mathematics
2013
Anindya Goswami
Anisa Chorwadwala
Ankur Paliwal
Anupam Kumar Singh
Ashwin T A N
Ayan Mahalanobis
Baskar Balasubramanyam
Chandrasheel Bhagwat
Debraj Roy
Diganta Borah
Gaurav Prabhakar Sawant
Gunja Sachdeva
Hardik Gajera
Hitesh Raoundal
Jatin Majithia
Jayant Deshpande
Jeeten Patel
Kaneenika Sinha
Kumar Vasumitra Singh
Makarand Sarnobat
Compiling and Editing
Anisa Chorwadwala
Chandrasheel Bhagwat
A Raghuram
Shanti Kalipatnapu
Photography
IISER Pune students and staff
Pratima Videotech, Pune
Manasi Mahapatra
Manidipa Pal
Neha Prabhu
Parthasarathi R
Prabhat Kushwaha
Prahlad Shinde
Pranay Goel
Rabeya Basu
Raghuram A
Rama Mishra
Rashmi Kulkarni
Rohit Joshi
Soumen Maity
Sreekar Sastry
Steven Spallone
Sudhir Pujahari
Sushil Bhunia
Vivek Mallick
Yasmeen Shameem
Printing
Anson Advertising and Marketing, Pune
WELCOME MESSAGE
I joined IISER Pune on December 26, 2011, as the Coordinator for
Mathematics. Since that date it has been one exhilarating journey in heading
a young and growing group of dedicated practitioners of Mathematics.
In my first year here, the faculty strength in Mathematics has grown from 14
to 18, and the number of PhD students has grown from 4 to 14. An
aggressive hiring policy is being pursued to bring in other areas of expertise,
to complement and strengthen existing areas, and to build inter-disciplinary
areas with a strong mathematical component.
We had a major overhauling of the undergraduate courses being offered in
Mathematics. We also set up courses for all the new PhD students. These
courses have been based on an ideological framework stemming from the
didactic dictum that most of Mathematics comes under one of these five
mutually
indistinguishable
subjects:
Algebra,
Analysis,
Geometry
&
Topology, Discrete Mathematics, and Applicable Mathematics.
We had some very famous mathematicians visit us and give IISER Pune
Colloquia; for example: Professor John Coates, the then Sadleirian Professor
of pure mathematics at Cambridge University, UK; Professor Jean-Marc
Fontaine, University of Paris-Sud at Orsay, Paris, France; Professor Benedict
Gross, former Dean of Harvard College, Harvard University, USA. It was a
great pleasure and a rare honor for me, and indeed all of us at IISER Pune,
to host such important mathematicians.
In July 2012, we had an international workshop on the “Bloch-Kato
conjecture for the Riemann zeta function at odd positive integers.” This was
followed by the “Pan Asian Number Theory” conference, held in India for the
first time, and indeed it was held in IISER Pune. In September 2012 we
organized an “Indo-French conference on Automorphic Forms, Galois
Representations and L-functions.” All these events have announced the
arrival of IISER Pune as an important center for Mathematics both on the
national and the international stage.
Mathematics at IISER Pune is now well-defined, vibrant and happening!
A Raghuram
Professor and Coordinator, Mathematics
IISER Pune
Anindya Goswami
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Anindya Goswami received his PhD from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India in
2008. Following this, he held postdoctoral positions at the Universiteit Twente in Enschede, The
Netherlands; INRIA in Rennes, France; and Technion in Haifa, Israel before joining IISER Pune
in 2011.
STOCHASTIC CONTROL – GAME THEORY, MATH
FINANCE, QUEUING NETWORKS, RENEWAL
PROCESSES
I am exploring various topics in Applied Probability. Those include generalization of Black-Sholes-Merton
PDE for options in semi-Markov modulated market, Föllmer Schweizer decomposition of an unattainable
contingent claim, equilibrium of non-cooperative semi-Markov game under ergodic cost, optimal control
under risk sensitive cost, portfolio optimization, large deviation limit, fluid limit in queuing network, PDE
techniques in stochastic control and differential games etc.
I use Markov models, filtering techniques, stochastic calculus, infinitesimal generator for semigroup of
operators, mild solution technique for parabolic equations, viscosity solution method for HJB/HJI
equations, stability analysis of numerical schemes for solving PDE or IE., convergence of value iteration
schemes, marginalization technique in rare event simulation for hybrid processes, martingale formulation
for Markov processes etc.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Atar, R., Goswami, A. and Shwartz, A. Risk-sensitive control for the parallel server model (Submitted).
Basak, G.K., Ghosh, M.K. and Goswami, A. (2011). Risk minimizing option pricing for a class of exotic options in a Markov modulated
market. Stochastic Analysis and Applications 29:259-281.
Ghosh, M.K., Goswami, A. and Kumar, S.K. (2010). Portfolio optimization in a Markov modulated market: Chapter in Modern Trends
In Controlled Stochastic Processes: Theory and Applications. Luniver Press, pp. 181-195.
Ghosh, M.K., Goswami, A. and Kumar, S.K. (2009). Portfolio optimization in a semi-Markov modulated market. Applied Mathematics
& Optimization 60:275-296.
Ghosh, M.K. and Goswami, A. (2009). Risk minimizing option pricing in a semi-Markov modulated market. SIAM Journal on Control
and Optimization 48:1519-1541.
Ghosh, M.K. and Goswami, A. (2008). Partially observable semi-Markov games with average payoff. Journal of Mathematical Analysis
and Applications 345:26-39.
Anisa M H Chorwadwala
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Anisa Chorwadwala received her PhD from the University of Mumbai in 2007. Following this,
she held postdoctoral positions at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai; The
Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy; and the Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. She has been on the faculty of IISER Pune
since April 2011.
SHAPE OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS
My research work falls mainly in the following two branches
of Mathematics: Partial differential equations and Riemannian
geometry. I work on shape optimization problems including
isoperimetric problems. A typical shape optimization problem
is to find a shape which is optimal in the sense that it
minimizes a certain cost functional while satisfying given
constraints. In many cases, the functional being minimized
depends on the solution of a given partial differential
equation defined on the variable domain.
We have solved some shape optimization problems for a
class of doubly connected domains over Rank-one
symmetric spaces of non-compact type. Here the functionals
Moving Plane Method for a punctured ball
to be optimized were the energy functional and the principal
on the unit sphere
frequency associated with the Dirichlet boundary value
problem and the Dirichlet Eigenvalue problem respectively, for both linear as well non-linear operators,
namely the Laplacian and the p-Laplacian.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Anisa M. H. C. and Mahadevan, R. A shape optimization problem for the $p$-Laplacian (Submitted).
Anisa, M.H.C. and Vemuri, M.K. (2012). Two functionals connected to the Laplacian in a class of doubly connected domains on rank
one symmetric spaces of non-compact type. Geometriae Dedicata DOI: 10.1007/s10711-012-9800-7.
Anisa, M.H.C. and Aithal, A.R. (2012). Convex polygons and the isoperimetric problem in simply connected space forms $M_κ^2$.
The Mathematical Intelligencer (Accepted for Publication).
Anisa, M.H.C. and Aithal, A.R. (2005). On two functionals connected to the Laplacian in a class of doubly connected domains over
space forms. Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences (Math. Sci.) 115:93-102.
Ayan Mahalanobis
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Ayan Mahalanobis obtained his PhD from Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA in 2005.
He was then a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey,
USA for a few years before joining IISER Pune in 2009.
PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY
I work at the intersection of pure mathematics (group theory) and public key cryptography. Cryptography,
especially public key cryptography, is the backbone of a modern society. It serves us with the required
tools for online transactions and trading, i.e., online commerce.
My research aims to find new cryptograhic primitives and to build secure protocols from that. We look for
groups in which the discrete logarithm problem is secure. My recent work has shown that the group of
non-singular circulant matrices over a finite field has some properties that make them attractive over the
discrete logarithm problem on a finite field. This new finding has opened a new avenue in research of
public key cryptography.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Shah, J. and Mahalanobis, A. A new guess-and-determine attack on the A5/1 stream cipher (Submitted).
