Our Team

Anirudh Dinesh is Chief Technology Officer at The Burnes Center for Social Change and its partner project, The Governance Lab, where he leads the design and development of community-centered AI tools to strengthen democracy and improve governance. In this role, he supports the strategic technology needs of all Center programs and its global community of high-impact faculty, students, and staff. 

He is Visiting Faculty at Northeastern University’s Khoury College of Computer Science and teaches product development as part of the Center’s AI for Impact program, working with students to build and deploy AI-enabled solutions for government and civic partners.

Anirudh leads the technology and design teams behind InnovateUS, the nation’s largest training program for public sector professionals in data, digital, innovation, and AI skills. He has worked with more than 40 cities and states to support the creation of AI training programs, including the development of custom-branded learning environments with single sign-on. His team is currently testing an AI coaching system to help learners close the knowing–doing gap and collaborates closely with InnovateUS’ data team to assess learning outcomes for more than 150,000 public professionals. Working closely with faculty colleagues, he has also helped design and produce courses that have reached learners in more than 150 countries.

Among the many products he and his team have created, AIEP is a free, open-source, generative AI platform that simplifies and translates Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Co-designed with parents, caregivers, and teachers, AIEP helps families better understand and advocate for their children’s educational needs while modeling a participatory approach to AI development.

Anirudh has led the design and deployment of tech-enabled approaches to online public engagement in 13 cities across three continents, including City Challenge and Policy Synth. He oversaw the redesign and deployment of open-source platforms such as All Our Ideas and Your Priorities in the United States and Latin America.

In addition to his university teaching, Anirudh leads executive and civic education workshops on problem definition, civic innovation, and people-led engagement as part of the GovLab’s Solving Public Problems curriculum. His work spans topics from tech-enabled disaster management to data-driven criminal justice reform.

Anirudh writes regularly about governance innovation. He has authored chapters in Open Data for Developing Economiesand The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance, developed case studies on data labs with New Philanthropy Capital (UK), and contributed to ten Smarter State case studies. A regular contributor to the Reboot Democracy in the Age of AI blog (for which he designed a custom blogging platform), his writing can be found atwww.dudurudh.com.

Anirudh holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from New York University and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University in India.