Vachani School of Advanced Computing

Vision

Exploring and Harvesting the Future of Computing for Sustainable Human Progress.

Push boundaries through exploration

Harvest value through strategic utilisation

Stay anchored in ethical responsibility

Serve humanity as the ultimate beneficiary

Mission

To establish and ensure:

High-Quality Teaching-Learning Environment

Core and Translational Research Ecosystem

Systemic Orientation for Real-world Problem Solving and Innovation

In the broad domain of Computing and its multidisciplinary integration

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Overview of the School

Exploring novel synergies across different domains like biosciences and health, mathematics, physical sciences, psychology, humanities, social sciences, archaeology, visual and performing arts, engineering, sustainability and environment, etc., leading to new forms of knowledge, creativity, and problem鈥憇olving.

Embedding computational thinking across the natural and social sciences.
Tackling societal challenges through research in cutting-edge computer science, applying our methods to critical areas like health, climate, sustainability, and public policy.
Driving innovative research in Computer Science, with a focus on CS+X and AI-ML.
Training the next generation of computational thinkers to have a deep social, cultural, ethical and historical background, with the mindset to use computing for the common good. This will be facilitated by a set of novel, rigorously designed programmes that will equip students to apply computational thinking to new domains and enable collaborations across fields.

VSAC: A Hub for Data and AI-Driven Multidisciplinary Convergence

A collaborative ecosystem that unites diverse disciplines to co鈥慸evelop solutions for complex academic, societal and global challenges 鈥� using AI, data science, and computational innovation as unifying engines.

It emphasizes, consistent with the culture of Ashoka , 鈥渃onvergence鈥濃€攖he deep integration of data, knowledge and methods from multiple fields to generate new frameworks, discoveries, and transformative impacts.

This hub will offer unique short-term courses and research programmes, and projects evolved through multi- and transdisciplinary initiatives.

The Department of Computer Science at 51茶馆 fosters a research-driven approach to both foundational and applied areas of computing. Its unique positioning within a liberal arts environment provides a distinctive opportunity to advance core computer science research while also exploring interdisciplinary applications across the natural and social sciences. Our department values the cross-pollination of ideas from diverse fields, not only to solve existing problems but to ask novel research questions that deepen and expand the scope of computer science. Through this integration of foundational knowledge and interdisciplinary engagement, Ashoka鈥檚 CS department contributes meaningfully to both the theoretical and societal dimensions of the field.

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The school is establishing pioneering Centres of Excellence to drive innovation, research, and impact:

Centre for Data Science and Analytics (CDSA):
CDSA consolidates diverse datasets (including economic, political, geographical, ecological, health, and cultural data) into a common knowledge graph with rich metadata. By offering standard tools for data cleaning, analysis, and visualisation, CDSA fosters interdisciplinary research and creates new opportunities in core computer science and AI. CDSA also provides a unified data infrastructure platform for 51茶馆.

SafeExpress Centre for Data, Learning and Decision Sciences:
This centre conducts high-level applied and methodological research to address complex societal challenges. Current initiatives include AI applications in weather modeling, financial fraud detection, infectious disease simulations, and reinforcement learning frameworks.

Centre for Digitalisation, AI, and Society:
This centre focuses on the ethical, social, and regulatory implications of digitalization and AI in large public services. Its work includes formal modeling of digital use cases, risk mitigation in data-driven AI systems, and studies on election security, payment systems, electronic health records, and other such large digital public service applications.

Koita Centre for Digital Health (KCDH-A):
A joint initiative with the Trivedi School of Biosciences, KCDH-A is dedicated to advancing digital health through education and research. It emphasizes the convergence of healthcare, genomics, IT, and AI, offering academic programmes, research initiatives, and executive education to nurture a new generation of digital health innovators.

Through these and other opportunistic centres, the ASAC envisions generating innovative research, forging and sustaining partnerships with government and industry, informing public policy, promoting entrepreneurship, and equipping students with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives needed to address the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

The department has drawn distinguished scholars with backgrounds from renowned institutions such as the IITs, ISI, Stanford, UPenn, MIT, and Yale. This diverse and accomplished faculty brings world-class expertise, enriching the academic environment and ensuring a transformative learning experience for students and researchers.

The School expects to continue to draw in the best talent from all over the world, across faculty levels, into its research programmes as PhD students as well as post- and pre-doctoral scholars; and, of course, into its unique set of undergraduate programmes.

PhD Programme

The Vachani School of Advanced Computing offers a diverse combination of programmes to cater to the evolving needs of students and the industry. In addition to major and minor programmes in disciplinary computer science, the school has introduced several innovative and unique interdisciplinary major programmes, including:

CS and Mathematics with specialisations in (i) Data Science and Machine Learning; or (ii) Cryptography, Number Theory, and Algebra.
CS, Economics, and Mathematics.
CS and Philosophy.
CS and Entrepreneurship.
CS and Artificial Intelligence.

Looking ahead, the school plans to expand its offerings with the introduction of the following interdisciplinary programmes:

CS and Biology.
Cognitive Science (integrating Psychology and Philosophy).
A minor in AI and Data Science.