Mahalanobis, A. The ElGamal cryptosystem over circulant matrices (Submitted).
Mahalanobis, A. The MOR cryptosystem and extra-special p-groups (Submitted).
Mahalanobis, A. The automorphism group of the group of unitriangular matrices over a field (Submitted).
Mahalanobis, A. (2012). A simple generalization of the ElGamal cryptosystem to non-abelian groups II. Communications in Algebra
40:3583-3596.
Mahalanobis, A. (2010). The discrete logarithm problem in the group of non-singular circulant matrices. Groups Complexity
Cryptology 2:83-89.
Baskar Balasubramanyam
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Baskar Balasubramanyam completed his PhD from Brandeis University, USA in 2007. In 200708, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Mathematics at the BenGurion University of the Negev in Israel. Following this, he was a Bateman Instructor at
California Institute of Technology, USA during 2008-10. He has been with IISER Pune since
September 2010.
MODULAR FORMS AND GALOIS REPRESENTATIONS
My research interests are in Number Theory. A modular form is essentially a function defined on the
complex upper half-plane (everything above the real axis) that behaves in a good way under
transformations of certain 2x2 matrices with integer entries. The expansion at infinity of such a function
gives us a power series whose coefficients have interesting arithmetic properties. An important example of
numbers that arise in such a way is the Ramanujan Tau function τ(n). In order to understand these
coefficients, it is useful to consider an object attached to it called the L-function (these are generalizations
of the Riemann zeta function).
A Galois group is a set of permutations of roots of an irreducible polynomial. For example, complex
conjugation permutes the roots of x2+1. It is possible to represent such permutations by matrices. One of
the problems in Number Theory is to try and understand the Galois group by studying its representations.
One can also attach L-functions to Galois representations and in some cases modular forms and Galois
representations are related through their L-functions.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Balasubramanyam, B., Ghate, E. and Vatsal, V. (2013). On local Galois representations over totally real fields. Manuscripta
Mathematica (Accepted for Publication).
Balasubramanyam, B. and Longo, M. (2010). ∧-adic modular symbols over totally real fields. Commenterii Mathematici Helvetici
86:841-865.
Chandrasheel Bhagwat
INSPIRE Faculty
[email protected]
Chandrasheel Bhagwat obtained Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Fergusson College,
Pune in 2003 followed by Master of Mathematics at Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore in
2005. He completed PhD in Mathematics from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)
Mumbai, India in 2011 and spent a few months as a post-doctoral fellow at IISER Pune. He has
received the DST-INSPIRE faculty award and research grant in 2011 and has joined IISER Pune
as a faculty member in March 2012.
NUMBER THEORY, REPRESENTATION THEORY AND
SPECTRAL THEORY OF SYMMETRIC SPACES
The interplay between arithmetic, spectral theory and geometry was studied by mathematicians like
Selberg, Maass, and Sunada among many others. From the last few years, I have been working on the
study of arithmetic aspects of the spectral theory and geometry of symmetric spaces. My thesis work
involved proving various analogues of the classical number theoretic results in the context of symmetric
spaces. I am also interested in the study of analytic properties of the Zeta functions associated to a rank
one locally symmetric space, which encode a lot of spectral and geometric data. They can be considered
as the spectral counterparts of the Dedekind zeta functions associated to number fields. I would like to
look at some of the `inverse problems’ on locally symmetric spaces with the aid of the Zeta functions
mentioned above.
In a joint work with Prof C S Rajan and Dr Supriya Pisolkar, we have established some results which relate
the notions of weak commensurability (introduced by Prasad and Rapinchuk) and representation
equivalence of arithmetic lattices in Lie groups. These notions are in turn related to the geometry and
spectral theory of the locally symmetric spaces defined by them.
My recent work with Prof Raghuram establishes period relations for the tensor product of motives which
together with the celebrated Deligne’s conjecture; predict the results of a similar nature about the
special values of Rankin - Selberg L-functions and Dirichlet L-series. In the future, I would like to work on
some the problems associated to special values of L-functions.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Bhagwat C. and Raghuram A. Ratios of periods for tensor product motives (Submitted).
Bhagwat, C., Pisolkar, S. and Rajan, C.S. (2013). Commensurability and representation equivalent arithmetic lattices. International
Mathematics Research Notices DOI: 10.1093/imrn/rns282.
Bhagwat, C. and Rajan, C.S. (2011). On a multiplicity one property for the length spectra of even dimensional compact hyperbolic
spaces. Journal of Number Theory DOI: 10.1016/j.jnt.2011.05.009.
Bhagwat, C. and Rajan, C.S. (2010). On a spectral analogue of the strong multiplicity one theorem. International Mathematics
Research Notices DOI:10.1093/imrn/rnq243.
Diganta Borah
IISER Fellow
[email protected]
Diganta Borah received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India in
2010 and was a Research Associate there until 2011. He joined IISER Pune in January 2012.
SEVERAL COMPLEX VARIABLES
Much of my current work focuses on the study of the intrinsic properties of a Kähler metric, the so called
Robin metric, on smoothly bounded pseudoconvex domains in Cn, n>1. This metric was constructed by N.
Levenberg and H. Yamaguchi using the Robin function that arises from the Green function associated to
the standard sum-of-squares Laplacian in Cn.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Borah, D. (2012). Remarks on the metric induced by the Robin function II. Michigan Mathematical Journal (Accepted for Publication).
Borah, D. and Verma, K. (2011). Remarks on the metric induced by the Robin function. Indiana University Mathematics Journal
60:751-802.
Jayant V Deshpande
Visiting Faculty
[email protected]
Jayant Deshpande’s specialization is statistics, particularly nonparametric inference, reliability
theory and survival analysis. He has extensive teaching and research experience at Panjab
University, Chandigarh; University of Pune; Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and at
many Universities abroad over the last forty five years. He has joined IISER Pune in August
2012.
MATHEMATICAL STATISTICS
My current research is on (i) bounds for the reliability and expected life of coherent systems whose
components have lifetimes belonging to certain well established aging classes of probability distributions
such as the IFRA class and the NBUFRA class, (ii) modeling the probability distributions of parallel and kout-of-n systems where the distributions are modified due to load sharing at the epoch of every
component failure and (iii) nonparametric tests for testing the constancy or the equality and
proportionality of fatality rates of emerging epidemics at one or more locations.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Deshpande, J.V., Isha Dewanb and Naik-Nimbalkar, U.V. (2010). A family of distributions to model load sharing systems. Journal of
Statistical Planning and Inference 140:1441-1451.
Lam, K.F., Deshpande, J.V., Lau, E.H., Naik-Nimbalkar, U.V., Yip, P.S., Xu, Y. (2009). A test for constant fatality rate of an emerging
epidemic, with applications to the SARS syndrome in Hong Kong and Beijing. Biometrics 64:869-876.
Deshpande, J.V. and Naik-Nimbalkar, U.V. (2007). Comparing relative importance of the same component in a series system in two
environments. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference 137:3410-3415.
Kaneenika Sinha
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Kaneenika Sinha completed her PhD from Queen's University, Canada in 2006. She has held
postdoctoral fellowships at University of Toronto, University of Alberta and Mathematical
Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley. She was an assistant professor in IISER Kolkata before
joining IISER Pune in December 2012.
ANALYTIC NUMBER THEORY, HARMONIC ANALYSIS
AND ARITHMETIC GEOMETRY
My primary research work is concerned with extremal functions in Fourier analysis, equidistribution of
Fourier coefficients of modular cusp forms, Eichler-Selberg trace formula and arithmetic of modular
curves. Modular forms play an extremely important role in number theory and their Fourier coefficients
carry fundamental information about points of elliptic curves over finite fields, values of the partition
function, class numbers and representations of integers by quadratic forms. They are essential tools in
addressing many fundamental problems in Mathematics, like Fermat's Last Theorem. Modular forms are a
special case of automorphic representations and lead to the Langlands program, a theme that drives much
of the twenty first century research in number theory and representation theory. My research program
focuses on the behavior of the Fourier coefficients of normalized Hecke eigenforms and their connections
with Jacobian varieties of modular curves.
