The common thread in my current research is to apply game theory, mechanism design, and artificial intelligence techniques to research problems  at the interface of computer science and economics. In particular, I am interested in auctions and markets, cooperative game theory,  computational social choice, machine learning, and data analytics. I am also exploring the application of these to digital agriculture and public health problems.  I teach courses on (1) Game Theory and (2) Artificial Intelligence for Social Good. Please click below for some recent research and innovation snippets.

Prof. Y Narahari

narahari[at]iisc[dot]ac[dot]in | Phone: +91 80 22932773, 22932368

I have been at the Indian Institute of Science since August 1979, as a B.E. Student (Department of ECE) (1979-82), M.E. Student (School of Automation) (1982-84), and Doctoral Student (Department of CSA) (1984-87). Since February 1988, I am on the faculty of the Department of CSA and was Chair of the Department during December 2009 – July 2014. I was the Dean, Division of EECS (Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Sciences) at IISc from August 2014 till July 2021. I was chairing the Office of DIGITS (Digital Campus and Informational Technology Services) during January 2016-December 2020. I am part of the AI Research Cluster and the Controls and Optimisation Cluster. Since June 1, 2022, I am officiating as Director, Centre for Brain Research.

During 1992, I was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA and during 1997, I was a Visiting Scientist on sabbatical at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersberg, Maryland, USA.

I am an elected fellow of: IEEE, New York (FIEEE)Indian National Science Academy (FNA), New Delhi; Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc), Bangalore; Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE), New Delhi; and the National Academy of Sciences (FNASc), Allahabad. I am a recipient of the J.C. Bose National Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. In 2009, I received the IISc Alumni Award for Research Excellence in Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science.

I have authored or co-authored three books: Game Theory and Mechanism Design (IISc Press and World Scientific) (2014); Game Theoretic Problems in Network Economics and Mechanism Design Solutions (2009) (Springer Monograph); and Performance Modeling of Automated Manufacturing Systems (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs) (1992).

My work has been driven by talented and brilliant students: 24 of them have completed Ph.D.18 have completed Master’s by Researchmore than 100 have completed M.Tech. projects. Currently, the group consists of 5 Ph.D. students and 6 M.Tech. project students.

I am fortunate to have been an alumnus of the Government Primary School, Kosgi (Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh) during 1964-69; the Mahatma Gandhi Municipal High School, Hindupur (Anantapur District, Andhra Pradesh) during 1969-74; the A.E.S. National College, Gauribidanur (Chickaballapur District, Karnataka) during 1974-79 (Pre-University and B.Sc. Courses), and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (B.E., M.E., and Ph.D.) during 1979-87. Professor N. Viswanadham was my research advisor during M.E. and Ph.D.

 

Updates

Dec 22, 2023: Congratulations to Gogulapati Sreedurga for defending her Ph.D. Thesis entitled Exploring Fairness and welfare Maximization in Participatory Budgeting.

Dec 4, 2023: Congratulations to Vishakha Patil on submitting her Ph.D. Thesis entitled Exploring Fairness and Causality in Online Decision-Making.

Nov 17, 2023: Congratulations to Vishakha Patil on presenting her Ph.D. colloquium on her thesis Exploring Fairness and Causality in Online Decision-Making.

October 2023: Congratulations to Anand Krishna for defending his Ph.D. Thesis “Algorithms for Individual and Collective Measures of Fairness” on October 18, 2023.

October 2023: Congratulations to Mayank Ratan Bhardwaj for defending his Ph.D. Thesis “Novel Algorithms for Improving Agricultural Planning and Operations using Artificial Intelligence and Game Theory” on October 17, 2023.

September 2023:  Congratulations to Vishakha Patil for selection and participation in the 10th  Heidelberg Laureates Forum.

September 2023: Congratulations to Jaydeep Pawar Vasudev for being awarded  Br. C. Selvam Endowment Award – 2023 to recognize the best M.Tech. Project among M.Tech. [CSE] students of 2021-2023 Batch for his project entitled Using Geospatial Information and Improved Deep Learning Methods for Crop Price Prediction.

Aug – Dec 2023: Co-teaching, with Prof. Viraj Kumar,  the course UE 101: Algorithms and Programming  for the undergraduate students (B.Tech. in Mathematics and Computing as well as B.Sc. (Research) students)

August 2023: Congratulations to Shivika Narang for joining as a Postdoc Fellow at the Simon Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute, Berkeley, SLMath for the Algorithms, Fairness, and Equity program, August 2023

July 2023: The Sixteenth International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM-2023) was held in the J.N. Tata Auditorium, IISc Campus, during July 11-14, 2023. THis is the first time this flagship conference in education technologies is being held in India. Click here for details and proceedings.

