Meet Arjun Singh: Indian-origin Gradescope co-founder wins prestigious Mark Bingham Award for Excellence in Achievement

Indian-origin entrepreneur Arjun Singh has been recognised with the prestigious Mark Bingham Award for Excellence in Achievement by Young Alumni, honouring his impactful contributions to education technology. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Singh co-founded Gradescope, a platform that has transformed how educators assess student work. Built during his time as a doctoral student, the tool uses AI-assisted methods to streamline grading and deliver faster, more consistent feedback. Today, Gradescope is widely used across universities worldwide, reflecting Singh’s growing influence in shaping modern digital education.

Arjun Singh’s AI grading breakthrough

Singh began developing Gradescope during his PhD at UC Berkeley, working alongside Pieter Abbeel and Sergey Karayev. The idea emerged from his own experience with the time-consuming and often inconsistent nature of grading large volumes of assignments, particularly in technical courses.

The platform introduced features such as digital submission handling, answer grouping based on similarity, and rubric-based evaluation. It supports both handwritten and digital assignments by allowing instructors to scan or upload responses and grade them within a unified system.

Gradescope also enables regrading workflows, detailed feedback annotations, and analytics that help instructors track class performance. These features made it especially useful in large university courses where manual grading is often inefficient.
What started as a student-led project quickly evolved into a widely adopted education technology platform. Gradescope was acquired in 2018 by Turnitin, enabling integration with plagiarism detection tools and broader institutional systems.

Today, the platform is used by more than 150,000 instructors and over 4 million students across 2,600 universities worldwide. Its adoption expanded significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when institutions required scalable tools for remote exams, assignments, and digital submissions.

The significance of the Mark Bingham Award

The Mark Bingham Award for Excellence in Achievement by Young Alumni is awarded by UC Berkeley to recognise graduates who have demonstrated notable achievements within a relatively short time after completing their studies.

Recipients are selected based on measurable impact in their respective fields, including innovation, leadership, and contribution to society. The award is typically limited to a small number of individuals each year, making it a selective recognition within the university’s alumni network.

The award is named after Mark Bingham, a 1993 UC Berkeley graduate known for his actions aboard United Flight 93 during the September 11 attacks. The naming reflects values of leadership, courage, and public contribution associated with the honour.

Beyond Gradescope: Singh’s ongoing journey

After co-founding Gradescope and serving as its CEO, Singh continued his work in the technology sector. Following the acquisition by Turnitin, he contributed to scaling the platform and integrating it into broader educational workflows.

He currently leads Superconductor, a technology company focused on building scalable software systems. His work continues to involve applying engineering and data-driven approaches to solve complex operational problems.

Singh’s career path reflects a transition from academic research to entrepreneurship and then to broader technology leadership, maintaining a focus on practical applications of software in real-world environments.

Transforming education through AI

Gradescope is part of a broader shift toward the use of AI-assisted tools in education, particularly in automating repetitive tasks such as grading and feedback generation.

The platform improves efficiency by allowing instructors to apply consistent grading criteria across large batches of similar responses. It also reduces turnaround time for returning graded assignments, enabling faster feedback cycles for students.

In addition, Gradescope integrates with learning management systems, allowing seamless assignment distribution, submission collection, and grade reporting. Its ability to handle both in-person and remote assessments has made it adaptable across different teaching environments.

As digital education continues to expand, tools like Gradescope are increasingly used to support large-scale instruction while maintaining structured and transparent evaluation processes.