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Debajyoti Bera
Associate Professor, Computer Science Department
IIIT-Delhi, India
Ph.D. (2010), Boston University, USA B.Tech. (2002), IIT-Kanpur, India
Latest résumé C.V.
Contact: iiitd.ac.indbera @
Office phone: 011-26907442
Office address: B508 R&D Block B204 Academic Block IIIT-Delhi Okhla Industrial Estate Phase-3 New Delhi, India - 110020
Residential address: IIIT-Delhi Okhla Industrial Estate Phase-3 New Delhi, India - 110020
Permanent address: Kolkata, West Bengal India - 700074
 
 

Looking for PhD/MTech(thesis) students

Looking for students to work on research problems in the following areas. Read this before contacting me.
  • Quantum computing: designing new algorithms, proving lower bounds on communication & complexity of solving problems, comparing classical and quantum computations
  • Complexity theory: investigating problems and complexity classes in P and below, especially circuit classes
  • Network/Graph algorithms: engineering algorithmic techniques for handling large and/or real-life graphs

What am I up to recently?

  • Aug 2024: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms)
  • Jan 2024: Teaching CSE622:(Introduction to Quantum Computing)
  • Aug 2023: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms)
  • Jul 2023: Santanu Majhi, student of MTech(Cryptography and security) from ISI Kolkata, defended his MTech thesis on Analysing Quantum Secret Sharing Schemes using the assistance of Quantum Information Theory
  • Jun 2023: Sanchita Saha defended her MTech(CSE) thesis on Few Quantum Cryptanalysis Techniques
  • Jan 2023: Teaching CSE622:(Introduction to Quantum Computing)
  • Aug 2022: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms)
  • Jan 2022: Teaching CSE322:(Theory of Computing)
  • Dec 2021: Tapadeep Chakraborty defended his MTech(CSE) thesis on parallel graph embedding
  • Aug 2021: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms)
  • Apr 2021: Siddharth Dawar defended his PhD thesis on Mining high-utility itemsets from a transaction database
  • Jan 2021: Teaching CSE322:(Theory of Computing)
  • Aug 2020: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms)
  • Jan 2020: Teaching CSE622:(Introduction to Quantum Computing) and CSE322:Theory of Computing
  • Aug 2019: Guiding Tharrma Shastha (Ph.D.) on quantum algorithms for Boolean functions.
  • Aug 2019: Guiding Sagnik Chatterjee (Ph.D.) on quantum optimization techniques.
  • Aug 2019: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms)
  • Jul 2019: Akshita Sawhney defended her MTech(CB) thesis on stage classification of renal cell carcinoma
  • Apr 2019: Anuj Saxena defended his PhD thesis on Enforcing Privacy for Location Based Services
  • Jan 2019: Teaching CSE322:Theory of Computing
  • Aug 2018: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms) and CSE621:(Complexity Theory)
  • Jan 2018: Teaching CSE622:(Introduction to Quantum Computing) and CSE322:Theory of Computing
  • Aug 2017: Advising Shanu for MTech thesis on quantum amplitude amplification, Parth for BTP on applications of ear decomposition on path-based graph problems, Gautam for BTP on enumeration of clique and related structures, Ankit for MTech thesis on classification of biological networks and Biswadeep for MTech thesis on biclustering of food data.
  • Aug 2017: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms)
  • Jan 2017: Teaching CSE622:(Introduction to Quantum Computing) and CSE322:Theory of Computing
  • Aug 2016: Advising G. Venkatesh for MTech thesis on LSH for data mining problems
  • Aug 2016: Teaching CSE525:(Graduate Algorithms)
  • Jan 2016: Teaching CSE523:(Randomized Algorithms) and CSE322:Theory of Computing
  • Aug 2015: Advising Amitesh Pandey for MTech thesis on universal turing machine simulator
  • Aug 2015: Advising Shubham Srivastava for MTech thesis on utility vs privacy gurantees of differential privacy
  • Aug 2015: Teaching CSE525 (Graduate Algorithms)
  • Jan 2015: Teaching CSE622 (Quantum Computing)
  • Jan 2015: Teaching CSE421/621 (Computational Complexity)
  • Aug 2014: Teaching CSE525 (Graduate Algorithms)
  • May 2014: Advising Siddharth Dawar for PhD thesis on frequent itemset mining
  • May 2014: Advising Khalique Newaz for MTech thesis on network analysis of prion disease
  • Jan 2014: Teaching CSE523 (Probability in Computing)
  • Aug 2013: Teaching CSE525 (Graduate Algorithms) and another 2-credit course CSE526 (P vs NP)
  • Jan 2013: Teaching (jointly with Rajiv Raman) CSE222 (Analysis and Design of Algorithms)
  • Aug 2012: Guiding Monalisa Jena (Ph.D.) on Rank Similarity Metrics
  • Aug 2012: Teaching CSE320/520 (Advanced Algorithms) in Monsoon 2012
  • Aug 2012: Guiding Akash Vanjani (B.Tech.) on Classroom Scheduling
  • Jan 2012: Teaching CSE523 (Probability in Computing) and CSE524 (Theory of Modern Cryptography, co-instruct with Somitra Sanadhya)
  • Jan 2012: Guiding Pranav Raj (B.Tech.) on Combinatorial Games
  • Dec 2011: Attending ICISS 2011 (Kolkata)
  • Aug 2011: Video lecture at IIT-Delhi as part of MHRD project on Introduction to Quantum Computing
  • Jul 2011: Guiding Anuj Saxena (Ph.D.) on Location-Privacy in Location Based Services