July 2023: Congratulations to Mayank Ratan Bhardwaj for submitting his Ph.D. Thesis entitled  Novel Algorithms for Improving Agricultural Planning and Operations using Artificial Intelligence and Game Theory

July 2023:  Congratulations to Gogulapati Sreedurga for submitting her Ph.D. Thesis entitled Exploring Welfare Maximization and Fairness in Participatory Budgeting

July 2023:  Congratulations to Amal Roy for contributing a state-of-the-art review paper for Sadhana: Amal Roy, Chandramani Singh, and Y. Narahari. Recent Advances in Modeling and Control of Epidemics using a Mean Field Approach. Sadhana, Indian Academy Proceedings in Engineering Sciences.

June 2023: Congratulations to all the six M.Tech. Project students for  successfully completing their M.Tech. projects. The projects contribute the six components of Project GRAMA (Game theory, Random Processes, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning for (Indian) Agriculture):

  • Abhishek Kumar Chaudhary : CROP-S: A Decision Support Tool for Acreage Planning of Agricultural Crops for Maximizing Profits of Farmers
  • Chaitanya Chennam: PROSPER : Protocol for Optimal Selling of Agricultural Produce for Enhanced Revenue
  • Kaushik Kukadia: Agri-Vaahan 2.0: AI-ML Pipeline for Agriculture
  • Kishan Mittal: ACRE 2.0: Agricultural Crop Recommendation for Farmers
  • Jaydeep Pawar: Using Geospatial Information and Improved Deep Learning Methods for Crop Price Prediction
  • Sneha Negi: Designing Fair, Cost-optimal Combinatorial Auctions based on Deep Learning for Procuring Agricultural Inputs

June 2023:  Congratulations to Anand Krishna for submitting  his Ph.D. Thesis entitled Algorithms for Individual and Collective fairness Measures.

June 2023:  Three papers accepted in IEEE CASE 2023 (International Conference on Automation science and Engineering, Auckland, New Zealand, August 2023). Congratulations to all the authors.

  • Mayank Ratan Bhardwaj, Bazil Ahmed, Prathik Diwakar, Ganesh Ghalme, and Y. Narahari. Designing Fair, Cost-optimal Auctions based on Deep Learning for Procuring Agricultural Inputs through Farmer Collectives.
  • Mayank Ratan Bhardwaj, Jaydeep Pawar, Abhijnya Bhat, Deepanshu, Inavamsi Enaganti, Kartik Sagar, and Y. Narahari. An innovative Deep Learning Based Approach for Accurate Agricultural Crop Price Prediction.
  • Mayank Ratan Bhardwaj, Abhishek Chaudhary, Inavamsi Enaganti, Kartik Sagar, and Y. Narahari. A Decision Support Tool for District Level Planning of Agricultural Crops for Maximizing Profits of Farmers.

June 2023: Congratulations to Shivika Narang for defending her Ph.D. Thesis entitled Algorithms for Achieving Fairness and Efficiency in Matching Problems.

May 2023:  Congratulations to Sreedurga and Vishakha for their papers in IJCAI-2023 (paper by Sreedurga is a single author paper).

  • Gogulapati Sreedurga. Participatory Budgeting with Multiple Degrees of Projects and Ranged Approval Votes.
  • Vishakha Patil, Vineet Nair, Ganesh Ghalme, Arindam Khan: Mitigating Disparity while Maximizing Reward: Tight Anytime Guarantee for Improving Bandits

April 2023: Congratulations to Anand Krishna for being awarded Best Presentation Prize in the IISc EECS Research Students Symposium.

March 2023:  A Roundtable on Transformational Technologies for Indian Agriculture was held in the Department of CSA, IISc, on March 18, 2023. Click here for a digest of the Roundtable. The Roundtable was a sequel to the one day workshop on Transformational Technologies for Indian Agriculture  held on January 10, 2022 (click here for the workshop report).

March 2023:  Congratulations to Shivika Narang for submitting her Ph.D. Thesis entitled   Algorithms for Achieving Fairness and Efficiency in Matching Problems

February 2023: Congratulations to Anand Krishna for being selected for a spotlight presentation at the PMRF Students Posters Presentations.

February 2023: Completed co-teaching, with Prof. Viraj Kumar,  the course UE 101: Algorithms and Programming  to the students of  the inaugural batch of  B.Tech. in Mathematics and Computing.  I had co-taught, with Prof. M. Narasimha Murty, the above course to the students of the inaugural batch of B.Sc. (Research) students during Aug – dec 2011.

December 2022: Collaborative project initiated with Bharat Electronics Limited entitles PROMISE: Procurement Mechanisms for (Agricultural) Inputs and Services

September 2022: Paper accepted in WINE 2022: Siddharth Barman, Anand Krishna, Y. Narahari, Soumyarup Sadhukhan. Nash Welfare Guarantees for Fair and Efficient Coverage.  WINE-2022.