My research program in number theory heavily draws ideas and techniques from various mathematical
areas, like harmonic analysis and arithmetic geometry. The problems pursued by me are posed in the
language of algebra and geometry, where as the techniques used in resolving them come from harmonic
analysis. Moreover, a comprehensive understanding of these questions necessitates approaching them
from a representation-theoretic point of view.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Bucur, A., David, C., Feigon, B., Lalín, M. and Sinha, K. (2011). Distribution of zeta zeroes of Artin-Schreier covers. Mathematical
Research Letters.
Lalín, M. and Sinha, K. (2011). Higher Mahler measure for cyclotomic polynomials and Lehmer's question. The Ramanujan Journal
26:257-294.
Ram Murty, M. and Sinha, K. (2010). Factoring newparts of Jacobians of certain modular curves. Proceedings of the American
Mathematical Society 138:3481-3494.
Ram Murty, M. and Sinha, K. (2009). Effective equidistribution of eigenvalues of Hecke operators. Journal of Number Theory
129:681-714.
R Parthasarathi
Assistant professor
[email protected]
R Parthasarathi received his PhD from Chennai Mathematical Institute-University of Madras,
India in 2007. Following this, he held postdoctoral positions at Chennai Mathematical Institute,
India and the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. He
worked as a visiting scientist at Hausdorff Institute for Mathematics, Bonn, Germany. He has
been on the faculty of IISER Pune since 2010.
MODULI SPACES OF VECTOR BUNDLES ON SURFACES
My research interests lie in vector bundles with added structures on projective varieties—in particular,
over algebraic surfaces. I work on the construction of moduli space of vector bundles with added structure
and study of the properties of these moduli spaces. I am interested in the study of restriction theorems for
the semi stable sheaves on algebraic surfaces.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
On Parabolic bundles on algebraic surfaces. Journal of Ramanujan Mathematical Society (Accepted for Publication).
Balaji, V., Dey, A. and Parthasarathi, R. (2008). Parabolic bundles on algebraic surfaces I-the Donaldson-Uhlenbeck compactification.
Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences (Math Sci) 118:43-79.
Dey, A. and Parthasarathi, R. (2005). On Harder-Narasimhan reductions for Higgs principal bundles. Proceedings of the Indian
Academy of Sciences (Math Sci) 115:127-146.
Pranay Goel
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Pranay Goel received his PhD in Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. His postdoctoral
work was carried out at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute, The Ohio State University, and
at the Laboratory of Biological Modeling, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, USA. He joined
the Mathematics and Biology faculty at IISER Pune in 2009.
DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS MODELING OF MULTISCALE
PHENOMENA IN BIOLOGY
Dynamical processes in biology naturally span several systems and multiple scales, both in space and in
time. We are interested in studying the dynamical behavior of biological processes through mathematical
modeling to complement experimental understanding. My research focuses primarily on theoretical
neuroscience, cardiac dynamics and diabetes. Each of these areas is rich with issues that arise from a
fundamental need to develop theoretical frameworks, and to handle multiscale dynamics within those.
Our understanding of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from the pancreatic endocrine tissue, the islets
of Langerhans, has developed considerably over the last three decades. Much of my recent work has been
related to analyzing some newly proposed models of islet voltage oscillations (called “bursting”) that
implicate both ionic as well as metabolic activity as being jointly responsible for function. Simultaneously,
we are also interested in modeling and analysis of data collected from patients diagnosed with Type 2
diabetes. This is joint work with researchers at the University of Pune and K. E. M. Hospital, Pune.
Although we are a dry lab, since such research is highly interdisciplinary in nature, we collaborate
extensively with experimentalists.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Goel, P. and Sherman, A. (2009). The geometry of bursting in the dual oscillator model of pancreatic beta-cells. SIAM Journal on
Applied Dynamical Systems (SIADS) 8:1664-1693.
Goel, P., Sherman, A. and Friedman, A. (2009). Multiscale modeling of electrical and intracellular activity in the pancreas: The islet
Tridomain equations. SIAM Multiscale Modeling and Simulation 7:1609-1642.
Zhang, M., Fendler, B. Peercy, B., Goel, P., Bertram, R., Sherman, A., Satin, L. (2008). Long lasting synchronization of calcium
oscillations by cholinergic stimulation in isolated pancreatic islets. Biophysical Journal 95:4676-4688.
Higgins, E.R., Goel, P., Puglisi, J.L., Bers, D.M., Cannell, M. and Sneyd, J. (2007). Modeling calcium microdomains using
homogenization. Journal of Theoretical Biology 247:623-644.
Goel, P., Sneyd, J. and Friedman, A. (2006). Homogenization of the cell cytoplasm: The calcium bidomain equations. SIAM Multiscale
Modeling and Simulation 5:1045-1062.
Rabeya Basu
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Rabeya Basu received her PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai,
India in 2007. She then undertook postdoctoral work initially at Harish Chandra Research
Institute, Allahabad and later as an NBHM Fellow at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata,
India. She was in IISER Kolkata as an assistant professor before joining IISER Pune in 2010.
UNITARY WHITEHEAD GROUP
From the late 1950's to the early 1970's several attempts were made to generalize classical groups by
constructing a theory which does not depend on the invertibility of 2. In 1966-67, Antony Bak resolved
this problem by introducing form rings and form parameter. I am working on recent development of Bak's
general quadratic (unitary) groups.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Basu, R. (2011). Absence of torsion for NK1(R) over associative rings. Journal of Algebra and its Applications 10:793-799.
Basu, R. and Rao, R.A. (2010). Injective stability for K1of regular rings. Journal of Algebra 323:367-377.
Bak, A., Basu, R. and Rao, R.A. (2010). Local-global principle for Transvection groups. Proceedings of the American Mathematical
Society 138:1191-1204.
Basu, R., Sridharan, R. (2007). An expository article: On Forster's conjecture and related results. Punjab University Research
Journal.
A Raghuram
Professor and Coordinator
[email protected]
After getting a BTech in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT) Kanpur, Raghuram moved to Mathematics and got a PhD in Mathematics in 2001 from the
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India. He had postdoctoral positions at
University of Toronto, Canada and TIFR, Mumbai, India and visiting assistant professorships at
Purdue University and University of Iowa, USA. He joined Oklahoma State University, USA in
2006 as a tenure-track assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor with
tenure in 2011. He has joined IISER Pune in December 2011 as a Professor and the Coordinator
of Mathematics. His research has been partially funded by the National Science Foundation,
USA, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany.
NUMBER THEORY, REPRESENTATION THEORY AND
AUTOMORPHIC FORMS
My group is currently studying the arithmetic properties of special values of automorphic L-functions.
The earliest prototype of a special value of an L-function is the classical formula by Euler which says that
the sum ∑ 1/n^2 of reciprocals of squares of all positive integers is π^2/6. More generally, suppose M =
{a_n} is a sequence of numbers coming from some interesting data, for example, a_p can be the number
of solutions of an equation modulo a prime p, then a guiding principle in modern number theory says that
to study the sequence M one should study the L-function L(s, M) = ∑ a_n/n^s. One can glean much
information about the sequence M by studying first the analytic properties, and second the arithmetic
properties of L(s,M).
The Langlands program, considered by many as a grand unifying principle in modern mathematics,
bridges different areas of mathematics, like geometry (elliptic curves), number theory (Galois
representations) and representation theory (automorphic forms). The central theme making these bridges
possible is the notion of an L-function.