Some software projects I was involved with

FOSS Involvement:I started using GNU/Linux at IIT in 2000 (for the sake of brevity I will write Linux to mean GNU/Linux). Redhat Linux (now Fedora Core) was used at our computer center but soon I moved to Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva Linux). The love thus started is not over yet. I am still using Mandriva Linux.

Like many other FOSS believers, I was highly motivated by Eric S. Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar when I read it in 2001. I wrote my first FOSS software and released it under an open source licensed soon after.

Over the years, the developer's itch bothered me several times. This resulted in several new softwares that I wrote. Some of these are not relevant anymore; but in their days some of them were even included in some Linux distributions.

Since 2005 I am involved with the Beagle project, the first desktop search service for Linux. Since 2006 December, I lead the development of the project and I am also one of the maintainers of the Beagle project. I also wrote several softwares related to Beagle and released them under open source licenses.

Other than the projects mentioned above, I have also contributed to numerous other open source projects, including bug-fixes and new features.

I was a mentor for the Beagle project for Google Summer of Code in 2007.

My Research Interests

quantum computing, randomized algorithms, computational complexity theory,
algorithms design and engineering in computational biology, networking & data-mining

DBLP profile Google scholar profile Scopus profile

Reports and Publications

  • D. Bera, Tharrmashastha S.A.P.V. Quantum Query-Space Lower Bounds Using Branching Programs (pre-print)
  • D. Bera, Tharrmashastha S.A.P.V. Low-Space Quantum Algorithms for Estimate-Mark-Amplify Tasks published in ICTCS 2024
  • D. Bera, S. Chatterjee. Efficient Quantum Agnostic Improper Learning of Decision Trees published in AISTATS 2024 (pre-print)
    • D. Bera, S. Chatterjee. Efficient Quantum Agnostic Improper Learning of Decision Trees presented as poster in QIP 2024
  • D. Bera, Tharrmashastha SAPV. A Generalized Quantum Branching Program published in FSTTCS 2023 (pre-print)
  • S. Chatterjee, R. Bhatia, P.S. Chani, D. Bera. Quantum Boosting using Domain-Partitioning Hypotheses published in Quantum Machine Intelligence (QMI). Earlier versions:
    • D. Bera, S. Chatterjee. Quantum Boosting using Domain-Partitioning Hypotheses presented as poster in QIP 2022 and was presented in QTML 2022 (pre-print)
  • S. Chatterjee, D. Bera. Applying the Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz to the Graph Matching problem published in AQIS 2020 (video, pre-print)
  • B.L.K. Jolly, L. Jain, D. Bera, T. Chakraborty. Unsupervised Anomaly Detection in Journal-Level Citation Networks published in JCDL 2020
  • D. Bera. Maximal Labeled-Cliques for Structural-Functional Communities published in Complex Networks 2020 (pre-print)
  • C. Pachorkar, M. Chaitanya, K. Kothapalli, D. Bera. Efficient Parallel Ear Decomposition of Graphs with Application to Betweenness-Centrality in HiPC 2016 (best paper award) (pre-print)
  • J. Leeka, S. Bedathur, D. Bera, M. Atre. Quark-X: An Efficient Top-K Processing Framework for RDF Quad Stores in CIKM 2016
  • D. Bera. Two-sided Quantum Amplitude Amplification and Exact-Error Algorithms in arXiv:1605.01828 [cs.CC] (pre-print)
    • Preliminary version in D. Bera. Applications of Quantum Amplitude Amplification in ECCC Tech Report TR14-151 (revised April 2016)
  • D.Bera, R. Pratap. Frequent-Itemset Mining using Locality-Sensitive Hashing in Proceedings of COCOON 2016 (preprint)
  • A. Saxena, V. Goyal, D. Bera. Mintra: Mining anonymized trajectories with annotations in Proceedings of IDEAS 2016

