Ankur A. Kulkarni
Professor and Kelkar Family Chair
Centre for Systems and Control, Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science, IIT Bombay Trust Lab, QUICST
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
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CV (may not be up to date) || Google Scholar || Experience || Awards || Bio || Contact
I am the Kelkar Family Chair Professor at the Centre for Systems and Control, also affiliated with the Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science, IIT Bombay Trust Lab, and the CoE in Quantum Information Computing Science and Technology at IIT Bombay. I presently serve on the IT-Project Advisory Board of the Securities and Exchange Board of India from 2022-24 served as Research Advisor to Tata Consultancy Services.
I am a systems theorist with an interest in systems with strategic agents and informational complexities. I do fundamental research on game theory, information theory, stochastic control and operations research. My recent work is on problems such as security, stealth, nudging, information disclosure and elicitation, particularly in the domains of finance and security.
On the applied side I have worked with industries to study systems where such issues show up, such as financial markets, power systems and defense.
Students interested in working with me:
If you have a mathematical bent of mind, I encourage you to get in touch with me. You can work with me through either of the centres I am associated with; you can write to me for more details.
Special note about prospective IDDDP students: Please note the requirements about two courses from the minor curriculum in SysCon in the first 6 semesters and plan accordingly. CMinds also has similar requirements.
Also see my research page to see the publications of my students.
Currently looking for students with an interest in
finance and other socio-technical systems, or
physics (in particular, quantum mechanics)
Industries interested in working with me:
Agent-based modeling is a powerful paradigm of Computational Decision making that leverages Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Machine Learning, and Game Theory to answer a variety of what-if questions about the strategic behaviour of self-interested agents. I have previously been a consultant to some leading financial and software organizations. I also have an interest in all problems that benefit our armed forces. If you are interested in these or similar questions, please get in touch with me.
Recent updates
May 2025 My paper “A Scalable Bayesian Persuasion Framework for Epidemic Containment on Heterogeneous Networks” coauthored with Shraddha Pathak was accepted by the Journal of Mathematical Economics
The Free Press Journal covered my work with former Ph.D. student Anuj Vora: link, saved pdf, epaper.
Submitted a paper “Strategic Classification for Non-uniform Preferences using Penalty Labels and Randomisation” coauthored with Manish Kumar Singh to Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
A project I did for Vir Innovations and delivered to the Indian Army was covered in The Hindu.
A project I did for Vir Innovations and delivered to the Indian Army was displayed at InnoYodha and covered by news channel AajTak. My project starts at 8:11, and my contribution was the algorithm for the secondary camera system mentioned at 9:28.
Awarded a project by SBI Hub for Data Science and Analytics, on “Interventions Against Socially Engineered Digital Fraud”
This webpage was under migration for many months. It has now taken its new form. Will post more recent updates here on.
Aug 2023: I was promoted to the rank of Professor with the Kelkar Family Chair in Quantitative Finance
Education and Experience
Professor, IIT Bombay, Aug 2023 - present
Kelkar Family Chair in Quantitative Finance, Jan 2023 - present
Associate Professor, IIT Bombay, Jun 2018 - Aug 2023
Postdoctoral researcher, Coordinated Science Laboratory at UIUC, first with Prof P R Kumar and Prof Todd Coleman and then with Prof Negar Kiyavash, 2010-2012.
Instructor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Fall 2010 and Fall 2011.
Ph.D. Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010.
Visitor at the School of Technology and Computer Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, Summer 2008.
M.S. General Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008.
B.Tech. Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, 2006.
Visitor to KTH (Sweden), Univ of Cambridge (UK), Univ of Paris-Dauphine (France), MIT (USA), NUS (Singapore), IISc (India).
Awards and Honours
Kelkar Family Chair in Quantitative Finance
Research Advisor, Tata Consultancy Services
Member, IT-Project Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
Associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
INSPIRE Faculty Award, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. A competitive award comprising of salary and research grant of Rs 35 lakhs ( USD 70000).
Excellence in Ph.D. Research (awarded to my student Sharu Theresa Jose) 2019.
Excellence in Teaching Award for 2018 at IIT Bombay.
Best paper award at the National Conference on Communications, 2017.
Best paper award at the Indian Control Conference, 2018.
Best paper award (runner-up) at the International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications (SPCOM), 2018.
William A. Chittenden Award for an Outstanding Master of Science Graduate in General Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Listed on the “Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students in Spring 2007” at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
NSF Travel Grant for the International Conference on Continuous Optimization, Hamilton, Canada, 2007 and IEEE CSS Student Travel Support Award for the Conference on Decision and Control, Shanghai, China, 2009.
Bio
Ankur A. Kulkarni is a Professor and the Kelkar Family Chair in Quantitative Finance at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB). He is a systems theorist with an interest in decision making in distributed, decentralised and strategic environments, with informational complexities, which he investigates using the lens of game theory, information theory, control theory, machine learning, and mathematical optimization. His current focus is on strategic inference, stealth, privacy, information elicitation and nudging. He has published 30 papers in international journals and more than 30 papers in international conferences. He has been a consultant to the Securities and Exchange Board of India wherein he was solely responsible for suggesting regulatory interventions for high frequency algorithmic trading. He presently serves on the IT-Project Advisory Board of SEBI and is responsible for advising SEBI on utilizing advanced technologies such as AI/ML and data analytics and guiding data-related policies for internal use and public use. He is also an advisor to the Tata Consultancy Services and on the technical advisory committee of Maha-IT, a Govt of Maharashtra enterprise. He was previously a consultant to HDFC Life Insurance Company wherein he tackled the problem of design of incentives for sales agents; to Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited on anti-money laundering and anomaly detection, and to Bank of Baroda on smart cash management. He received his B.Tech. from IITB in 2006, followed by M.S. in 2008 and Ph.D. in 2010, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He was an Associate (from 2015–2018) of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (a honour reserved for only 100 scientists under the age of 35 across all fields), he has been an editor for several conferences, a recipient of the INSPIRE Faculty Award of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, 2013, and of several Best Paper awards and the Excellence in Teaching Award at IIT Bombay. He has been a visitor to MIT in the USA, University of Cambridge in UK, NUS in Singapore, University of Paris, IISc in Bangalore and KTH in Sweden.
Contact
106 Systems and Control Engineering
IIT Bombay
Powai, Mumbai, 400076.
kulkarni.ankur{at}iitb.ac.in
+91-9167889384 (M)
+91-22-25765384 (O)