Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy

News

September 2021: It's a pleasure to welcome -- if somewhat belatedly -- undergraduate researchers Aswath, Deepti, Garvit and Prakhar to the group. It's also great to have Divyansh "visiting" (via Google Meet) from IISER Pune to work on research. See People.
June 2021: Venkat now also has a faculty affiliation with the Anuradha and Prashanth Palakurthi Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (APPCAIR) -- an inter-campus AI Research Centre at BITS.
March 2021: US Patent on Method and electronic device for providing image-based captcha challenge granted !
Jointly with Ajit Rajwade, Vishal Agarwal and Lalduhbera Hlychho at IIT Bombay.
November 2020: Virtual visit & an invited talk at the University of Bristol, hosted by Cian O’Donnell.
November 2020: Simran Ketha starts as the first Ph.D. student in the group. Welcome Simran !
October 2020: Invited talk at The (Oxford) Neurotheory Forum, hosted by Tim Vogels, with a virtual visit to IST Austria.
July 2020: Invited talk at the Synapse Symposium at IISER Tirupati.
June 2020: Organized the Monsoon Brain Meeting, an online Neuroscience conference, jointly with Arjun Ramakrishnan (IIT Kanpur),
funded by DBT-Wellcome Trust India Alliance & Pratiksha Trust.
This international meeting had ~800 attendees and ~140 contributed talks, in addition to a panel on a possible India Brain Project & more.
See the IndiaBioScience coverage of the meeting. All the videos available here: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3.
January 2020: Venkat has been named a 2020 Grass Fellow — one of 9 early-career investigators so named, globally.
The Grass Fellowship offers investigators the opportunity to spend a summer working on independent research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachussetts, funded by the Grass Foundation.

People

Ph.D. Student

Undergraduate Researchers

"Visiting" Undergraduate Researcher

Work

Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy,
An Algorithmic Barrier to Neural Circuit Understanding,
[BioRxiv], 2019.

[BioRxiv download stats]
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy,
Hierarchies & Lower Bounds in Theoretical Connectomics,
[BioRxiv], 2019.
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy, Arunava Banerjee,
Connectomic Constraints on Computation in Neural Circuits,
Janelia Conference: Analysis and Interpretation of Connectomes, Ashburn, VA, 2018.
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy
An Algorithmic Barrier to Neural Circuit Interrogation
Integrated Systems Neuroscience 2017 meeting, Manchester, UK.
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy
An Algorithmic Question concerning the Experimental Interrogation of Neural Circuits,
International Conference on Mathematical NeuroScience (ICMNS), 2017.
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy
Lower Bounds in Theoretical Connectomics,
International Conference on Mathematical NeuroScience (ICMNS), 2015. [PDF]
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy, Arunava Banerjee
Connectomic Constraints on Computation in Feedforward Networks of Spiking Neurons,
Journal of Computational Neuroscience, 37(2): 209-228, 2014. [Main text] [Supplement]
(DOI: 10.1007/s10827-014-0497-5)

A talk on Theoretical Connectomics that describes this work is also available.
(Sound is a bit weak (albeit still audible in full volume) till 16:05)
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy, Arunava Banerjee
Theoretical Connectomics,
Max Planck / HHMI Connectomics Conference 2014.
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy, Arunava Banerjee
Connectomic Constraints on Computation in Networks of Spiking Neurons,
Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) 2013.
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy, Ariel Furstenberg, Assaf Breska, Leon Y. Deouell and Haim Sompolinsky
Single-trial decoding of intention from EEG,
Israel Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2012.
Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy, Arunava Banerjee
On the trade-off between single-neuron complexity and network size with respect to spike-timed computations,
Twenty First Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS*2012. [PDF]
Tamer Kahveci, Venkatakrishnan Ramaswamy, Han Tao, Tao Li
Approximate Global Alignment of Sequences,
Proceedings of IEEE 5th Symposium on Bioinformatics & Bioengineering 2005 (BIBE 05), Minneapolis, 2005. [PDF]
Ravi Gummadi, N.S. Narayanaswamy, Venkatakrishnan R
Algorithms for Satisfiability using Independent Sets of Variables,
Proceedings of Seventh International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT 2004), Vancouver, 2004.
Revised Selected Papers, Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 3542: 133-144, 2005 . [PDF]

Theses

The Transformational Complexity of Acyclic Networks of Neurons, Ph.D. Thesis, 2011.

Empirical Study of Divide and Conquer Algorithms for Satisfiability, B.Tech. Project Report, 2004.

Teaching

At BITS, I teach,

CS F214 Logic in Computer Science (I Semester 2020-2021)
CS F211 Data Structures & Algorithms (II Semester 2020-2021 - ongoing).

In the past, I have taught (at the University of Florida)

COT 3100 Applications of Discrete Structures (Fall 2009, Summer 2008)
CGS 3460 Computer Programming Using C (Spring 2008)

and served as a Teaching Assistant for

CAP 6610 Machine Learning (Spring 2010)
COT 5405 Analysis of Algorithms (Fall 2008, Summer 2007, Spring 2007 and Fall 2006)
COT 3100 Applications of Discrete Structures (Spring 2009, Fall 2007, Spring 2006 and Fall 2005)
CIS 3023 Programming for CIS Majors II (Summer 2005 and Spring 2005)
CIS 3020 Introduction to Computer Science (Fall 2004).

Seminars

At NCBS, I organized the following seminars.

Samose (with David Farris and Amit Vutha) -- an eclectic Math seminar, where mathematics of all stripes is welcome; and
Rusmalai (with Sahil Moza, Sriram Narayanan and Dinesh Natesan) -- a Machine Learning seminar with an emphasis on Deep Learning.

Notes

On the PCP Theorem and Approximability.

Links

Trivia

My Erdös number is 4, through the path VR - N.S. Narayanaswamy - C. E. Veni Madhavan - Renu C. Laskar - PE.

Academic Genealogy

Tweets by VenkRamaswamy

The Satrapy

What a misfortune, although you are made
for fine and great works
this unjust fate of yours always
denies you encouragement and success;
that base customs should block you;
and pettiness and indifference.
And how terrible the day when you yield
(the day when you give up and yield),
and you leave on foot for Susa,
and you go to the monarch Artaxerxes
who favorably places you in his court,
and offers you satrapies and the like.
And you accept them with despair
these things that you do not want.
Your soul seeks other things, weeps for other things;
the praise of the public and the Sophists,
the hard-won and inestimable Well Done;
the Agora, the Theater, and the Laurels.
How can Artaxerxes give you these,
where will you find these in a satrapy;
and what life can you live without these.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1910)

Last modified: Fri Mar 6 15:20:05 2021