Pradeep Varakantham

Lee Kuan Yew Fellow
Professor of Computer Science
School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University
Email: pradeepv(at)smu(dot)edu(dot)sg

I am a Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computing and Information Systems at Singapore Management University. I head the CARE.AI research lab

Research in my group focusses on developing collaborative and trustworthy intelligent agent systems. Currently, we are focussed on trustworthy Reinforcement Learning methods. Previously, research has focussed on performing sequential dynamic matching of supply and demand through reinforcement learning and multi-stage stochastic optimization , so as to improve quality of life metrics. Most of these systems are motivated by urban environments and have concrete applications in Transportation, Emergency Response, Entertainment, Energy, and Security. Our contributions are at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Operations Research, Machine Learning and Behavioral Economics.

My CV here: (PDF)

Updates

• Our four submissions accepted at AAAI. We provide best performance and generalization ability of our approaches in the context of Constrained RL.
• Changyu Chen awarded the Singapore Data Science Consortium (SDSC) Dissertation Research Fellowship
• Dexun Li and Wenjun Li won the SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship awards at SMU for 2023-2024
• Visiting faculty at Harvard Teamcore research group in early part of 2024.
• Meghna Lowalekar, PhD student from our lab won the best dissertation award at ICAPS 2022.
• I will be leading the CARE.AI research lab at SMU. Akshat Kumar, Arunesh Sinha and Mai Anh Tien are also part of the lab.
• Our project on trustworthy AI for training non-expert humans awarded a multi-million grant (~6.1 million SGD). I am the principal investigator for the project.
• Our project on collaborative AI for situated assistance awarded a grant (~1.2 million SGD). I am heading the effort on multi-agent robust decision making.
• I am working with the AI for Social Good team at Google as a visiting researcher.
• Our paper on high capacity real-time ride sharing was awarded the best application paper award at ICAPS 2019.
• I now serve on the AISingapore (https://www.aisingapore.org) Scientific Committee.
• We (School of Information Systems) were awarded the strategic partner award by Singapore Civil Defense Force, due to our deployed system on Dynamic Resource Optimization (DRO)for SCDF.
• I was a panelist on the Channel News Asia show on Responsible AI
• We were awarded the best demo award at AAMAS 2018.
• Two of my students (Tanvi Verma and Meghna Lowalekar) are awarded the SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship for AY 2018-2019
• My PhD student Meghna Lowalekar is awarded the SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship for AY 2017-2018
• Two of our papers on minimizing regret in uncertain MDPs and sequential matching in bike sharing systems accepted in Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR).
• Our commentary on AI for bike sharing published in TODAY news: link
  
• Awarded the Ministry of Education Tier 2 Grant for our proposal on "Moving Beyond Data Insights: Optimizing Dynamics in Safety and Security Networks". Jan 2017 - Dec 2019
  
• Awarded grants from Ministry of Home Affairs Singapore on Safety and Security Issues. August 2016 - July 2018
  
• SMU coverage of my research : link
  
• Invited to give the Early Career Spotlight talk at IJCAI-16: link
  
• Elected to the IFAAMAS Board: link
  
• Awarded Lee Kong Chian Fellowship for 2016.
  
• My PhD student Supriyo Ghosh is awarded the SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship for AY 2016-2017