These programmes are designed to empower students with a holistic education that blends technical expertise with insights from other disciplines, preparing them to tackle complex, real-world challenges.

Research
Student interest and engagement

Research

The School is actively engaged in cutting-edge research, ranging from core, disciplinary research (both theoretical and applied), to a variety of CS+X applications.

The thrust areas of VSAC include:

AI and Machine Intelligence: Foundation models, agentic systems, edge AI, Neuro-AI, and trustworthy AI.
Data and AI-Driven Multidisciplinary Systems: AI and data at the intersection of health, environment, energy, cities, education, and science.
Security, Privacy and Cryptography: Post-quantum cryptography, zero-trust systems, federated learning, and differential privacy.
Human鈥揅omputer Interaction and Ambient Computing: Multimodal interfaces, AR/VR, context-aware systems, and visualisation.
Quantum Computing: Error correction, hybrid quantum-classical systems, and domain-specific quantum applications.
Algorithms and Programming Languages: Learning-augmented algorithms, distributed and quantum-inspired algorithms, AI-assisted programming, verified systems.
Sustainable and Green Computing: Carbon-aware systems, low-power hardware, and sustainable computing infrastructure.
Data Science and Applications: Statistical learning, data integration, optimisation, networks, and data-driven decision systems.
Big Data and Data Infrastructure: Distributed systems, cloud/edge platforms, real-time analytics, and scalable data architectures.
Robotics and Autonomous Systems: Perception, navigation, physical intelligence, and AI-driven autonomous agents.
Neuromorphic and Bio-Inspired Computing: Brain-inspired hardware, spiking neural networks, and energy-efficient AI systems.
Distributed, Cloud and Edge Computing: Serverless systems, cloud-native AI, and edge networks for real-time intelligence.
High-Performance and Exascale Computing: AI-HPC convergence, specialised accelerators, energy-efficient supercomputing.
Software Engineering: Program synthesis, verification, MLOps, and reliable AI systems.
Mathematical Foundations: Mathematical foundations of AI, interpretability, robustness, and theory inspired by ML
Computational Social Sciences: Social Networks, Political Behaviour, Economic Behaviour and Computational Economics
Financial Inclusion: Credit scoring, Risk assessment, Payment & Transaction Analysis, Consumer Protection, Public Finance, Welfare
Climate Resilience: Modelling & Forecasting, Smart Agriculture, Infrastructure Resilience, Climate Finance, Climate Governance
Digital Archaeology: Remote sensing & Site Discovery, GIS, Artefact analysis, 3D reconstruction, Script decipherment

We actively publish in top fora across the world, with around a dozen A/A* level publications from our department in the past year (CSF, HCI, ICSE, ICML, ICLR, Indocrypt, NeurIPS, OOPSLA, PLoS, PoPETS, VLDB, etc.).

Examples of some current CS+X initiatives include:

Digitalisation and Society:

Privacy and security analysis of systems such as elections, end-to-end messaging, digital identity, and money-transfer
Efficacy analysis of digitalisation of the public distribution system
Impact assessment of electronic health records in India from the lens of digital divide, and gender and caste inequities.

Health Analytics:

Epidemiological modelling.
Predictive analytics on sensitive health data, leveraging cryptography to provide privacy guarantees
Machine learning for radiology and pathology, with a focus on cancer data
Personalised health analysis of a local cohort using digital wearables

Applied Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning:

Structural and AI-ML-based analytics of media to better understand and identify misinformation and fake news
Robustness, reliability, fairness and trustworthiness of ML algorithms
Multimodal Food Computing, leveraging AI, machine learning, and diverse data (images, text, audio, biochemical) to improve food systems, dietary analysis, and personalised nutrition

Several of the projects involve a great deal of stakeholder alignment 鈥� e.g., bringing together medical practitioners with computer scientists 鈥� which is a critical aspect of building solutions with real-world impact. By fostering such research and collaborations, the ASAC aims to address pressing global challenges and establish itself as a hub for impactful innovation

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Student interest and engagement

Over the past five years, the Computer Science Department at Ashoka has more than doubled student engagement with computer science. Our unique interdisciplinary majors have started seeing great traction, along with sustained interest in the core CS major and minor degrees, so that today more than 15% of all students at 51茶馆 major or minor in computer science every year. This is expected to keep increasing further in the coming years with more exciting majors and minors in the pipeline and students engaging in the work of the various centres. Further, the CS students at Ashoka engage actively in Industry projects, and participate in hackathons, build exciting products in the Mphasis Makerspace at Ashoka and participate in a wide range of conferences and events. They go on to take up coveted internships and聽 jobs in organisations like Adobe, Google, IBM, Microsoft聽 and several others as well as enrol in some of the best Masters and PhD programs around the world including Columbia University, Northwestern University, University of Washington, Georgia Tech, NTU, USC.

There is also a strong Pre-Doc and PhD programme that is being strengthened further going forward.

51茶馆

Vachani School of Advanced Computing