Designing Algorithms For Applications

Prof. Amit Kumar, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Delhi who won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award 2018, speaks to Pritha Roy Choudhury about his research and the sectors it will impact...

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Q. Can you elaborate on your research that earned you the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award?

A. I worked in the area of theoretical computer science. It involves a lot of mathematical analysis about algorithms. I basically worked on a step-by-step process of solving problems where I look at various algorithmic problems, how they behave, and the right way of designing them. The other aspect I was looking at was understanding problems in what is called graph theory. Graph theory is a branch of mathematics where you try to understand how various objects are connected to each other. Say for example Facebook, you want to understand how people are connected to each other. Similarly, in Google Maps you want to understand how cities are connected to each other. So, a lot of my algorithms are in such settings where you want faster algorithms.

Q. Which sector will your research impact?

A. Algorithms, in general, have various applications. The kind of algorithms I make will help data centres and cloud computing. Data centres are useful everywhere, in educational institutions or companies or hospitals. So in that sense it will indirectly help many sectors.

Q. What challenges did you face as a researcher?