Chirantan J. (CJ) Desai and Hina Desai Computer Science Fellowship

Chirantan J. (CJ) Desai earned his Master's in Computer Science and an MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995. In November 2025, he was appointed President and CEO of MongoDB where he leads the company's continued position as the go-to database platform powering AI, cloud and real-time applications. He also serves on MongoDB's board of directors.

Previously, Desai served as President of Product and Engineering at Cloudflare, and President and COO of ServiceNow. He also served as ServiceNow's Chief Product Officer and was responsible for their products, platform, technology, and cloud infrastructure. Prior to joining ServiceNow, Desai was the president of the Emerging Technologies Division (ETD) at EMC from September 2013 until December 2016. From November 2004 to September 2013, he held several leadership roles at Symantec Corporation, including Executive Vice President of Information Management. Mr. Desai formerly served as a member of the board of directors of Zebra Technologies Corp. 

“I’m very proud of the fact that the Illinois CS program continues to be [among the] top five in the country,” said Desai. “I absolutely enjoy my ties with CS, and I’m very humbled that I can contribute my small part in attracting future leaders in the CS discipline.” The Desai Computer Science Fellowship is intended to assist the department in recruiting and retaining excellent female graduate students and was endowed by Chirantan and Hina Desai.