Dr. Ravindran Kannan is the recipient of the highest award in Discrete Mathematics – the Fulkerson Award.

Considered as one of the world leaders in the areas of “geometry of numbers” and “probabilistic approximate algorithms”, his work with Dwyer & Frieze on a probabilistic approximate algorithm for the computation of the volume of a polytope, for which he & his coauthors won the Fulkerson award in 1991, has opened up an important area of research.

Dr. Kannan has also had the honour of being a visiting Miller Research Professor, University of California, Alexender Von Humboldt Fellow, University of Bonn and a Member of New York Academy of Sciences. Following his B.Tech. at IITB where he took the silver medal in his discipline, Dr. Kannan did his masters and doctorate from Cornell University.

Dr Kannan has held the following positions: lecturer at the University of California; Assistant Professor at MIT and later an Associate Professor, Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at Carnegie-Mellon University. Presently he is Chair Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Yale University.

Dr. Kannan has had the distinction of serving on various prestigious editorial boards and conference programme committees. He is a widely published author in refereed journals and has over 45 published papers to his credit.