Our work uses the results and techniques of the Langlands program to prove theorems about special
values of various L-functions. These values encode within them a lot of arithmetic and geometric
information of the objects to which the L-functions are attached. In earlier work stemming from my thesis,
we have also studied the representation theory and harmonic analysis of p-adic groups.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Grobner, H., and Raghuram, A. On the arithmetic of Shalika models and the critical values of L-functions for GL(2n). American
Journal of Mathematics (Recommended for Publication).
Gan, Wee Teck and Raghuram, A. (2012). Arithmeticity for periods of automorphic forms. Proceedings of the International
Colloquium in TIFR on Automorphic Representations and L-functions (To appear).
Harder, G. and Raghuram, A. (2011). Eisenstein cohomology and ratios of critical values of Rankin-Selberg L-functions. Comptes
Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences-Series I 349:719-724.
Raghuram, A. and Tanabe, N. (2011). Notes on the arithmetic of Hilbert modular forms. Journal of Ramanujan Mathematical Society
26:261-319.
Raghuram, A. (2010). On the special values of certain Rankin-Selberg L-functions and applications to odd symmetric power Lfunctions. International Mathematics Research Notices 334-372 doi:10.1093/imrn/rnp127.
Rama Mishra
Associate Professor
[email protected]
Rama Mishra has obtained her PhD from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India in
1994. She spent a few years with Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad and Indian
Statistical Institute, Delhi as postdoctoral fellow and then served as a faculty at IIT Kharagpur
and IIT Delhi for several years. She worked as a JSPS fellow at Osaka City University, Japan for
one year and as a visiting faculty at Boise State University, USA before joining IISER Pune.
LOW DIMENSIONAL TOPOLOGY
For a reasonably long period of time my research focused around the Polynomial representation of long
knots. It was motivated by the issue of settling a long lasting conjecture of Abhayankar. We established
the equivalence between polynomial isotopic classes of long knots with the ambient isotopic classes of
classical knots. Thus the entire knot theory can be done over polynomial knot category. I am trying to
compute some numerical knot invariants such as unknotting number through polynomial knot theory.
Quantum topology is one of the emerging research areas. Many knot invariants naturally arise through
nice matrix algebra representation of interesting quantum groups. They have been related to several
models in statistical mechanics. I would like to explore some models that are related to Singular knot
theory.
I am also interested in classical knot invariants and their application in mathematics and biological
sciences. My joint work with Prof Louis Kauffman on A nodal parity invariants of knotted rigid vertex
graphs, discusses the application of this invariant on protein folding classification.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Mishra, R. (2012). Polynomial unknotting and singularity index. Kyungpook Mathematical Journal (Accepted for Publication).
Kauffman, L. and Mishra, R. (2012). Nodal parity invariants for knotted rigid vertex graphs. Journal of Knot Theory and its
Ramifications (Accepted for Publication). http://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.2176v1.pdf
Mishra, R. and Bhushan, S. (2012). Knot theory in understanding proteins. Journal of Mathematical Biology 65:1187-1213.
Prabhakar, M. and Mishra, R. (2009). Minimal degree sequence for torus knots of type (p,q). Journal of Knot Theory and its
Ramifications 18:485-491.
Prabhakar, M. and Mishra, R. (2009). Polynomial representation for long knots. International Journal of Mathematical Analysis 3:325337.
Mishra, R. (2006). Polynomial representations of strongly invertible knots and strongly negative amphicheiral knots. Osaka Journal of
Mathematics 43:625-639.
Prabhakar, M. and Mishra, R. (2006). Minimal degree sequence of 2–bridge knots. Fundamenta Mathematicae 3:190.
Soumen Maity
Associate Professor
[email protected]
Soumen Maity received a PhD from the Theoretical Statistics & Mathematics Unit at Indian
Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India in 2002. He has postdoctoral experience from Lund
University Sweden; Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kolkata, India; and University of
Ottawa, Canada. Prior to joining IISER Pune in 2009, he served as an assistant professor at
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Kharagpur, India.
COMBINATORICS − COVERING ARRAYS,
CRYPTOGRAPHY, AND EXTREMAL SET THEORY
I am mostly interested in combinatorial problems. More specifically, I have been working on covering
arrays on hypergraphs, construction of cryptographically important Boolean functions, and extremal set
theory.
Covering Arrays on Hypergraphs: Covering arrays are combinatorial structures which extend the
notion of orthogonal arrays and have applications in the realm of software and circuit testing. A covering
array of strength three is an array with the property that any three rows are qualitatively independent. A
covering array is optimal if it has the minimum number of columns among covering arrays with the same
number of rows. We work on upper and lower bounds on the size of covering arrays on hypergraphs based
on hypergraph homomorphism.
Cryptography: Boolean functions are used as nonlinear combining functions in LFSR based stream
ciphers. A Boolean function is said to be resilient if its output leaks no information about its input values.
My research in this area presents some strategies to modify the bent functions, by toggling some of its
outputs, in getting a large class of 1-resilient functions with very good nonlinearity and autocorrelation.
Extremal Set Theory: Given a finite set X, the general problem in extremal set theory asks how large or
small a family of subsets of X can be if it satisfies certain restrictions. Two core concepts in extremal set
theory are intersecting families and shadows. The main results for intersecting families are the Erdos-KoRado and Hilton-Milner theorems, and the principal result for shadows is the Kruskal-Katona theorem. By
defining suitable notions of “intersecting” and “shadow” we intend to find remarkable analogs of these
theorems for other structures such as multisets, permutations, set partitions, etc.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Maity, S. (2012). 3-Way software testing with budget constraints. IEICE Trans. Information & Systems E95-D (9):2227-2231.
Yasmeen and Maity, S. (2012). Mixed covering arrays on hypergraphs. Communications in Computer and Information Science
305:327-338.
Maity, S. and Maitra, S. (2010). Minimum distance between bent and 1-resilient Boolean functions. Ars Combinatoria 97:351-375.
Sreekar Shastry
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Sreekar Shastry received his PhD from the University of Michigan, USA and was a postdoctoral
fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India. He joined IISER
Pune in January 2011.
RIGID ANALYTIC GEOMETRY
My research centers on rigid analytic spaces which are the p-adic versions of the real manifolds so familiar
from topology and differential geometry. Specifically, I work on analytic spaces defined by V. Berkovich.
My line of research is the development of heat flow on such spaces. This involves a fascinating interplay
between classical analysis on the real line (such as the Gaussian distribution) and p-adic analysis (for
instance Haar measure on the p-adics).
The heat flow is ubiquitous in classical geometry. To give an idea, the classical Gauss-Bonnet theorem
which relates the curvature of a manifold to its topology may be proved by studying the behavior in short
time and long time of the heat flow. I am developing a p-adic analogue of this theory.
My earlier work was on the geometry of Drinfeld modular curves.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Shastry, S.M. (2007). The Drinfeld Modular Jacobian J_1(n) has connected fibers. Annales de l'institut Fourier 57:1217-1252.
Anupam Kumar Singh
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
After doing MSc (Mathematics) from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, Anupam
Singh worked for his doctorate at Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad and Indian
Statistical Institute (ISI), Bangalore, India and got PhD from ISI in 2007. He held postdoctoral
positions at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai and Institute of
Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai, India before joining the faculty of IISER Pune in 2008.
CONJUGACY QUESTIONS AND REPRESENTATION
THEORY OF GROUPS
Conjugacy questions in group theory have been of interest for its connection with the representation
theory and they have not been understood very well for Algebraic Groups over arbitrary field. Usually
groups are difficult objects and one studies them via their representations to get better understanding.
Let G (e.g. GLn) be an algebraic group defined over a field k. We denote the k points of G by G(k) (e.g.
GLn(k), SLn(k) etc.). An element t of G(k) is said to be real if it is conjugate to its own inverse in G(k). I
have been concerned with finding real elements in algebraic groups. Very interestingly often it relates to
finding strongly real elements (the elements which are product of two involutions in G(k)).
