Research at CSE Department, IIT Madras

Global Excellence and Local Relevance in research, teaching, and technology development is the vision of the Department. The Department was started as the Computer Centre in 1973 with the acquisition of an IBM 370, perhaps the most powerful computer in India at that time. It offered M.Tech, M.S(By Research) and PhD degree programmes. In 1983, the B.Tech degree programme was started

Research programs
Research Labs
Fellowship /Financial Support
Research by faculty name
Research Area

Introduction

The Department of Computer Science offers graduate programs leading to Computer Science degrees at the master's and doctoral level. The Department offers three graduate programmes M.Tech, MS (By Research), and PhD. MS and PhD being the research programmes.

Today the Department has a vibrant student body numbering about 400. Over 60% are postgraduate, mostly supported by scholarships.The Department also offers several attractive industry-sponsored Fellowships for outstanding PhD scholars and liberally supports participation in top-ranking international conferences.

The department has long-term research collaborations with various research organizations like Microsoft Research (MSR) India, IBM India Research Lab (IRL), and DRDO etc.Apart from research scholar over 50 full-time engineers work on R&D projects enriching the academic environment

Research programs

MS(By Research) program:In the MS(By Research) program, the scholar works under the supervision of an advisor. A General Test Committee (GTC) oversees the work of the scholar periodically. The scholar takes a minimum of five courses, and also pursues independent research,resulting in a dissertation. The dissertation is sent to external reviewers. Based on the reviews, a viva voce is optionally held by the GTC. Most M.S. scholars go on for further studies or join research oriented companies after they graduate.

Ph.D. program: In the Ph.D. program, the scholar works under the supervision of an advisor. A Doctoral Committee (DC) oversees the work of the scholar. After joining the program, the scholar typically takes a set of courses ( minimum course requirement: 4), and also needs to clear a comprehensive examination. The scholar pursues research, leading to a dissertation which is evaluated by external reviewers. After incorporating the comments given by the reviewers, the scholar has to defend the thesis before an expert panel. Most Ph.D. scholars join research organizations, academia or go on for post doctoral work.

Research Labs

The Department is engaged in basic research, industry-oriented development, and socially relevant projects.Reflecting the vision of the Department, the faculty are engaged in research in various areas in the following labs .

Artificial Intelligence and Databases
Computer Vision
DONlab: Indic Computing and Communication Systems
High Performance Computing and Networking
Network Systems
Reconfigurable and Intelligent Systems Engineering
Software Systems Research Lab
Speech and Vision
System Development
Theoretical Computer Science
Visualization and Perception

Artificial Intelligence and Databases

Research Areas: Knowledge management with case based reasoning, Planning and constraint satisfaction, Machine learning, Semantic interoperability using ontologies, XML data handling - storage indexing and query languages, Online and Exact algorithms, Data warehousing - ETL flows.

Faculty Associated:      Deepak Khemani,
P. Sreenivasa Kumar,     N. S. Narayanaswamy ,
B. Ravindran,    Sutanu Chakraborti

Computer Vision

Research Areas:

Feature Detection and Matching,

Object Categorization,

Face Recognition,

Tracking

Faculty Associated: Anurag Mittal

DONlab: Indic Computing and Communication Systems

Research Areas: Advanced network management and planning, Multimodal interfaces to the computer, Speech synthesis and recognition, speaker recognition, speech recognition for Indian languages, spoken language identification, DSP virtual machine, Network planning and security, wireless and optical networks, sensor networks, traffic modeling.

Faculty Associated: T. A. Gonsalves (On Leave), Hema A. Murthy , Krishna Sivalingam

High Performance Computing and Networking

Research Areas: Wireless Networks - Protocols for hybrid wireless networks, Ad-hoc wireless networks, Wireless sensor networks; WDM Optical Networks - Routing and wavelength assignment, traffic grooming, survivable multicast.

Faculty Associated: C. Siva Ram Murthy

Network Systems

Research Areas: Understanding ultra-high speed computing, Developing universal learning space, Establishing an integrated computing environment, Studies in information technology management, Understanding the interaction between society, IT development, law, enforcement, disputes settlement, electronic forensics and judiciary

Faculty Associated: S. V. Raghavan (On Deputation : Scientific Secretary to the Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of India) , V. Kamakoti

Reconfigurable and Intelligent Systems Engineering

Research Areas: VLSI: Design and testing of reconfigurable architectures, Fault tolerant architectures, modern FPGA architectures, Design and verification of VLSI systems, Network-on-chips, Design of Multicore Systems

Intelligent Systems: Reinforcement Learning, Data Mining, Text and Web Mining, Autonomous Agents,Computational Biology.

