksha Parsewar Named 2026 David Belanger Fellowship Award Winner

Business Analytics & Artificial Intelligence graduate student came to Stevens after eight years as a software engineer
Six people pose together in a bright room with large windows overlooking a waterway. The group includes a woman in a blue dress, a woman in a floral skirt and white top, a woman in business attire, a man in a suit and tie, and two women in summer dresses.

The Stevens business analytics and artificial intelligence program recently gathered to present Pratiksha Parsewar the 2026 David Belanger Fellowship Award. The award is given annually to a first-year student in Business Analytics & Artificial Intelligence master’s program who is judged by a committee of faculty and the program's Industry Advisory Board to be most likely to have a successful career in Big Data and AI.

Members of the Belanger family were on hand for the presentation, continuing a tradition that honors Professor David Belanger's legacy at Stevens.

Parsewar earned her undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Modern Education Society's College of Engineering in Pune, India. She built an eight-year career in software engineering, working across startups and global technology companies, including MobiKwik, one of India's leading fintech unicorns, before moving into full-stack engineering work for a Toronto-based technology firm focused on scalable enterprise and cloud-based solutions. She joined the Business Analytics & Artificial Intelligence program at Stevens last fall, and serves as a teaching assistant for AI and generative AI courses. She was recently selected to present at the Women Who Code Conference, sharing practical applications of generative AI with an audience of technology professionals and business leaders.

"Receiving the David Belanger Fellowship is one of the greatest honors of my academic journey," Parsewar said. "Returning to graduate school after more than eight years in the technology industry was a significant decision, and this recognition reassures me that I made the right choice. What makes this fellowship especially meaningful is Professor Belanger's legacy. He believed that Big Data research should ultimately serve real-world systems, and that philosophy resonates deeply with me."

David G. Belanger was a beloved and respected faculty member of the Stevens School of Business who passed away in 2022. An internationally known authority on Big Data and data governance, he joined Stevens in 2012 as a senior research fellow after 30 years at AT&T Bell Labs, where he served as Chief Scientist from 2001 to 2012. At Stevens, he taught in the Business Intelligence & Analytics graduate program and played a leading role on its Industry Advisory Board. He was also called upon to lead the IEEE's Big Data Initiative and was a founding member of the NJ Big Data Alliance.

David Belanger Fellowship Award Winners

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