July 2022: Paper in IJCAI: Siddharth Barman, Anand Krishna, Y. Narahari, Soumyarup Sadhukhan: Achieving Envy-Freeness with Limited Subsidies under Dichotomous Valuations. IJCAI-2022.

July 2022: Paper in IJCAI: Gogulapati Sreedurga, Mayank Ratan Bhardwaj, Y. Narahari: Maxmin Participatory Budgeting. IJCAI-2022.

June 2022: Took up additional responsibility as Director, Centre for Brain Research (https://cbr.iisc.ac.in/). The new building of the centre inaugurated by Respected Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi (https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/bengaluru/pm-inaugurates-centre-for-brain-research-at-iisc-in-bengaluru-1119757.html).

June 2022: Paper in ACM COMPASS: Mayank Ratan Bhardwaj, Azal Fatima, Inavamsi Enaganti, Y. Narahari: Incentive Compatible Mechanisms for Efficient Procurement of Agricultural Inputs for Farmers through Farmer Collectives. ACM COMPASS 2022.

April 2022: Shivika Narang selected for the Best Presentation Prize in the 2022 EECS Research Students Symposium Session on Artificial Intelligence: https://eecs.iisc.ac.in/EECS2022/awards.html

April 2022: Ganesh Ghalme joins as Assistant Professor in the Department of Artificial Intelligence, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad.

January 2022: Dr Soumyarup Sadhukhan, C.V. Raman Postdoc, joins the Department of Statistics, IIT-Kanpur, as Assistant Professor.

January 2022: INAE (Indian National Academy of Engineering) workshop on Technology Enabled Transformation of Indian Agriculture (January 10, 2022). Please click here for the workshop report.

October 2021: NABARD (The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, Government of India,) has awarded a project entltled Enabling and Empowering Indian Farmers through AI and Game Theory Based Services. (October 2021). For more details, click here.

Oct. 2021: Ganesh Sambhaji Ghalme and Arpita Biswas receive Ph.D. Degrees at the IISc Convocation.

Oct. 2021: Arpita Biswas selected for the Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award by the Indian National academy of Engineering

Sep. 2021: Arpita Biswas’s Ph.D. Dissertation selected for Best Thesis Award in the Department of CSA for the Academic Year 2020-21.

Aug. 2021: Y. Narahari introduces a new Course E0388: Topics in Artificial Intelligence for Social Good

Jul. 2021: K.S. Shivanjali (M.Tech. – CSE), Bazil Ahmad (M.Tech. – AI), and Someshwar Arnoorla (M.Tech. – AI) complete their M.Tech. Projects

May 2021: Paper accepted in the Journal of Machine Learning Research. Vishakha Patil, Ganesh Ghalme, Vineet Nayar, Y. Narahari.  Achieving fairness in the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem. Journal of Machine Learning Research. 2021.

Apr. 2021: Soumyarup Sadhukhan, Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute, joins as C.V. Raman Postdoc.

Mar. 2021: Paper accepted in the Artificial Intelligence Journal. Ganesh Ghalme, Swapnil Dhamal, Shweta Jain, Sujit Gujar, Y. Narahari.  Balloooning multi-armed bandits. Artificial Intelligence, 2021

Jan 2021: Vishakha Patil and Anand Krishna selected for the Prime Minister’s Ph.D. Research Fellowship

 

R&D Projects

My most recent R&D Projects (ongoing) are in the area of AIML and Game Theory applied to enable agricultural farmers. These are sponsored by NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) and BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited). For a complete list of my R&D Projects, please click here.

Teaching

I am currently co-teaching the course Algorithms and Programming to the students of the recently launched B.Tech. in Mathematics and Computing course.   I will be co-teaching the course E1 254 –    Game Theory during January-April 2023. I have earlier offered the courses: Artificial Intelligence for Social Good,  Topics in Game Theory,  Electronic CommerceSoftware ArchitectureSupply Chain ManagementPerformance Modeling, and Data Structures and Algorithms. I have also co-taught a course on Algorithms and Programming (offered in August-December 2013, 2012, and 2011) to the undergraduate students at IISc.

Research Monograph

Y. Narahari, Dinesh Garg, Ramasuri Narayanam, Hastagiri Prakash. Game Theoretic Problems in Network Economics and Mechanism Design Solutions (April 2009). Springer Series in Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing.

Monograph Flyer (WORD)

Monograph Description (WORD) (PPT)

Research Group

Ph.D. | M.Tech.

Project Associates

View List of Project Associates

Recognition for Students

Best Thesis Awards, Fellowships, etc.

Institute and Professional Service

Admin Positions, Conference Organisation, etc.

Invited Talks (Abroad)

Click here for details.

Invited Talks (In India)

Click here for details.