The IISc/CSA and University of Wisconsin—Madison connection

Since its inception in 1969, the Department of Computer Science and Automation (CSA) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) can count, as of 2021, ten University of Wisconsin—Madison alumni on its faculty at various points in time:

    CSA Faculty Member     Degree/year     Advisor at UW-Madison     Notes
(1) Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman     Ph.D. 1961 (ECE)     Prof. Vincent Rideout     Joined IISc in 1982 after serving as a faculty member at IIT Kanpur from 1962-1982, where he started the first computer science academic program in India. He retired from IISc in 1994.
(2) Isukapalli Gopala Sarma     Ph.D. 1964 (ECE)     Prof. Thomas J. Higgins     Joined IISc in 1969 as the founding chairman of IISc/CSA (then called School of Automation) after serving as a faculty member at IIT Kanpur. He passed away in 1996. The CSA department honors his memory through an annual distinguished lecture named after him.
(3) Kanchi Gopinath     M.S. 1980 (CS)     Prof. Charles Fischer     Joined IISc in 1990 after obtaining his Ph.D. degree at Stanford in 1988, advised by Prof. John Hennessy, and a post-doctoral stint at Stanford. He retired from IISc in 2021.
(4) Matthew Jacob Thazhuthaveetil     Ph.D. 1986 (CS)     Prof. Andrew Pleszkun     Joined IISc in 1991 after serving as a faculty member at Penn State from 1986-1991.
(5) Jayant Haritsa     Ph.D. 1991 (CS)     Prof. Miron Livny and Prof. Michael Carey     Joined IISc in 1993 after post-doctoral research at the University of Maryland-College Park.
(6) Sriram Vajapeyam     Ph.D. 1991 (CS)     Prof. Gurindar Sohi     Joined IISc in 1992 after serving as a research staff member at Cray, and was with IISc/CSA until 2001.
(7) Raghavan Komondoor     Ph.D. 2003 (CS)     Prof. Susan Horwitz     Joined IISc in 2008 after serving as a postdoctoral researcher and then research staff member at IBM Research.
(8) Vinod Ganapathy     Ph.D. 2007 (CS)     Prof. Somesh Jha     Joined IISc in 2017 after serving as a faculty member at Rutgers University from 2007-2017.
(9) Siddharth Barman     Ph.D. 2012 (CS)     Prof. Shuchi Chawla     Joined IISc in 2015 after post-doctoral research at Caltech.
(10) Arkaprava Basu     Ph.D. 2013 (CS)     Prof. Mark Hill and Prof. Michael Swift     Joined IISc in 2018 after serving as a research staff member at AMD Research.
Credits for compiling the list: Jayant Haritsa.

When I joined IISc in 2017, I was one of seven University of Wisconsin—Madison alumni on the IISc CSA faculty (out of 30). That made IISc/CSA the largest faculty gathering of University of Wisconsin—Madison alumni in any academic department worldwide!

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