Apart from studying structure of real elements in Algebraic Groups over k, I also looked at many examples
such as linear groups, orthogonal groups, symplectic groups and the groups of type G2 to get better
understanding of the problem. Finding real elements helps in the understanding of real characters of the
group which in turn give information about those complex representations of the group which are either
orthogonal or symplectic.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Kulshrestha, A. and Singh, A. (2011). Real elements and Schur indices of a group. The Mathematics Student 80:73-84.
Gill, N. and Singh, A. (2011). Real and strongly real classes in PGLn(q) and quasi-simple covers of PSLn(q). Journal of Group Theory
14:461-489.
Gill, N. and Singh, A. (2011). Real and strongly real classes in SLn(q). Journal of Group Theory 14:437-459.
Steven Spallone
Associate Professor
[email protected]
Steven Spallone received
did postdoctoral work at
University of Oklahoma,
(TIFR) Mumbai, India. He
his PhD from the University of Chicago, USA in 2004. Afterwards he
the Max-Planck Institute in Bonn, at Purdue University, and at the
USA. He also visited the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
joined the faculty of IISER Pune in July 2012.
REPRESENTATION THEORY AND CANONICAL FORMS
A basic theme in representation theory for a topological group is the duality between the geometry of the
group and its spectral theory. In one project, I study arithmetically interesting representations called
“discrete series” using this duality. I attempt to write their multiplicities in terms of measures over
conjugacy classes of p-adic groups.
In another project, I study representations of isometry groups of quadratic forms, notably those induced
from a stabilizer P of a nondegenerate subspace. I show that relationships between such representations
are illuminated by first decomposing P into two subgroups M and N, and then by finding canonical forms
for the conjugation action of M on N.
To introduce another project, consider square matrices, with entries modulo a cubefree integer. I study
the question of when two such matrices are conjugate. I have also written some papers regarding when
two germs of dynamical systems fixing a point are conjugate, in the p-adic setting.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Spallone, S. (2012). Stable trace formulas and discrete series representations. Pacific Math Journal 256:435-488.
Jenkins, A. and Spallone, S. (2012). Local analytic conjugacy of semi-hyperbolic mappings in two variables, in the non-archimedean
setting. International Journal of Mathematics 23:1250059.
Shahidi, F. and Spallone, S. (2010). Residues of intertwining operators for SO(6) as character identities. Compositio Mathematica
146:772-794.
Spallone, S. (2008). Residues of intertwining operators for classical groups. International Mathematics Research Notices 056:37.
Margalit, D. and Spallone, S. (2007). A homological recipe for pseudo-Anosovs. Mathematical Research Letters 14:853-863.
Vivek Mohan Mallick
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
After completing BStat (1999) and MStat (2001) from Indian Statistical Institute, Vivek Mallick
got his PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Mumbai, India in 2008. He has
joined IISER Pune in 2012 after completing his postdoctoral research at the Institute of
Mathematical Sciences in Chennai and Centre de Recerca Matematica in Barcelona, Spain.
ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY
My research can be divided into three categories: intersection theory, derived categories, and T-varieties.
Intersection theory
In intersection theory, one defines invariants of algebraically defined geometric spaces in terms of how the
spaces lying on the given space intersect each other. One can study those invariants to determine deep
geometric properties of the space.
Derived category
Given a variety (a type of algebraically define geometric space), one can define another algebraic object
called derived category. It is known that a lot of the geometric properties of the space translate to
algebraic properties of the derived category.
T-variety
While studying an object one many times first determine its group of symmetries. The same holds for
varieties. When the group of symmetries contain a torus, one can, with some additional hypothesis
describe a variety purely in terms of some combinatorial data. Currently I am working on such varieties.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Dubey, U.V. and Mallick, V.M. (2012). Reconstruction of a superscheme from its derived category. Journal of the Ramanujan
Mathematical Society 27(4).
Dubey, U.V., Mallick, V.M. (2012). Spectrum of some triangulated categories. Journal of Algebra 364:90-118.
Mallick, V.M. (2009). Roitman's theorem for singular projective varieties in arbitrary characteristic. Journal of K-Theory 3:501-531.
ADJUNCT FACULTY MEMBERS
S A Katre
Professor & Head
Department of Mathematics
University of Pune, Pune
E-mail: [email protected]
[email protected]
S A Katre received Masters degree in Mathematics from University of Pune and PhD
from Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. He began his academic career from SP
College of Pune and moved to University of Pune in 1988 as a faculty member and
has been there since. Prof Katre’s work is in the area of Algebra and Number Theory,
in particular, cyclotomy, number of points on curves over finite fields, Waring's
problem for matrices, coding theory, and group theory. His pedagogical interests
include contributing to mathematics olympiads, open source mathematical software,
and e-learning in mathematics. Prof Katre had served as the editor of pedagological
journal Bona Mathematica and has organized the NBHM sponsored ATM Schools in
Mathematics during 2004-2012.
Sujatha Ramdorai
Canada Research Chair, Department of Mathematics
University of British Columbia, Canada
Sujatha Ramdorai obtained her PhD in TIFR/Bombay University in 1992 and was
with TIFR till January 2012. She currently holds a Canada Research Chair at the
Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia. Her research interests
include Iwasawa theory and the theory of motives. Prof Ramdorai is a recipient of
the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award and the ICTP Ramanujan Award. She was a
Member of the National Knowledge Commission and is a Member of the Scientific
Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, and also the National Innovation Council. She
is also interested in broader educational issues and in policy matters related to
Higher Education and Research.
STUDENTS
Debraj Roy
Graduate Student
Debraj completed MSc (Mathematics) in 2011 from University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. He
joined IISER Pune in August 2012 and is presently doing coursework that is a part of the IISER
Pune Mathematics PhD program.
Gunja Sachdeva
Graduate Student
Gunja completed MPhil in Mathematics from Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Deemed University,
Agra in December 2011 and joined IISER Pune in August 2012. She is currently pursuing the oneyear coursework as a part of the Mathematics graduate program at IISER Pune. She is a teaching
assistant for the Multivariable Calculus course taught by Dr Anindya Goswami to first-year BS-MS
students.
Hitesh Raoundal
Graduate Student
Hitesh obtained MSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. He
joined IISER Pune in January 2011 and is working with Dr Rama Mishra in the area of knot theory.
Jatin Majithia
Graduate Student
Jatin completed his MSc in Mathematics from University of Pune, Pune in 2012 and joined IISER
Pune soon after as a graduate student. Currently, he is doing the one-year coursework of IISER
Pune’s Mathematics PhD program.
Makarand Sarnobat
Graduate Student
Makarand completed MSc in Mathematics from Sir Parshurambhau College, Pune in 2012 and
joined IISER Pune soon after. He is presently doing coursework as a part of the Mathematics PhD
program at IISER Pune. He is also a teaching assistant for the Introduction to Proofs course
taught by Dr Steven Spallone to second-year BS-MS students.
Manasi Mahapatra
Graduate Student
Manasi received an MSc (Mathematics) from Utkal University, Orissa in 2006 and then taught at
the Women's Christian College in Chennai for two years before coming to IISER Pune in August
2012. She is now pursuing coursework that is part of the Mathematics PhD program at IISER
Pune.
STUDENTS
Manidipa Pal
Graduate Student
Manidipa completed MSc in Mathematics from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in
2011. She joined IISER Pune in January 2012 and will soon be completing coursework that is part
of the Mathematics PhD program at IISER Pune. Her research interests are in the area of Algebra.
Neha prabhu
Graduate Student
Neha completed MSc in Mathematics from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in 2012
and joined IISER Pune soon after. She is currently doing coursework for PhD program and is
working as a teaching assistant for the Multivariable Calculus course taught by Dr Anindya
Goswami to first-year BS-MS students.
Prabhat Kushwaha
Graduate Student
Prabhat obtained MSc from the Department of Mathematics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi
and joined IISER Pune in January 2012. He is currently doing one-year coursework that is part of
the Mathematics PhD program at IISER Pune and is interested in cryptography.
