IDiyas Q&A: Meet Kuntal Dey, Technology R&D Senior Principal at Accenture Technology Labs with 200+ Granted Patents!

Meet Kuntal Dey, Technology R&D Senior Principal at Accenture Technology Labs. With 200+ Granted Patents, specializing in Responsible AI and Software Engineering. His research focuses on AI-powered software engineering, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Knowledge Graphs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and AI application cost and carbon management. Previously, he explored privacy-preserving computing and cloud computing.

Since January 2021, Dr. Dey has also served as an Adjunct Faculty member at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Guwahati, teaching Natural Language Processing (NLP) and advising PhD students.

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Learn about Kuntal’s patents here.

Where did your inspiration to become an inventor come from?

It came from within. I have been a “creator” since childhood. I remember that early in my class 11^th, when I had just learned permutations and combinations but was yet to learn binomial theorem, I had independently discovered it while playing with numbers – especially the coefficients in (a+b)²and (a+b)³ and realizing that these can be generalized using combinations. I was excited, pointed this out to my math tutor in a coaching group, and then was rebuked for going ahead of the class and learning things that were meant to be learned in the class.

Until later in the year we were taught binomial theorem, I had no idea what got him offended. But there were incidents of minor discoveries even earlier, and minor inventions too.

I used to play with things and then they would come apart, and while I could fix back most of them, sometimes I could not. All in all, I was a curious boy when young, and that curiosity carried on. As an adult, it made me both a researcher and inventor – I also am an active researcher and also publish my research works in reasonably good forums.

One key point to note is that, as a child, my parents had always given me infinite freedom in all that I did. They trusted me. They brought me up with an open mind, and never imposed anything. They loved me and respected my activities. They were proud of me. They gave me wings that allowed me to fly, and they planted seeds of thoughts in my mind that made me responsible, learn and respect values and also led me to become who I am today – not only as an inventor but also as a human. My deepest respect and love to them.

Luckily, I have been married to a wonderful person who encourages me to remain who I am and become even better, and provides full support to all my activities. My respect and love to her.

And then, my teachers. I had an incredible journey in my primary and high school. The teachers encouraged me, trusted me, and gave me an infinite amount of confidence. All of this also added to my growth of personality, which later made me an inventor and researcher along with added passions, and gave me the courage to believe in all that I did. Later in my student life, I had great mentors – my MTech guide was incredible as a guide and is one of the leading researchers worldwide in his area. Later, when I did PhD late in my career (I started part-time in mid-thirties), my PhD advisor knew exceptionally well how to handle that mature me, and did an unbelievably outstanding job of it that awes me till date.

And then of course, I’ve had some exceptionally good colleagues and students that have pushed me and kept me motivated.

All in all, my ecosystem first made me an inventor and then retained me as an inventor. I have been a lucky person indeed!

Out of your many inventions, which invention are you most proud of?

I am glad that I am inventing, in the first place. I am happy with quite a few of my inventions. There is an invention that I had been a part of in Accenture, which is yet to be published by the USPTO so I cannot disclose it here. Let’s just say, it is a precursor to what we know as GraphRAG today. It has the Graph, the R and the A of a GraphRAG, but not the G in the way we know it – as it adopts the solution to a software engineering toolset domain. I love it. I wish I had submitted a patent application on what I used to call “Split VM” back in 2011 – a version of this is what became the famous Smart Contract in the world of Blockchain. I still regret not having proceeded with it. Thank goodness, someone has done the work and the world is enjoying the benefits that it could have given. So this regret is merely personal, thankfully.

What does your typical day look like, and how do you make it productive?

My typical days vary. I give time to my family, and especially my son, in the morning, and then get to work once he goes to school sometime after 8 AM. At work, I balance between business value creation and development of inventions. These days, in some semesters, I teach Natural Language Processing in Indian Institute of Information Technology remotely as an Adjunct. I give time to Indian Classical Music – I used to learn it as a child and of late I have restarted learning it further – not sure how long I shall be able to continue. And then, there are other passions too that I have, but usually miss out giving adequate time to those.

I try to remain productive by focusing on something methodically and going in depth. In general, I am a relatively quick thinker, and make it a habit to practice innovative thinking consistently. I deeply believe, consistency is the primary key to any practice in life.

How do you bring your ideas to life?

I am an optimist who keeps an open mind. I try to learn from even the hardest of setbacks – try to ignore the negatives and try to take only the positives away. I try to keep a positive, open and flexible mindset always. I have managed to get a divorce – no, not from my marriage (that’s been a long and happy one) – but from my ego. I learn even from school children if I can. I respect knowledge of all sorts, but try to filter to retain the positive and compose it to make the world a better place. I firmly believe, in the tiny timespan of life that we have, anything that generates and distribute negativity need to be ignored, except, if that has any iota of positive to take away, then that needs to be taken away.

What’s the one trend that excites you?

If you mean a technology trend, then it is AI. I have believed in it since my few weeks of college life (one of the first things I did after entering my BTech was that I took a membership of the British Council Library in Calcutta and started reading AI books).

