Ashok Vardhan Makkuva
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Postdoctoral researcher |
About
Hi there! I am a postdoctoral researcher with Michael Gastpar at EPFL, where I also closely collaborate with Martin Jaggi and Hyeji Kim.
I got my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UIUC working with Pramod Viswanath. During my PhD, I have also had the pleasure to collaborate with Sewoong Oh and Sreeram Kannan (UW Seattle), and Hessam Mahdavifar (University of Michigan). Prior to that, I obtained my masters from UIUC with Yihong Wu.
Earlier, I graduated from IIT Bombay with a B. Tech. (Honors) in Electrical Engineering and Minors in Mathematics working with Vivek Borkar.
News
Mar 2024: Talk on Attention with Markov at ETH Zürich hosted by Thomas Hofmann.
Feb 2024: Our new paper on principled analysis of transformers is now available on arXiv: Attention with Markov.
Dec 2023: Talks at UC Berkeley and Stanford on LASER.
Nov 2023: Our recent work LASER is accepted for the Oral track at the NeurIPS Federated Learning Workshop, 2023.
Apr 2023: Our paper CRISP is accepted in ICML, 2023.
Oct 2022: Talk at ETH Zurich on KO codes.
Research
My research mission is to develop theoretical and algorithmic solutions for problems with clear practical impact. On the theoretical front, I am interested in designing mathematical frameworks that provide clear and valuable insights into these problems. Levaraging these tools, I construct data-driven algorithms that are mathematically-grounded and are computationally efficient. Along this broader philosophy, I am specifically interested in problems that beget a creative amalgamation of diverse topics especially in data science. The following is a research overview:
In addition to the aforementioned themes, I am also interested in blockchains (best paper award). Here is a detailed list of my publications.