Pralhad Shinde
Graduate Student
Pralhad completed Masters degree in Mathematics from University of Pune, Pune in 2011. He
joined IISER Pune as a graduate student in January 2012 and has undertaken coursework that is
part of the IISER Pune Mathematics PhD program. Pralhad is interested in discrete mathematics
and is looking forward to work in this area.
Rashmi Kulkarni
Graduate Student
Rashmi obtained MSc in Microbiology from MS University, Baroda and an MTech from the Centre
for Modeling and Simulation, University of Pune, Pune. She joined IISER Pune in August 2010 and
is working with Dr Pranay Goel toward her PhD. Her research involves quantitating oxidative
stress in the development of insulin resistance.
Rohit Joshi
Graduate Student
Rohit joined IISER Pune after obtaining Integrated Masters degree from the Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) Kanpur and will soon complete coursework that is part of IISER Pune’s
Mathematics PhD program. Rohit was the winner of silver medal in International Mathematics
Olympiad in 2004 while in his 12th standard.
STUDENTS
Sudhir Pujahari
Graduate Student
Sudhir obtained MSc in Mathematics from Utkal University, Orissa. He joined IISER Kolkata in
January 2011 as a CSIR JRF and shifted to IISER Pune in December 2012. He is working with Dr
Kaneenika Sinha in the area of Analytic Number Theory and is presently doing the coursework of
the Mathematics PhD program at IISER Pune.
Sushil Bhunia
Graduate Student
Sushil completed MSc (Mathematics) in 2010 from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He joined
IISER Pune in January 2012 and is presently doing coursework that is part of the PhD program.
Sushil is interested in working in the area of Algebra.
Yasmeen Shameem
Graduate Student
Yasmeen completed MSc in Mathematics from University of Pune and joined IISER Pune in January
2011. She is working toward her PhD with Dr Soumen Maity in the area of combinatorics and
graph theory. More specifically, her research project is based on strength three covering arrays
and hypergraphs.
Ankur Paliwal
BS-MS Student
Ankur is working with Dr Soumen Maity at IISER Pune for his fifth-year of BS MS dual degree
program. His project involves concepts of Hypergraphs And Extremal Combinatorics. Specifically,
he is working on Transversal Hypergraph generation problem, that is, to find a transversal
hypergraph for a given hypergraph. A transversal hypergraph is a hypergraph whose edges are
the minimal hitting sets of the given hypergraph. Transversal Hypergraph Generation is one of the
most important problems on hypergraphs with many practical applications in various areas of
Computer Science, especially in Logic and Artificial Intelligence. Recent applications of the
problem are channel assignment in cellular mobile communication systems and computing
homology groups of finite simplicial complexes in Topology.
Ashwin T A N
BS-MS Student
Ashwin was doing his fifth year project with Prof Kesavan at the Institute of Mathematical
Sciences, Chennai. He was studying the theory of Sobolev spaces and its applications to Boundary
Value Problems. He has taken a break this year.
STUDENTS
Hardik Gajera
BS-MS Student
Hardik is doing his fifth-year project at with Dr Ayan Mahalanobis at IISER Pune. He introduces
here the topic of his project along with its specific goals.
Let G be a finite cyclic group generated by g. For a given element h in G, discrete logarithm
of h is the smallest positive integer such that h=g^x. Finding the discrete logarithm for given
group element is called the DLP. The hardness of the DLP ensures the security of the some current
cryptosystems, such as Diffie-Hellman key exchange, ElGamal Cryptosystem and Digital Signature
Algorithm.
The r-adding rho method is one of the generic algorithm to attack DLP. Jung Hee Cheon et.al gave
a novel way to speed up the r-adding rho method using time-memory trade off. Hardik has
implemented both the methods, the r-adding rho method and the modified r-adding rho method,
in Magma and is trying to recreate the results of Jung Hee Cheon et.al.
Gaurav Prabhakar Sawant
BS-MS Student
Burgers' equation is a fundamental partial differential equation from fluid mechanics. It occurs in
various areas of applied mathematics, such as modeling of gas dynamics and traffic flow. For his
BS-MS project, Gaurav is studying well-posedness of some particular initial-boundary-valueproblems concerning Burgers' Equation, under the guidance of Prof K T Joseph at TIFR Centre for
Applicable Mathematics, Bengaluru.
Apart from Partial Differential Equations, Gaurav has a wide range of research interests—from
abstract algebra to number theory and from geometry to discrete mathematics. He also likes
computational aspects that divulge into rate determination in chemical reactions and theoretical
evolutionary models.
Jeeten Patel
BS-MS Student
Jeeten is working with Dr Anindya Goswami at IISER Pune as part of his BS-MS fifth-year project.
He is also working as a teaching assistant for the Multivariable Calculus course taught by Dr
Anindya Goswami to first-year BS-MS students. Jeeten’s project work involves surveying recent
development on certain problems in Mathematical Finance. It aims to survey existing literature on
Markov modulated GBM model and make competitive study along with some more models (semimarkov modulated GBM,Levy process). Issues related to locally risk minimizing pricing, optimal
hedging, portfolio optimization with risk sensitive cost, stability of numerical solutions of
associated PDE’s, computation of complexity of numerical schemes are being emphasized.
Kumar Vasumitra Singh
BS-MS Student
Kumar is working with Dr Soumen Maity in the area of combinatorics, specifically on multisets,
which are generalizations of sets in which an element from the universal set can appear more
than once. Kumar is studying the discreet structure and is trying to find generalizations of already
established work for set systems, for multisets.
ACADEMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT
Ayesha Fathima
Teaching Assistant
Ayesha graduated with a BS-MS Dual degree from IISER Pune in August 2012 and is currently
working as a Teaching Assistant in her alma mater. She had assisted Dr Anupam Kumar Singh in
conducting Elementary Geometry course and Dr Jayant Deshpande in conducting the Statistics
course Fall semester 2012. She is currently assisting Dr Chandrasheel Bhagwat in conducting the
Ordinary Differential Equations course and Dr Jayant Deshpande in conducting the Probability and
Statistics course.
Ayesha is interested in Algebraic Geometry. She has worked with Prof Nitin Nitsure at Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Mumbai for her MS thesis Project. Her thesis was titled
Introduction to Affine and Projective Varieties. It involved solving problems from the first chapter
of the book Algebraic Geometry by Robin Hartshorne. It also contained an essay which had an
exposition on the connections between two kinds of subspaces of the Complex Projective Space of
dimension 2, namely the algebraic varieties and the analytical submanifolds. In future research
career she would like to work on problems which explore connections between algebraic
subvarieties and analytical submanifolds of projective spaces over any field and of any dimension.
She would also like to explore and work on such topics as Coding theory which use the techniques
of Algebraic Geometry and also find widespread use in everyday life.
Kapil Kumar Gupta
Teaching Assistant
Kapil graduated from IISER Pune in August 2011 with BS-MS dual degree and is currently working
at the institute as a Teaching Assistant. He is assisting Dr Chandrasheel Bhagwat in conducting
the Ordinary Differential Equations course and Dr Jayant Deshpande in conducting the Probability
and Statistics course. Kapil is interested in the field of cryptography and coding theory. For his MS
thesis project, he worked in the field of Post Quantum Cryptography, under the guidance of Dr
Bimal K Roy (Director, Cryptography Research Group, ISI kolkata). He studied the implementation
of Hybrid McEliece Encryption Scheme (HyMES) in C-programming language. The thesis was titled
“An implementation oriented overview of code based Cryptography”. Later he went on to work as
a Computer Aided Engineer at Zeus Numerix Private Limited, Mumbai. Here he was involved in
software development team, where he developed the software for design of satellite reflector and
Computation Electromagnetic Simulations.