Talks and Presentations

My Erdos number is 4.

What have I been teaching?

I feel comfortable teaching theoretical Computer Science courses, both undergraduate and advanced. The advanced courses stress on formalism and rigorous analysis, whereas, the introductory courses on breadth and competence in tools and techniques.

Assistant Professor at IIIT-Delhi (2010-2021)
Associate Professor at IIIT-Delhi (since 2021)

Many of these courses were also designed by me.

Teaching Fellow at Boston University (2003 to 2009)

I formally got involved in teaching as Teaching Fellow for various courses at Boston University since 2003. I enjoy teaching both introductory and and advanced courses. Introductory classes require a lot of patience and I enjoy the challenge of explaining completely new concepts to students. On the other hand in the advanced classes I am mostly acting as a tutor helping the students who get stuck. Students and professors like me alike for my services. I was awarded The Best TF award in the Computer Science department in 2007 by the College of Arts and Science (CAS), Boston University. Following are some of the courses which I oversaw as TF (many of them multiple times).

  • CS111 - Introduction to Computing, both C++ and Java
  • CS112 - Data Structures
  • CS113 - Combinatoric Structures (Introductory Discrete Mathematics)
  • CS235 - Algebraic Algorithms
  • CS237 - Probability in Computing
  • CS330 - Introduction to Analysis of Algorithms (Undergraduate Algorithms)

Where have I worked?

GMD-IPSI: I was a summer intern during the summer of 2001 at GMD-IPSI (later merged with Fraunhofer IPSI) in Darmstadt, Germany. There I worked for the OASYS group on the project Teachware on Demand. Teachware on Demand tries to solve the courseware management problem where courses are taken by students, written by authors and tagged by editors. The system allows each group to work independently and allows efficient tagging to create courses from smaller concepts. I was responsible for developing the intermediate web architecture using SOAP. I also did some theoretical work on integrating LOM (Learning Object Metadata) and MPEG­7 to allow tagging of courses in video formats.

Adobe Systems India Pvt. Ltd.: I worked for 5 months in 2002 after graduation from IIT Kanpur at Adobe's India R&D center in Noida, India. I was responsible for reverse engineering and parsing Microsoft office file formats to be read by Adobe applications. I really liked the work there; also, we moved to a new building when I was there which was very nice.

VMWare, Inc.: I was a summer intern during the summer of 2006 at VMWare's R&D center at Palo Alto, USA. I designed the API and implemented the required infrastructure to allow (python and other) scripts to be submitted, managed and run on virtual machines using Virtual Center. It was a wonderful experience to work at a company which was growing extremely rapidly at that time.

Personal Information

Roads and bends taken so far ...
  • 1980: Incubated in Kolkata
  • (1983-1984) Pre-nursery in Springdal School, Rourkela
  • (1984-1986) Pre-nursery in Olympus K.G. School, Paikpara, Kolkata
  • (1986-1990) St. Mary's Orphanage and Day School, Dumdum, Kolkata
  • (1990-1996) Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur, Kolkata
  • (1996-1998) Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, Kolkata
  • (1998-2002) B.Tech. at IIT-Kanpur
  • (2002) Software developer at Adobe India Private Ltd.
  • (2003-2009) Ph.D. at Boston University
  • (2010-2021) Assistant Professor at IIIT-Delhi
  • (2021-) Associate Professor at IIIT-Delhi

For projects and thesis advisor

Possible domains (not exhaustive): Complexity theory, Algorithms, Formal solutions for security and privacy, Quantum computing, Algorithms for computer networks, Algorithms for data engineering.

