Padmanabhan, who was managing director of research outreach at Microsoft, has more than 20 years of research experience.
He will play a key role in spearheading the company's big data research initiatives in the region including data mining, machine learning, social network analysis, mobile experience and content intelligence technologies.
While announcing the appointment, Dr Shriram Revankar, vice president, Adobe Research Big Data Experience Lab, said the research labs in Bengaluru attract some of the best talent in the industry.
"We are delighted to strengthen our team with a computer scientist and visionary of the calibre of Dr Padmanabhan," Revankar said in a statement.
Prior to joining Microsoft in 1997, Padmanabhan was assistant professor of computer science at Yale University for four years.
He has published over 60 papers in leading journals and conferences and has over 6,000 citations by other researchers in the field of computer vision.
An electrical engineering undergraduate from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras, Padmanabhan is credited with pioneering work in the areas of visual motion analysis, video surveillance and 3D scene modelling from images and video.
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