Manasi Gangan
Graduate Student (Biology) and Teaching Assistant
Manasi completed MSc from the Biochemistry Department of MS University of Baroda, India in
June 2011. She then joined IISER Pune as a PhD student in January 2012 and is currently working
with Dr Chaitanya Athale at the institute. Her research involves quantitative studies of spatiotemporal coupling between bacterial replication and division. Manasi is assisting Dr Pranay Goel
with his course on Mathematical Biology.
Suvarna Gharat
Administrative Assistant
Suvarna completed her BSc in Physics from Fergusson College and her post graduation from
Modern College, Pune. She joined IISER Pune in July 2011 and is presently assisting the
Mathematics group in various administrative responsibilities.
COLLOQUIA & SEMINARS
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Prof R Sridharan (CMI, India) March 14, 2012
Colloquium: Snippets from Greek geometry and Indian combinatorics
Prof A Raghuram (IISER Pune, India) March 14, 2012
Glimpses into the Langlands program
Dr Saurabh Ray (MPII, Germany) March 19, 2012
Epsilon-nets and its relatives
Prof Rajesh Kasturirangan (NIAS, Bangalore, India) March 28, 2012
Colloquium: M-Theories: Mind, Mathematics and Metaphysics
Prof Ravi Raghunathan (IIT Bombay, India) March 30, 2012
The exterior square L-function of GL_n
Prof Maneesh Thakur (ISI Delhi, India) April 26, 2012
The Kneser-Tits problem
Dr Arijit Dey (IIT Madras, India) May 22, 2012
Moduli of vector bundles on algebraic varieties
Dr Suma Ghosh (University of Utah, USA) May 31, 2012
Epidemiology and control of infectious diseases – Mathematical modeling, analysis and simulation
Dr Sarbeswar Pal (CMI, Chennai, India) June 22, 2012
Moduli of non-very stable bundles over a compact Riemann surface
Dr Jishnu Biswas (ISI Bangalore, India) July 09, 2012
ACM rank 2 vector bundles on projective hypersurfaces and complete intersections
Prof John Coates (Cambridge University, UK) July 25, 2012
Colloquium: Arithmetic mysteries and the Riemann zeta function
Dr Mahesh Agarwal (University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA) August 06, 2012
Congruences between modular forms and lower bounds on Selmer groups
Dr Arnab Mitra (TIFR Mumbai, India) August 09, 2012
n representations of GL_{2n}(F) with a symplectic period
Dr Kaneenika Sinha (IISER Kolkata, India) August 13, 2012
Higher Mahler measures and Lehmer's question
Dr Aribam Chandrakant Sharma (Mathematics Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany) August 21, 2012
Rational points on Elliptic curves and congruences between Modular forms
Dr Vivek Mallick (IISER Pune, India) August 28, 2012
Toric geometry
Prof S Katre (Pune University, Pune, India) August 30, 2012
Jacobi Sums and MDS codes
Prof Jean-Marc Fontaine (University at Orsay, Paris-Sud 11, France) September 05, 2012
Colloquium: p-adic numbers
Dr Vivek Mallick (IISER Pune, India) September 11, 2012
Two dimensional toric varieties
Dr Chandrasheel Bhagwat (IISER Pune, India) September 13, 2012
On motives and period relations
Dr R Parthasarathi (IISER Pune, India) September 18 and 26, 2012
Vector bundles on algebraic curves
Prof K Srinivasa Rao September 20, 2012
The life and work of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Dr Samrat Chatterjee (International Centre of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India) September
21, 2012
Understanding relation between aberrant cell signaling and disease: experiment coupled with mathematical model
Dr Bhaswar Ghosh (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland) October 12, 2012
Dr Anupam Kumar Singh (IISER Pune, India) October 17, 2012
Introduction to Hecke Algebras
Prof Kapil Paranjape (IISER Mohali, India) October 25, 2012
Group theory and solving the Rubik's cube
Dr Amlan Barua (IIT Chicago, USA) October 26, 2012
Evolution of precipitates in elastic media
Prof Rahul Mukerjee (IIM Kolkata, India) October 31, 2012
Two-sided Bayesian and frequentist tolerance intervals: General asymptotic results with applications
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Dr Rama Mishra (IISER Pune, India) November 01, 2012
Links, Braids and Jones Polynomial – II
Dr Kaushik Bal (NISER, Bhubaneswar, India) November 02, 2012
Existence and stabilization results to a Quasilinear PDE
Dr Parameswaran Sankaran (IMSc, Chennai, India) November 02, 2012
The vector field problem
Dr Steven Spallone (IISER Pune, India) November 06, 08, and 20, 2012
Introduction to conjugacy mod $p^2$
Dr Kashyap Rajeevsarathy (IISER Bhopal, India) November 09, 2012
On the fractional powers of Dehn twists
Dr Anita Mehta (Bose Institute, Kolkata, India) November 15, 2012
Competing synapses with two timescales: A basis for learning and forgetting
Dr Anisa Mohmad Husen Chorwadwala (IISER Pune, India) November 16, 2012
A glimpse of shape optimization problems
Prof Suraj C Kothari (Iowa State University, USA) November 19, 2012
Preventing catastrophe from sophisticated software sabotage : An introduction to detecting security and safety
vulnerabilities in embedded software
Dr Kumar Balasubramanian (IISER Bhopal, India) November 21, 2012
Self-dual representations with vectors fixed under an Iwahori subgroup
Dr Ananthnarayan H (IIT Mumbai, India) November 27, 2012
Tales of a local algebraist
Dr Alok Maharana (IISER Mohali, India) November 30, 2012
Special type affine surfaces
Prof Jaya N Iyer (IMSC, Chennai, India) December 07, 2012
Algebraic cycles on varieties
Prof Hung Yean Loke (NUS, Singapore) December 07, 2012
Local theta lifts of unitary lowest weight modules to the indefinite orthogonal groups
Prof Siddhartha Gadgil (IISc, Banglore, India) December 28, 2012
Goldman bracket and Topological rigidity
Dr Shameek Paul January 03, 2013
On fundamental group of hyperelliptic fibrations
Dr Sarang Sane (University of Kansas, USA) January 08, 2013
Euler class groups and Chow-Witt groups
Dr Prabal Paul (BITS Pilani, Goa Campus, India) January 10, 2013
On some weighted Zero-sum problems
Prof Benedict Gross (Harvard University, USA) January 11, 2013
Colloquium: Solving cubic equations
Prof Stefan Friedl (University of Cologne, Germany) January 17 and 31, 2013
The Alexander polynomial and the genus of a knot (Jan 17); Slice knots (Jan 31)
Prof K Ramasubramanian (IIT Bombay, India) January 30, 2013
Colloquium: Need for the advent of Calculus in India
Prof K B Athreya (Iowa State University, USA) February 04-08, 2013
An explicit formula for the k-th power of positive integers 1, 2, ..., n (Feb 4); In a connected world does local
fairness imply global fairness? (Feb 5); Unit ball in high dimensions (Feb 6); Normal numbers (Feb 7); Model for
Indian vegetable market bargaining (Feb 8)
Dr Badal Joshi (University of Minnesota, USA) February 08, 2013
Switching in biological networks
Prof S M Bhatwadekar (Bhaskaracharya Pratishtan, India) February 12, 2013
Cancellation problem for affine varieties over an algebraically closed field
Dr Suhas Pandit (Max Planck Institut für Mathematik, Mathematics, Germany) February 14, 2013
The complex of HNN-extensions associated to the free group of rank n
Dr Diganta Borah (IISER Pune, India) February 14, 2013
L^2-cohomology of Robin metric
Prof V Srinivas (TIFR Mumbai, India) February 15, 2013
Algebraic versus topological entropy for surfaces over finite fields
Dr Rabeya Basu (IISER Pune, India) February 19, 2013
Topis in classical K-theory
Dr Sanjoy Pusti (University of Luxembourg) February 22, 2013
An analogue of Bochner's theorem for semisimple Lie groups
PUBLICATIONS
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Bhagwat, C.R.; Raghuram, A. - Ratios of periods for tensor product motives. (Submitted)
Bhagwat, C.R.; Pisolkar S.; Rajan C.S. - Commensurability and Representation Equivalent Arithmetic Lattices.