Faculty Associated: V. Kamakoti , B. Ravindran , Shankar Balachandran , Madhu Mutyam ,
Ashish Tendulkar , Srinivasan Murali(Adjunct)

Software Systems Research Lab

Research Areas: Distributed Systems- Cluster Computing, Concurrency Control, Parallel Programming; Object-Oriented Systems - Component Customization, Role Modeling, Cost Estimation; Software Engineering - Pattern oriented Software design, Refactoring design.

Faculty Associated: D. Janaki Ram

Speech and Vision

Research Areas: Speech Signal processing, Speaker verification, recognition and segmentation, Speech enhancement, Spoken language identification; Content-based information retrieval, Applications of artificial neural networks, kernel methods, and support vector machines; Multi-camera vision systems, Surveillance under occlusion

Faculty Associated: C. Chandra Sekhar , Hema A. Murthy

System Development

Research Areas: Interfaces for the differently-abled, multi-lingual interfaces, Technology and Society

Faculty Associated: R. Kalyana Krishnan

Theoretical Computer Science

Research Areas: Unconventional models of computing, Optimal secure multiparty computations and communications, basic research in all aspects of algorithms, automata theory, graph theory, cryptography, randomized computations, computational biology, computational complexity and computational geometry.

Faculty Associated: Kamala Krithivasan, C. Pandu Rangan, N. S. Narayanaswamy , Jayalal Sarma M.N

Visualization and Perception

Research Areas: Multi-modal biometry using face, fingerprint and video, Texture analysis and classification, Shape from texture, Digital video analysis, Modeling of soft objects, Event analysis, Aerial image exploitation, Shape representation, Super-resolution mosaic.

Faculty Associated: Sukhendu Das

Fellowship and Financial Support

Graduate students/Scholars are supported by teaching/research assistantships (HTTA/HTRA) or project. Apart from this PhD scholars also receive industry fellowship from Microsoft, Infosys, IBM, Inautix etc.

M.S. scholars Regular(HTTA/HTRA):Rs.8000 per month for three years maximum; Rs.10,000 annual contingency grant.
M.S. by project: Project associates get a salary of about Rs.12000-Rs.14000, depending on qualifications and experience. Travel grant from project funding.

Ph.D. Scholars Regular(HTTA/HTRA): Rs.14,000 per month for the first two years, and Rs.15,000 for the next two years; Rs. 20,000 annual contingency grant.
Ph.D. by project: Project officers get a salary of about Rs.15000-Rs.18000, depending on qualifications and experience. Travel grant from project funding.

Industry Fellowship

Apart from HTTA/HTRA PhD scholars also have the opportunity of getting industry fellowship from Microsoft, Infosys, IBM etc. Scholars have to apply separately for this through the department. The funding institution decides the final approval of the fellowship.

Microsoft India Ph.D. fellowship: Approx. Rs.16,000 monthly and travel grant for attending conferences. Maximum time period: 48 months. Awardees: Arpita Patra, T. Venkatesh.

Infosys fellowship: Endowment consists of a sum of Rs. 9 lakhs; a sum of Rs. 3 lakhs will be released initially and Rs. 6 lakhs will be released over the duration of the award at regular intervals. Package of Rs. 2.25 to Rs. 2.55 lakhs per year.

IBM Ph.D. fellowship: Rs. 15,000 monthly, annual incidental expenses Rs.15,000, annual tuition fees (approx) Rs. 7,000. Awardees: S. Ranbir Singh, Madhu Mutyam

In addition, the scholar can apply to other fellowships/research grants whenever the grants are available. The Department typically recommends eligible scholars to the institution granting the fellowship. The funding institution decides the final approval of the fellowship. The scholar is allowed to have only one source of financial assistance.

Seminar and Conferences

Special guest seminars and the Department's research seminars, which focus on specific research areas, allow advanced students to augment their classroom and laboratory study. It is the unique opportunity to interact with industry leaders and leading researchers who often visit the department to offer talks and seminars.

Join Us!

The faculty in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IITM is conducting cutting edge research, and we are looking for the very best graduate students to collaborate with us in our research. Have a look at the prospective students page