I am a PhD student in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization (ACO) at the School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech. I am fortunate to be advised by Dr. Swati Gupta and Dr. Mohit Singh. I visited MIT’s Sloan School of Management in Fall 2024.
My research interests include discrete optimization and its applications to algorithmic fairness, machine learning, and quantum computing. Each of my research projects (alongside my fantastic and generous collaborators) answers one or more of the following questions:
- How do we reconcile multiple competing objectives in optimization problems? This question arises in various contexts, such as
- Online learning, where we seek to balance regret minimization against computational efficiency [NeurIPS21].
- Fairness in ML and resource allocation, where different stakeholders have different, often competing definitions of fairness [EC23], [arXiv25], [web-tool]. While algorithm design often focuses on optimizing for a single predetermined objective, real-world applications typically require balancing multiple complex goals.
- Combinatorial optimization, where studying multiple objectives provides a unified framework and new insights into classical problems [SODA25] [arXiv22].
- Can we combine techniques from ‘continuous’ and ‘discrete’ optimization to obtain more efficient algorithms? For example, our paper [NeurIPS21] discusses recommendation systems modelled as an online optimization problem over combinatorially rich submodular base polytope and several discrete optimization techniques to improve runtime of regret-optimal mirror descent methods on these polytopes.
- Can we use techniques from classical computing to improve the performance of quantum algorithms? For example, our paper [Quantum23] on QAOA for Max-Cut discusses warm-starting QAOA with solutions from the classical Goemans-Williamson algorithm. Our papers [PRA22] [arXiv24] on generating graph compilations for QAOA use classical pre-processing to shorten QAOA circuit and reduce noise in it.
Outside of work, I enjoy hiking, poetry, and cooking. I am also a big cricket fan!
Research updates
December 2024
Our paper on using graph sparsification and decomposition for noise reduction in QAOA is now under revision at Quantum. Joint work with Philip C. Lotshaw, Greg Mohler, and Swati Gupta.
October 2024
Our paper on portfolios for fairness in combinatorial optimization has been accepted at SODA 2025! Joint work with Swati Gupta and Mohit Singh. Find the paper here.
September 2024
I am visiting Dr. Swati Gupta’s lab at MIT Sloan School of Management this Fall!
June 2024
Our paper on using graph sparsification and decomposition for noise reduction in QAOA is now online here. Joint work with Philip C. Lotshaw, Greg Mohler, and Swati Gupta.
May 2024
Our web tool to visualize and mitigate ‘medical deserts’ the US is now online. Based on our paper on fair facility location from EC 2023. Joint work with Swati Gupta and Mohit Singh.
May 2024
I am interning at Amazon Research in Bellevue, Washington this summer with the Supply Chains Optimization Technology team.
September 2023
Our paper Warm-Started QAOA with Custom Mixers Provably Converges and Computationally Beats Goemans-Williamson’s Max-Cut at Low Circuit Depths has been published in Quantum! Find the paper here. Joint work with Reuben Tate, Bryan Gard, Greg Mohler, and Swati Gupta. Find the paper here.
July 2023
Our paper Which $L_p$ norm is the fairest? Approximations for fair facility location across all ‘p’ has been published in Economics and Computation (EC) 2023! Find the paper here. Joint work with Swati Gupta and Mohit Singh.
July 2022
Our paper Generating Target Graph Couplings for QAOA from Native Quantum Hardware Couplings has been accepted for publication in Physical Review A! Find the paper here. Joint work with Joel Rajakumar, Bryan Gard, Creston Herold, and Swati Gupta.
May 2022
Our poster on Reusing Combinatorial Structure: Faster Iterative Projections over Submodular Base Polytopes is runner-up at MIP 2022 poster competition! Find the paper from NeurIPS 2021 here. Joint work with Hassan Mortagy and Swati Gupta.
February 2022
Our paper New Proofs for the Disjunctive Rado Number of the Equations $x_1 - x_2 = a$ and $x_1 - x_2 = b$ has been published in Graphs and Combinatorics! Find the paper here. Joint work with A. Dileep and Amitabha Tripathi.
December 2021
Our paper Reusing Combinatorial Structure: Faster Iterative Projections over Submodular Base Polytopes has been published in NeurIPS 2021! Find the paper here. Joint work with Hassan Mortagy and Swati Gupta.