Office: SP 2.17

Phone: +91 80 2293-3385
Fax: +91 80 2360-0563

E-mail:

Prior to joining the Indian Institute of Science in 2011, I was an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Queen's University.

I have a PhD in Electrical Engineering: Systems and an MS in Mathematics from the University of Michigan (2001), and a BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay (1995).
A little more detail on my prior academic background and experience is provided on a separate page.

I currently serve on the editorial boards of the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, and Cryptography and Communications. I have previously served as an Associate Editor for Coding Theory for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

I am a past recipient of the DST Swarnajayanti Fellowship in the Engineering Sciences.

IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW) 2022

Research Interests

• Coding for Data Communication and Storage
• Quantum Error-Correcting Codes
• DNA-Based Data Storage
• Information Theory and Information-Theoretic Security
• Source Coding, Data Compression
• Discrete Applied Mathematics (a broad umbrella for much of what I do)

Publications and Preprints

Current Graduate Students and Postdocs:

• Jasbir Kaur (IISc IoE postdoc; PhD (Mathematics), Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh)

• Aswanth T. (PhD)
• Prachi Mishra (PhD)
• Daanish Mahajan (PhD; jointly supervised with Chirag Jain)
• Shiv Pratap Singh Rathore (PhD)
• Pushpendra Singh (PhD)

• Sanjay Kumar Meena (MTech)
• C. Bindu Priya (MTech)
• Kushal V. (MTech)
• Shadaf Firdoush (MTech)
• Sureshkumar V. (MTech)

Past Graduate Students and Postdocs (at IISc):

• Tania Sidana (PhD (Mathematics), IIIT Delhi), IISc IoE postdoc, 2021-2023.
• Narendra Kumar (PhD (Mathematics), IIT (ISM) Dhanbad), IISc IoE postdoc, 2020-2021.
• Sajith Padinhatteeri (PhD (Mathematics), IIT Bombay), 2017-2020; now an Assistant Professor at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad campus

• V. Arvind Rameshwar (PhD), graduated December 2023; currently with India Urban Data Exchange.
• Praneeth Kumar V. (PhD), graduated December 2022; currently a postdoc in Justin Coon's group at the University of Oxford.
• Vinay Kumar B.R. (PhD), graduated December 2021; now a postdoc with Konstantin Avrachenkov at INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, France.
• K.M. Shivkumar (PhD), graduated April 2019; now with Seed2Sapling.
• Manuj Mukherjee (PhD), graduated Oct. 2017; conferred with the Seshagiri Kaikini Medal for the year 2017-18, awarded by IISc for the best PhD thesis from the ECE Department; now an Assistant Professor at IIIT-Delhi.
• Shashank Vatedka (PhD), graduated April 2017; conferred with the Seshagiri Kaikini Medal for the year 2016-17, awarded by IISc for the best PhD thesis from the ECE Department; now an Assistant Professor at IIT Hyderabad.

• Puspabeethi Samanta (MTech-Res), graduated July 2023
• Athin Mohan (MTech), graduated July 2023
• Nikhil Verma (MTech), graduated July 2023
• Kamta Singh Yadav (MTech), graduated July 2022
• Supriya Sunil Tambe (MTech), graduated July 2022
• Sq Ldr Johns U.K. (MTech), graduated July 2021
• Anand Jerry George (MTech), graduated July 2021; joined the PhD program at EPFL
• Aashish Tolambiya (MTech), graduated July 2021
• Anaswara S. (MTech), graduated July 2020
• Adway Patra (MTech), graduated June 2019; joined the PhD program at the University of Maryland
• Varadaraj M.S. (MTech), graduated June 2018
• Anoop Jose (ME), graduated Feb. 2018
• Roshan Antony (ME), graduated June 2017
• Sanket Sit (ME), graduated June 2017
• Krishna Kant (ME), graduated Dec 2016
• Ravi Ranjan (ME), graduated July 2016; back to his position in DRDO, Hyderabad
• Chun Lam Chan (MPhil at the Chinese University of Hong Kong; co-supervised with Prof. Pascal Vontobel), graduated July 2015; went on to get a PhD from EPFL
• Abhinav Das (ME), graduated June 2015
• Winston Fernandes (ME), graduated June 2013

Past Graduate Students and Postdocs (at Queen's University):

• Manish K. Gupta (PhD (Mathematics), IIT Kanpur), 2005-2006; now a Professor at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology.