If you want to do a project or thesis with me, I would require a minimum of one of these skills:

  • Good grades in these courses: programming, discrete mathematics, data structures, algorithms
  • For implementation work: good hold in your choice of programming language, knowledge of standard libraries and expert in finding and using multiple APIs, fully comfortable with new tools and technologies
  • For theoretical work: strength in mathematics, especially algebra, probability and combinatorics, good grades in courses like advanced (or any other elective) algorithms, theory of computing, or other theoretical courses, ability to formulate a problem in a formal manner, and ability to write a formal proof
  • Students with Mathematics background, with some exposure to theoretical computer science, are strongly desired

UG-PG thesis students

Ph.D. students

M.Tech. Thesis
  • Sanchita Saha: Few quantum cryptanalysis techniques (2023) (thesis)
  • Tapadeep Chakraborty: A Sketch-based Approach towards Scalable and Efficient Attributed Network Embedding (2021) (thesis)
  • Sudatta Bhattacharya: Upper and Lower bounds of various Centrality Measures on Planar and Sparse Graphs (2020) (thesis)
  • Akshita Sawhney: Stage classification of clear cell renal cancer based on gene expressions (2019) (thesis)
  • Shanu: Quantum algorithms for unitary operator identification (2018)
  • Biswadeep Khan (co-guide G. Bagler): Application of pattern mining on data of flavor molecules, their percepts and molecular features (2018)
  • Ankit Sharma (co-guide G. Bagler): Protein Classification on the basis of thermal stability using Supervised Learning (2018)
    (thesis) (pre-print)
  • G. Venkatesh: Design and Analysis of LSH Based Techniques for Inner Product (2017)
  • Amitesh Pandey (capstone project): Universal Turing Machine Simulator (2016)
  • Shubham Srivastava: Utility And Privacy Guarantees of Differential Privacy (2016)
  • Khalique Newaz (co-guide K. Sriram): Network analysis of prion disease (2015)
    (thesis) (publication)
  • Siddharth Dawar (co-guide Vikram Goyal): Privacy Preserving Reverse Spatial and Textual Nearest Neighbour Query (2014)
  • Pankaj Sahu (co-guide Vikram Goyal): Finding Top-k Influential Set in Directed Graphs (2014)
    (thesis) (publication)

B.Tech. Project (BTP)
  • Porvil & Zubair Aslam (2021)
  • Gautam Gupta (2018)
  • Parth Mittal (2018)
  • Alakh Dhruv Chopra (2017)
  • Kshitij Jain & Sahil Mahajan (2015)
  • Ishan Goel (2014)
  • Divyanshu Bansal (2014)
  • Akash Vanjani (2013)
  • Pranav Raj (2013)

External advisee

  • Mayank Kharbanda: Analysis of Random Number Generator & Test Suites (2020) for MSc thesis, Computer Science, Delhi University
  • SAPV Tharrmashastha: Quantum Algorithm for Computation of Auto-Correlation Spectrum of Boolean Functions (2018) for 5-year integrated MSc, Integrated Science Education and Research Center, Visva Bharati
  • Rohit Beriwal: Analysis of Quantum Circuit with Faulty Gates (2019) for B.E. (hons) thesis, C.S engineering at BITS-Pilani, Dubai Campus
  • Santanu Majhi: Analysing Quantum Secret Sharing Schemes using the assistance of Quantum Information Theory (2023) for M.Tech. in Cryptology and Security from ISI Kolkata
  • Sejal Sarada: Designing quantum algorithms for linear algebraic problems (2024) for MSc thesis, BITS Pilani Goa Campus
(*) indicates current student

Need a letter of recommendation?

I will only write a letter if you have worked with me for at least two semester, where work means

  • a course (including independent study) with A- or a better grade
  • a successfully completed project (regular or internship)
  • a properly done TA-ship
  • some research, or other significant academic activity

Looking for internship or project under my guidance?

Contact me only if you want to solve challenging problems with provable theoretical bounds. The problem can be entirely theoretical or involve some implementation, but you must be prepared to approach the problem in a more structured and formal way. If you wish to work according to these terms, send me an email with a 2-3 paragraph writeup on the problem which excites you, including (a) why it is challenging (b) some initial idea that you have thought.