Max Planck Sabbatical Award for Venkat Chandrasekaran

Venkat Chandrasekaran, Professor in Computing and Mathematical Sciences and in Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, was awarded a Max Planck Sabbatical Award by the Max Planck Society. The award enables him to establish a close cooperation with our institute during a one-year research stay in Leipzig. With his own local research group, he studies convex objects that arise in applications like convex optimization and data science.

Venkat Chandrasekaran’s research interests lie in mathematical optimization and its interface with topics in the information sciences. Specifically, the group “Convexity, Optimization and Data Science” is interested in understanding various aspects of convex bodies – geometric, algebraic, combinatorial – motivated by applications in optimization and data science. There will be a close collaboration with the established groups in nonlinear algebra, algebraic geometry, tensors and optimization, and information geometry.

Venkat Chandrasekaran’s research stay will greatly enrich the scientific spectrum of our institute, as director Bernd Sturmfels points out: “Venkat continues to create new research that is extremely interesting and innovative. I view him as a model for applied mathematicians of the future. Based on solid grounding in statistics and optimization, he interacts with “pure” mathematics in an inspiring bi-directional manner.”