Chair’s Welcome

A warm welcome to CSA@IISc.

CSA (Computer Science and Automation) at the Indian Institute of Science has its seeds in the erstwhile School of Automation set up in 1969. While at inception it was primarily focused on automatic control, the ambit expanded in the 1980s to include computation and communication, leading to the current name.

CSA focuses on creative research in three broad areas of computer science:

  • Theoretical Computer Science, including number theory, complexity theory, graph theory, coding theory, algorithms, data structures, automated verification, combinatorial and computational geometry, cryptography and security.
  • Computer Systems and Software, including computer architecture, operating systems, programming languages, compilers, software engineering, database systems, graphics and visualization, communication networks and distributed computing.
  • Intelligent Systems, including pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, algebraic geometry, optimization, information retrieval, and scientific applications.

These research activities find expression through publications in premier international journals and conferences, and through the development of open-source software prototypes and tools. CSA is also involved in numerous scientific initiatives at the institute, state, national and international levels, including sponsored research projects, industrial consultancy, government programs, journal editorship, workshops, symposia and conferences.

CSA currently has 30 full-time faculty, some of whom are cross-listed with related departments such as SERC, ECE and Mathematics. We also draw on the expertise of a few adjunct and honorary faculty, apart from postdocs and research associates. The faculty mentor a graduate student population that is close to 270 strong, the largest in Indian academia. Roughly half of these students are in the research stream, with almost 100 in the PhD program, and the rest in the MSc(Engg) program. The other half are in the course stream, leading to an ME degree, with around 80 percent in Computer Science & Engineering (CSE), and the remainder in the Systems Science & Automation (SSA) program conducted jointly with the EE department. These academic activities are supported by several technical, project and office staff.

A detailed account of the department’s history, major contributions, current activities and personnel are available on this website. We also invite you to visit CSA in person and experience its potent intellectual ambience at first-hand.

Vinod Ganapathy
Professor and Chair