THE INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES C. I. T. Campus, Taramani, Chennai - 600 113. ANNUAL REPORT Apr 2014 - Mar 2015 Telegram: MATSCIENCE Fax: +91-44-2254 1586 Telephone: +91-44-2254 2398, 2254 1856, 2254 2588, 2254 1049,2254 2050 e-mail: offi[email protected] Foreword The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai has completed 53 years and I am pleased to present the annual report for 2014-2015 and note the strength of the institute and the distinctive achievements of its members. Our PhD students strength is around 140, and our post-doctoral student strength is presently 45. We are very pleased to note that an increasing number of students in the country are ben- efiting from our outreach programmes (for instance, Enriching Collegiate Education 2015, One Percent 2014), and we are proud of the efforts of our faculty, both at an individual and at institutional level in this regard. IMSc has started a monograph series this year. We plan to publish at least one book every year. Academic productivity of the members of Institute has remained high. There were several significant publications reported in national and international journals and our faculty have authored a few books as well. Six students were awarded Ph.D., five students have submitted their Ph.D. theses. One student was awarded M.Phil., degree. Five students were awarded M.Sc. by Research, and a student has submitted master’s thesis under the supervision of our faculty. 16 conferences and workshops were organized at IMSc during 2014-2015. These include Mock Modular Forms and Physics, Aspects of Mathematics, Dynamics Days Asia Pacific 08, Fracture: From Micro-Scale Processes to Macro-Scale Response, Sage Days workshop on combinatorics and representation theory, 18th workshop on elliptic curve cryptology, Master Class in Modular Theory of von Neumann algebras, Indo-UK Workshop on Computational Complexity Theory, Second Conference on Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication, to name but a few. There were 51 lectures/lecture series conducted at the Institute during the reporting period. In addition, 3 lecture courses were given at Chennai Mathematical Institute for their National Undergraduate Programme. The list of off-site conferences or- ganized by IMSc faculty also continues to be impressive. This academic year 12 conferences were organized outside including, Annual Foundational School–II, AIS on Schemes and Co- homology, OTOA 2014, FSTTCS, Workshop on New Developments in Exact Algorithms and Lower Bounds. We are proud to note the awards and honors bestowed on our faculty at the individual level. Prof. Partha Sarathi Chakraborty was awarded SwarnaJayanti Fellowship and NASI- SCOPUS Young Scientist Award-2014; Dr. Areejit Samal was awarded Ramanujan Fel- lowship of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), India, a Max Planck DST Mobility Grant for the period 2015-2018, and a Simons Associateship of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy for the period 2015-2020. Dr. C.M. Chandrashekar was awarded Ramanujan Fellowship for the year 2015. This report was compiled through the efforts of the IMSc Annual Report Committee com- prising of Drs. C. R. Subramanian, Shrihari Gopalakrishna, Pralay Chatterjee, Paul Pandian and Usha Devi. I owe my gratitude to all of them. July, 2015 V. Arvind ii Contents 1 The Institute 1 1.1 GoverningBoard ................................. 1 1.2 ExecutiveCouncil................................ 3 1.3 Faculty....................................... 4 1.4 Other Senior Academic Members . .. 6 1.5 ScientificStaff................................... 6 1.6 ProjectConsultant ............................... 7 1.7 ProjectEngineer ................................. 7 1.8 ProjectStaff.................................... 7 1.9 Post-DoctoralFellows. ... 8 1.10Ph.D.Students .................................. 10 1.11 AdministrativeStaff . .. .. .. 16 1.12 AdministrativeTrainees . .... 16 2 Research and Teaching 17 2.1 ComputationalBiology. .. 17 2.1.1 ResearchSummary ............................ 17 2.1.2 ListofPublications. .. .. 18 2.2 Mathematics.................................... 19 2.2.1 ResearchSummary ............................ 19 2.2.2 ListofPublications. .. .. 24 2.3 Physics....................................... 32 2.3.1 ResearchSummary ............................ 32 2.3.2 ListofPublications. .. .. 45 iii 2.4 Theoretical Computer Science . .... 55 2.4.1 ResearchSummary ............................ 55 2.4.2 ListofPublications. .. .. 62 2.5 StudentProgrammes ............................... 68 2.5.1 DegreesAwarded ............................. 68 2.5.2 LectureCoursesDuring2014–2015. .. 70 2.5.3 SummerStudents............................. 72 2.5.4 OtherStudents .............................. 