Of course, back in the 1990’s when AI was more of a fairytale than a reality, people around me didn’t take the readings seriously, but as usual, I ignored that negativity and followed that as a path with a heart in my life. Now, in my mid-forties, I respect the younger me that had the courage to do this.

Human psychology excites me a lot (I had, in fact, done a Masters – MS – as a distance learning course from an institute in India – in Psychological Counseling and Psychotherapy, and had written an MS thesis on Industrial Psychology – when I was working in VERITAS/Symantec after my MTech in Computer Science and Engineering). A psychological characteristic that I want to see in everybody is positivity, though I seem to see the opposite to be more prevalent in the average human, unfortunately. If most of us (humans) could deep-think, work and experiment with things, instead of being critical on the face of things and discard, I feel the Earth would have been an even more exciting and developed place to live in.

What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an inventor?

Persistence and discipline, along with flexibility and creating a network that can bring good technical problems to me. The one habit, though, would be disciplined persistence on any chosen topic. I have my good and bad days and periods – times when my mind is working slower than other times. My defense mechanism to the tougher times is to make sure I stick to my basics and keep delivering an average performance. I never say die. I persist, travel on and on, and more often than not, make it!

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Inside academia, none. I love what I did.

What I would advise outside academia to a younger me though is – I should have also focused on what I call to be “financial education” earlier. What I mean by that is, how to make self-sustaining finance, how can my money grow with little supervision and free up my time and energy to do fun things that I love doing (such as, inventing). The liberty it brings to life is transformational. I shall definitely take my son through what I perceive to be appropriate “financial education” early on. Life is a totality and inventing is just a part of it. If one manages the totality better, it is likely that the inventing will also be managed and done better.

Tell us something true that almost nobody agrees with you on.

I am an atheist. Apologies if I hurt anyone. It is just my way of thinking. I deeply respect and accommodate your religious thinking, and may you have a great life wherever you live and in whichever phase of life you are.

As an inventor, what is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

I persist in what I believe. I am not afraid to experiment with things and break them down unless they are not meant to be broken down. Exercised with cautious intelligence, this is something I would encourage others to also do. Break down things and ideas. Break down linearity. Enjoy Borges-like Labyrinths and others. Deconstruct and reconstruct with your controlled and intelligent imagination.

What strategy has helped you grow as an inventor? Please explain how.

Open thinking, flexibility, networking for getting exposed to strong technical challenges, self-belief, and deconstruction/reconstruction.

What is one failure you had as an inventor, and how did you overcome it?

I regret not having tried to patent the “Split VM” as I call it. There were another couple of things that I also should have tried to patent. Somehow, I didn’t. In each of these cases, others have invented those, so for the humans, those journeys have remained a success. As a human, the bigger me have been thus successful. But the smaller me – that is, me – failed to move in the right direction, and had others not done, it would have costly mistakes to mankind. I didn’t overcome these personal failures. Thankfully, the world overcame those, and I clapped at the world, paying the infinite knowledge and wisdom of mankind deep respect along with that.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why? (personal or professional)

My fees to my music school. I should call it “our” music school – my son also learns there. I used to learn classical music very long back – from 1984 to 1994 – a decade. Then I restarted this year (2024) and am loving it. Right now, I am learning in The Fifth Note, which is the great Ustad Rashid Khan’s academy. Sadly, I didn’t have the fortune to meet the great Ustad or be coached my him – he passed away earlier this year before I joined there, but I love the place and the teachings I receive there. It’s a great school indeed. And it keeps my imaginative spirit going. Coming back to the 100-dollar question – was the amount I paid exactly 100 dollars? Not really – the monthly fees there at the moment are much lower. But ballpark, yes, as I had paid for a few months together in advance.

What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Our dear friend Google. I know there are good alternatives, but I am in the habit of using Google and nothing has been more helpful than that. An informed me (usually informed via Google) can usually think out the rest that I need – I mean, what needs intelligence. Google supplies me with the information.

What is the one book that you recommend that our inventor community should read and why?

I have loved reading throughout my books. I was brought up on storybooks – fictions – lots and lots of them. In a way, I was also shaped to be flexible, to have great values that can make a human nice, not by any one book, but simply by the overall collection of books I have read. I read Bengali – my mother-tongue and one of the richest languages in Earth for literature and art-and-culture – and English. However, in both the languages, there have been numerous translations of works from other literature-rich languages, as well as of course the popular pieces of literature. The translations into English/Bengali that I’ve read mostly span over French, Spanish (including Latin America), German, Italian and some Arabic. I cannot single out a book. But I do believe, diversity of reading, understanding, ingesting, accepting and respecting it all can shape up a better human, a better inventor and a better package overall, and make us thinkers with empathy and positivity.

What is your favorite quote?

I have quite a few favorite quotes. And asked at a different time, I could respond differently. The one at the top of my mind now is from Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. It goes like this:

“Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.” … … … “For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length–and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.” The last bit of it – in the second quotes – keeps refreshing me every moment of my life – the joy of traveling the path of life – the full length of it – looking breathlessly.