Prof. Yashodhan Kanoria
B. Tech., 2007, Electrical Engineering

Prof. Yashodhan Kanoria is the Sidney Taurel Associate Professor of Business in the Decision, Risk and Operations division at Columbia Business School. He received his B. Tech. degree (President of India Gold Medal) in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2007 and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2012.

After completing his Ph.D., Prof. Kanoria spent a year at Microsoft Research New England during 2012-13 as a Schramm Postdoctoral Fellow. Later, he joined the University of Columbia in 2013 as an Assistant Professor.

Prof. Kanoria has worked on the design and optimization of marketplaces, especially matching markets. He has worked extensively on centralized college and school admissions, the design of search and matching platforms for labor, dating, accommodation, etc., foundational questions regarding the nature of equilibria in matching markets, and algorithms for dynamic matching and resource allocation. Prof. Kanoria has designed and helped implement a centralized seat allocation process for all centrally-funded engineering colleges in India, which has been running successfully since 2015, administered by the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA), preventing the wastage of hundreds of IIT seats each year.

Prof. Kanoria received a ‘National Science Foundation (USA) CAREER Award’ in 2017. He was a finalist for the 2018 INFORMS Wagner Prize in Operations Research practice for his work on JoSAA.

Special Memories

Respect for seniors: In my first year, an H4 senior saw me going to the bathroom with my toothbrush around midnight. He said, ‘Itna brush karega toh daant ghis jaayenge.’ I stopped brushing before bed, and that remains the case to date. Luckily I’m blessed with good teeth.

Respect for profs: I wanted to run a full marathon in my fourth year. So I coordinated with Prof. Sharat Chandran to go on a long run one weekend morning. He was running like a hare for hours and I was falling behind, so I tried to catch up by sprinting down the Sameer hill, and of course busted my knee in that attempt. I didn’t try to compete with IIT Bombay profs after that.