74 2.6 HonoursandAwards ............................... 75 3 Other Professional Activities 77 4 Colloquia 87 4.1 Conferences/Workshops Held at IMSc . ..... 87 4.1.1 Mock Modular Forms and Physics . 87 4.1.2 Aspects of Mathematics, a two-day mathematics programme..... 88 4.1.3 DynamicsDaysAsiaPacific08 . 88 4.1.4 Sage Days workshop on combinatorics and representationtheory . 88 4.1.5 IMSc-IITB-IISERP Research Meeting on Physiological Modeling . 88 4.1.6 18 th workshop on elliptic curve cryptology . ..... 89 4.1.7 Enriching Mathematics Education . ... 89 4.1.8 Master Class in Modular Theory of von Neumann algebras ...... 89 4.1.9 ResearchinMathematics. 89 4.1.10 OnePercent................................ 90 4.1.11 Second Conference on Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication 90 4.1.12 Indo-UK Workshop on Computational Complexity Theory ...... 90 4.1.13 Fracture: From Micro-scale Processes to Macro Scale Response. 91 4.1.14 Instructional Seminar on Logical Aspects of Multi-Agent Systems . 91 4.1.15 Enriching Collegiate Education . .... 91 4.1.16 IMSc School in Theoretical Physics (ISTP) 2-14 June 2014...... 92 4.2 Other Conferences/Workshops Organized by IMSc . ........ 93 4.2.1 AnnualFoundationalSchool–II . .. 93 iv 4.2.2 Mathematics Workshop for Students (MWS) 2014 . .... 93 4.2.3 INSA Award Function (IIT, Chennai) 4 August 2014 . .... 93 4.2.4 Annual meeting of the Indian Academy of Science . .... 93 4.2.5 AISonSchemesandCohomology.. 93 4.2.6 OTOA2014................................ 93 4.2.7 Winter School on modular functions in one and several variables . 93 4.2.8 IndianStringsMeeting . 94 4.2.9 Indian Science Congress 2015, University of Mumbai, 3-7 January 2015,SymposiumonHEP ........................ 94 4.2.10 AsianLogicconference . 94 4.2.11 Social Networking Workshop, 7th International Conference on COM- munication Systems and NETworkS (COMSNETS) . 94 4.2.12 Workshop on Design and Analysis of Algorithms . ...... 95 4.3 Seminars...................................... 96 5 External Interactions 117 5.1 Collaborative Projects with Other Institutions . ........... 117 5.1.1 Algorithms and Complexity of Algebraic problems . ....... 117 5.1.2 Arithmetic circuits computing polynomials . ....... 117 5.1.3 Computational methods for identifying and analyzing design features ofmetabolicnetworks . 117 5.1.4 Correctness by Construction (CORCON) . 118 5.1.5 India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) . ..... 118 5.1.6 India-EU program on Mathematics for Health and Disease ...... 118 5.1.7 Indo-German research grant funded by the Humboldt Foundation . 119 5.1.8 ITRA-Media Lab Asia Project on De-congesting India’s transportation networks using mobile devices . 119 5.1.9 Mechanism of Active Intracellular Transport: Connecting Theory and Experiment ................................ 119 5.1.10 Quantitative analysis of Mitochondrial positioning in C. elegans axons 119 5.2 InstituteAssociateships. ..... 120 5.3 Conference Participation and Visits to Other Institutions .................................... 121 v 5.4 VisitorsfromOtherInstitutions . ...... 144 6 Infrastructure 159 6.1 ComputerFacilities.............................. 159 6.2 TheLibrary.................................... 161 vi Chapter 1 The Institute 1.1 Governing Board Thiru. P. Palaniappan, Hon’ble Minister for Higher Education, Government of Tamil Nadu, Fort St. George, Chennai 600 009 (Chairman) Dr. R.K. Sinha, Chairman, AEC & Secretary to Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy, CSM Marg, Mumbai 400 001 (Vice-Chairman) Prof. S. K. Joshi, Honorary Scientist Emeritus CSIR, Vikram Sarabhai Professor, National Physical Laboratory, Dr. K. S. Krishnan Road, New Delhi 110 012 (Member) Prof. Mustansir Barma, Distinguished Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai 400 005 (Member) Prof. C. S. Seshadri, Director-Emeritus, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Plot Nos. D19 & D20, SIPCOT Information Technology Park, Padur Post, Siruseri-603 103 (Member) Prof. Amitava Raychaudhuri, Sir Tarak Nath Palit Professor of Physics, University of Calcutta, 92 Acharya Profulla Chandra Road, Kolkata - 700 009 (Member) Prof. R. Thandavan, Vice Chancellor, University of Madras, Chennai 600 005 (Member) Prof. Sudhanshu Jha, 402 Vigyanshila, Juhu-Version Link Road, Seven Bungalow, And- heri(W), Mumbai 400 061 (Member) 1 Shri Pradeep R. Baviskar, IAS, Joint Secretary(R&D), Department of Atomic Energy, CSM Marg, Mumbai 400 001 (Member upto 64th Board Meeting) Shri Pranay Verma, IFS, Joint Secretary (R&D) to Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy, CSM Marg, Mumbai 400 001 (Member Forthcoming Meeting) Shri R.A. Rajeev, IAS, Joint Secretary (Finance) to Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy, CSM Marg, Mumbai 400 001 (Member ) Shri Hemant Kumar Sinha, IAS, Principal