International Mathematics Research Notices. (Accepted)
Borah, Diganta - Remarks on the metric induced by the Robin function II. Michigan Mathematical Journal (Accepted)
Dubey, Umesh V.; Mallick, Vivek M. - Reconstruction of a superscheme from its derived category. Journal of
Ramanujan Mathematical Society 27, No. 4 (2012) 411-424.
Dubey, Umesh V.; Mallick, Vivek M. - Spectrum of some triangulated categories. Journal of Algebra 364 (2012), 90118.
Jenkins, A.; Spallone, S. - Local analytic conjugacy of semi-hyperbolic mappings in two variables, in the nonArchimedean setting. International Journal of Mathematics 23 (2012), no. 6, 1250059, 21.
Spallone, S. - Stable Trace Formulas and Discrete Series Multiplicities. Pacific Journal of Mathematics 256 (2012),
no. 2, 435-488.
Mitra, A.; Spallone, S. - An Integration Formula for Unipotent Radicals. (Submitted)
Prasad, A.; Singla, P.; Spallone, S. - Similarity of matrices over local rings of length two. (Submitted)
Wee Teck Gan; Raghuram, A. - Arithmeticity for periods of automorphic forms. To appear in the proceedings of the
international colloquium on "Automorphic Representations and L-functions", TIFR Mumbai, January 2012. (Accepted)
Raghuram, A. - Special values of the Riemann zeta function: some results and conjectures. (Submitted)
Bhagwat, C; Raghuram, A. - Ratios of periods for tensor product motives. (Submitted)
Grobner, H; Raghuram, A. - On the arithmetic of Shalika models and the critical values of L-functions for GL(2n).
With an appendix by Wee Teck Gan. American Journal of Mathematics. (Accepted)
Atar, R.; Shwartz, A.; Goswami, A. - Asymptotic optimality of a fixed priority rule for a queuing problem in the large
deviation regime. (Submitted)
Goswami, A.; Saini, R. K. - Volterra equation for pricing and hedging in a regime switching market. (Submitted)
Atar, R.; Shwartz, A.; Goswami, A. - Risk-sensitive control for the parallel server model. (Submitted)
Chorwadwala, Anisa M. H.; Mahadevan, R. - A shape optimization problem for the $p$-Laplacian. (Submitted)
Chorwadwala, Anisa M. H.; Aithal, A. R. - Convex Polygons and the Isoperimetric Problem in Simply Connected
Space forms $M_\kappa^2$''. The Mathematical Intelligencer. (Accepted)
Chorwadwala, Anisa M. H.; Vemuri, M. K. - Two Functionals Connected to the Laplacian in a Class of Doubly
Connected Domains on Rank One Symmetric Spaces of non-compact type. Geometriae Dedicata (2012) DOI:
10.1007/s10711-012-9800-7.
Balasubramanyam, B.; Ghate, E.; Vatsal, V. - On local Galois representations associated to ordinary Hilbert modular
forms. Manuscripta Mathematica. (Accepted)
Parthasarathi, R. - On parabolic bundles on algebraic surfaces. Journal of Ramanujan Mathematical Society.
(Accepted)
Maity, S. - 3-Way software testing with budget constraints. IEICE Trans. Information & Systems Vol. E95-D, No. 9,
2012, pp. 2227-2231.
Yasmeen; Maity, S. - Mixed covering arrays on hypergraphs. Communications in Computer and Information Science
Vol. 305, 2012, pp. 327-338.
Maity, S. - Software testing with budget constraints. Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International Conference on
Information Technology – New Generation pp. 258-268, IEEE Computer Society, 2012.
Maity, S.; Arackaparambil, C.; Meyase, K. - A new construction of resilient Boolean functions with high nonlinearity.
Ars Combinatoria. (Accepted)
Mahalanobis, A. - A simple generalization of the ElGamal cryptosystem to non-abelian groups II. Communications in
Algebra 40(9) 2012, 3583-3596; Mahalanobis, A. - The automorphism group of the group of unitriangular matrices
over a field. (Submitted); Mahalanobis, A. - The MOR cryptosystem and extra-special p-groups. (Submitted);
Mahalanobis, A. - The ElGamal cryptosystem over circulant matrices. (Submitted)
Shah, J. and Mahalanobis, A. - A new guess-and-determine attack on the A5/1 stream cipher. (Submitted)
Goel, Pranay - An introduction to mathematical biology. Math Unlimited: Essays in Mathematics R. Sujatha, H.N.
Ramaswamy, C.S. Yogananda (Eds.), CRC Press, USA, (2012), 313- 331.
Goel, Pranay; Sneyd, James - Gap junctions and excitation patterns in continuum models of islets. Discrete and
Continuous Dynamical Systems - Series B 17 (2012), no. 6, 1969–1990.
Kulshrestha, Amit; Singh, Anupam - Real elements and Schur indices of a group. Mathematical Student 80 (2011),
no. 1-4, 73–84 (2012).
Mishra, Rama - On 3-superbridge knots. (Submitted); Mishra, Rama - Polynomial Unknotting and Singularity Index.
Kyungpook Mathematical Journal. (Accepted); Mishra, Rama - Nodal Parity Invariant for knotted rigid vertex graphs.
Journal of knot theory and its Ramifications. (Accepted); Mishra, Rama - Knot theory in Understanding Proteins.
Journal of Mathematical Biology Volume 65, Issue 6 (2012), Page 1187-1213.
Mathematics Day 2012
March 14
Poster session
Prof R Sridharan delivers the guest lecture
The 2012 Mathematics Day celebration at IISER
Pune kicked off with the release of a book on
academic profiles of members comprising the
IISER Pune’s Mathematics unit. Guest speaker,
Prof Sridharan (Chennai Mathematical Institute,
Chennai) delivered a colloquium on Snippets from
Greek Geometry and Indian Combinatorics. This
was followed by a poster competition organized
for BS MS students and screening of a film on S
Ramanujan titled “The Enigma of Srinivas
Ramanujan” made in 1987 by Mr Nandan
Kudhyadi and featuring Raghuveer Yadav as
Ramanujan and Tom Alter as G H Hardy. Prof
Raghuram (Coordinator, Mathematics, IISER
Pune) ended the event with a talk on Glimpses
into the Langlands Program.
Prof Bhatwadekar and Prof Katre
address the audience
Poster session
Workshop on Bloch-Kato Conjecture for the Riemann Zeta Function at Odd Positive
Integers and Pan Asian Number Theory Conference
July, 2012
IFCPAR-CEFIPRA Symposium on
Automorphic Forms, Galois Representations and L-functions
September, 2012
Light Moments
Random Pics at Work
Making of the Movie, The Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan
Ken Ono and Raghuram by Ramanujan's bust in
Ramanujan’s home in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu,
India. Photograph taken during the filming of the
documentary movie, The Genius of Srinivasa
Ramanujan. The movie is directed by Nandan
Kudhyadi, co-produced by Vigyan Prasar and
IISER Pune, and features Prof Ken Ono, Emory
University, USA; Prof A Raghuram, IISER Pune;
Prof K Srinivasa Rao, IMSc, Chennai; and Dr T V
Venkateswaran, Vigyan Prasar, Delhi. The movie
is shot in Chennai, Erode, Kumbakonam,
Nammakal, Cambridge and other such locales
where Ramanujan lived and worked.
Spreading the Smile
is an outreach event organized by Disha, a voluntary organization initiated by IISER Pune
students. Shown here are some of the pictures shared by members from the Mathematics unit who have participated at
this event.
Orientable or not,
Mathematics
keeps us connected!
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune
Dr Homi J Bhabha Road, Pashan, Pune – 411 008, Maharashtra, India
Phone: +91 20 2590-8001 Fax: +91 20 2586-5315
Website: www.iiserpune.ac.in