• Akiko Manada (PhD), graduated July 2009; now an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical, Electronics and Information Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology.
• Ya Meng (MSc), graduated Aug. 2009; went on to obtain a PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Florida.
• Adam Cohen (MSc), graduated Nov. 2008.
• Anda Vulpoiu (MSc), graduated Sept. 2006.

Teaching

Jan-Apr 2024: Quantum Error-Correcting Codes (E2 210)

Past courses at IISc:

• Error-Control Coding (E2 205, Aug-Dec 2017, Aug-Dec 2018, Oct 2020 - Jan 2021 (online semester), Aug-Dec 2021, Aug-Dec 2022, Aug-Dec 2023)
• Quantum Error-Correcting Codes (E2 210, Jan-Apr 2023)

• Statistical Physics Methods in Information and Coding Theory (E2 330, Jan-Apr 2019, Jan-Apr 2020)
• Finite-State Channels (E2 214, Jan-Apr 2017, Aug-Dec 2018, Aug-Dec 2019)
• Information-Theoretic Security (E2 213, Jan-Apr 2016)
• Random Processes (E2 202, Aug-Dec 2015, Aug-Dec 2016)
• Information Theory (E2 201, Aug-Dec 2012, Aug-Dec 2013, Aug-Dec 2014)
• Information Theory and Coding for Non-Standard Channel Models (E2 213, Jan-Apr 2012, Jan-Apr 2013, Jan-Apr 2014)

Courses taught at Queen's University:

• Matroid Methods (with a Focus on Applications to Coding Theory) (MATH 978), Winter 2007.

• Introduction to Coding Theory (MATH 406/806), Winter 2005, Winter 2008, Winter 2009.

• Introduction to Coding for Constrained Systems (MATH 478/878), Winter 2006.

• Statistical Physics Methods in Information and Coding Theory (E2 330, Jan-Apr 2019, Jan-Apr 2020)
• Error-Control Codes (E2 205, Aug-Dec 2017, Aug-Dec 2018, Oct 2020 - Jan 2021 (online semester), Aug-Dec 2021, Aug-Dec 2022)
• Finite-State Channels (E2 214, Jan-Apr 2017, Aug-Dec 2018, Aug-Dec 2019)
• Information-Theoretic Security (E2 213, Jan-Apr 2016)
• Random Processes (E2 202, Aug-Dec 2015, Aug-Dec 2016)
• Information Theory (E2 201, Aug-Dec 2012, Aug-Dec 2013, Aug-Dec 2014)
• Information Theory and Coding for Non-Standard Channel Models (E2 213, Jan-Apr 2012, Jan-Apr 2013, Jan-Apr 2014)

Courses taught at Queen's University:

• Matroid Methods (with a Focus on Applications to Coding Theory) (MATH 978), Winter 2007.

• Introduction to Coding Theory (MATH 406/806), Winter 2005, Winter 2008, Winter 2009.

• Introduction to Coding for Constrained Systems (MATH 478/878), Winter 2006.

• Introduction to Real Analysis (MATH 281), Winter 2007, Winter 2008, Winter 2009.

• Linear Algebra (APSC 174), Winter 2006.

• Probability I (STAT 251), Fall 2006, Fall 2005, Fall 2004.

• Probability Theory for Electrical Engineers (STAT 356), Winter 2004.

Mandatory Reading/Viewing Material for Mathematicians

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics by Richard W. Hamming. This essay was inspired by Eugene Wigner's original article, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Comm. Pure Appl. Math., 13 (Feb. 1960).

A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy. The classic defence of (pure) mathematics.

A lecture video on How to Write Mathematics by Paul R. Halmos, with an introduction by Don Knuth. (There was an article by Halmos on this topic available online at one point, but it seems to have vanished off the tangle of the web.)

Non-Academic Interests

www.whateverchumps.blogspot.com

I support Asha for Education, a charitable organization working towards the education of underprivileged children in India. I was actively involved with the Canadian chapter.