Prof. Anurag Kumar
Professor, Department of Electrical Communication Engineering
Director, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Three decades ago, in 1990, Prof. Anurag Kumar organized the first ever SPCOM together with Prof. V. Umapathi Reddy. In his capacity as the Associate Chair (2000-2004) and Chair (2004-2007) of the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Chair (2007-2014) of the Division of Electrical Sciences at IISc, and currently as the Director of IISc (2014 to date), Prof. Anurag Kumar has been very supportive of SPCOM. He will be super-annuating on July 31, 2020. On this occasion, we are proud to present to you a brief biographical sketch of Prof. Anurag Kumar that shows what an illustrious career he had and also give a glimpse of his research contributions. SPCOM remains indebted to Prof. Anurag Kumar and wishes him good health and a happy post-retirement life.
Anurag Kumar obtained his B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur in 1977, and was awarded the President of India’s Gold Medal. He then obtained the PhD degree from Cornell University (1981), where he worked under the guidance of Prof. T.L. Fine. He was a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, N.J., for over 6 years. During this period he worked on the performance analysis of computer systems, communication networks, and manufacturing systems. Since 1988 he has been with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, in the Dept. of Electrical Communication Engineering (ECE), where he is a Professor, and is also currently the Director of IISc. From 2000 to 2004 he was the Associate Chair of the ECE Department, from 2004 to 2007 he was the Chair of the ECE Department, and from 2007 to 2014 he was the Chair of Electrical Sciences Division. In 2014, he took charge as the Director of IISc. From 1989 to 2003 he was also the Coordinator at IISc of the nationwide Education and Research Network (ERNET) Project, which established the first country-wide packet communication network in India.
He has served as an Area Editor for IEEE Transactions on Networking, and for IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials.
He has been elected a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science (IASc), a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), and a Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). He received the IISc Alumni Award for Excellence in Engineering Research for 2008. He has been awarded the DST J.C. Bose National Fellowship for the period 2011-2021.
Professor Anurag Kumar has conducted deep and wide ranging research at I.I.Sc. in the field of Communication Networking. He has worked on problems of performance analysis, network design, and analysis and design of controls in networks. He has co-authored two books that are widely used in India and abroad: "Communication Networking: An Analytical Approach," and "Wireless Networking." His students have distinguished themselves in academia and industry.
Professor Kumar's research has covered the areas of analysis and control of queueing models, high speed packet switching, distributed simulation, traffic control and network engineering for elastic traffic and stream traffic in packet networks, and wireless networking. His research in wireless networking has included cellular and WiFi access networks, ad hoc mesh networks, algorithm design for distributed detection, localisation, self-organisation and geographic message forwarding in wireless sensor networks, as well as planned and impromptu deployment of sensors for such networks. A few of his notable applied contributions are those on modelling and performance analysis of the C-DoT digital switching system, the performance of versions of the transmission control protocol TCP in local networks with a lossy wireless link, and the performance of the WiFi medium access control protocol through fixed point analyses. Carrying applied research through to technology development, his group has developed a centralised approach to performance management in WiFi local area networks, and a system for the design and deployment of wireless sensor networks.
Professor Kumar's contributions have extended to leading multi-faculty projects, for ERNET as well as for DRDO. He has undertaken numerous sponsored research projects at I.I.Sc. from government and from industry in India and abroad, and has been consultant to industry in many projects.
