Kanwal and Ann Rekhi

Kanwal and Ann Rekhi provided
$5 million for the new building adjacent to Fisher Hall that bears their names.
Kanwal, a native of India, graduated from Michigan Tech in 1969 with a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering.

A visionary in the technology industry, Kanwal has been active in the Silicon Valley community of entrepreneurs. He is head of Ensim Corporation, a global leader in
hosting automation software.

Early in his career, he faced recurrent layoffs. After the third, he intended to become “self-sufficient.” In 1982, he founded Excelan, a pioneering computer networking company, which merged with Novell, Inc., in 1989. Kanwal became executive vice president and led the firm’s product development and technology strategies, including Novell’s UNIX systems group. After leaving Novell, he went to work at Intellimatch, an Internet database service, and CyberMedia.

Kanwal now invests in companies that concentrate on software and networking systems. He has been recognized for his commitment to technology and business startups and was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Venture magazine in1987.
In 1994 he co-founded a nonprofit association that promotes wealth creation through entrepreneurship. The organization, based in California, has spread worldwide from its start with helping immigrants from India.

Kanwal and Ann have long supported Michigan Tech. Kanwal has received the Board of Control Silver Medal and an honorary Doctorate in Business and Engineering. He is a member of the Electrical Engineering Academy.

This computer science hall adds 51,000 square feet to Fisher Hall.
Fisher Hall, which opened in 1964, originally housed the mathematics and physics programs and is named after James Fisher, former head of the Department of Physics.

Facilities for computer science students, faculty, and staff have been inadequate, inefficient, and scattered among three buildings around the campus.

Rekhi Hall provides new classrooms—two equipped for high-tech instruction, and two equipped to support distance learning—and it houses several general purpose labs and nine specialty labs, as well as the Computer Science Learning Center.

The Department of Computer Science has sixteen faculty, more than three hundred undergraduate and graduate students, and offers degrees in computer science, computer systems science, and software engineering.

  “I’m happy to pay back.”
—Kanwal Rekhi, Class of 1969