Nabanita De ’17MS Receives Outstanding Young Alumni Award
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Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) alumna Nabanita De ’17MS is one of six graduates recognized at the 2025 UMass Alumni Honors Awards, presented annually by the UMass Amherst Foundation. The awards honor exceptional alumni who have translated their UMass experience into professional success and meaningful service.
De received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award, which celebrates alumni who have graduated within the past 10 years and used their UMass education and professional pursuits to create positive global impact. De was cited as a visionary serial technology entrepreneur who is reshaping the future of privacy and artificial intelligence.
As the founder and CEO of PrivacyLicense.ai, De is building the world’s first privacy operating system for the AI era. Her innovation, the AI Privacy License, functions as a revolutionary internet contract described as “robots.txt with legal teeth,” that enables creators and AI companies to collaborate under shared, machine-readable legal standards. Her vision reimagines privacy as the foundation of a more transparent, automated, and equitable digital ecosystem.
Beyond her professional achievements, De has volunteered for over 100 nonprofits. As a UNICEF state lead, she helped fundraise $134 million in U.S. government funding and advocated for two national legislation bills. She also founded CovidHelpForIndia.com, a platform that streamlined pandemic resources, and was named to the BITSAA Global 30 Under 30 list in 2022 for her social entrepreneurship leadership. Her first venture at 18, Bluetooth Messenger, was downloaded by more than 50,000 people, topped the App Store’s “New and Rising” category worldwide, and won the BITSAA Mantra Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
De also founded the Nabanita De Foundation, which tackles large-scale humanitarian challenges through technology, entrepreneurship, and advocacy. The foundation has established partnerships with Forbes, Audible, and Amazon, with initiatives adopted by 135 countries. Her thought leadership includes writing 20 Forbes articles with 500,000 reads, three Pulitzer Prize nominations, and recognition on Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas list.
While pursuing her master’s degree at CICS, De led the team that created FiB, a Chrome extension that detects fake news on Facebook. The project won the Google Moonshot Prize at Princeton University and became one of the top five news stories of 2016, receiving coverage from more than 1,000 media outlets, including Business Insider, the Washington Post, Wired, CNN, and the BBC. It was later presented at more than 40 global universities, including Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Wharton, Cornell, and Georgia Tech, and earned her an invitation to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit.
“I think UMass shaped the way my career took charge,” says De. “I felt like I got the support to build really innovative things, and the knowledge that I needed to be able to build that as well. UMass had those resources, really.”
To date, De has won more than 20 hackathons, including the Global GenAI Hackathon, Microsoft Hack for Good, and MIT Media Lab’s AR/VR Hackathon. Her 51-plus technology awards include honors as a Facebook Scholar for Women in Cyber Security, Microsoft Grace Hopper Scholar, Facebook F8 Scholar, as well as recognition from the Webby awards.
The 2025 UMass Alumni Honors Awards reception was held on October 23 at the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was co-sponsored by the UMass Amherst Alumni Association. During the event, university leaders celebrated the achievements of this year’s honorees, whose work reflects the institution’s mission of excellence, innovation, and service.
“I am proud to recognize the extensive accomplishments of this year’s Alumni Honors Awards recipients,” said UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier A. Reyes. “Their careers and achievements illustrate the value of outstanding public higher education, and each of them has shown a deep commitment to advancing the common good through their professional and volunteer work. They embody the university’s mission and are exemplary role models for generations of students to come.”