C. Seshadhri (Seshadhri Comandur)
Contact info -
Seshadhri Comandur
IBM Almaden Research Center
650 Harry Road
San Jose, CA - 95120
Phone : (408) 927-1142 (Office)
Email : ****** [at] gmail [dot] com
(replace ****** by csesha)
I am currently a postdoc in the Theory Group
at IBM Almaden.
I joined in September 2008 and will be around for two
years. To those who speak theorese, a large portion of my work has been
focussed on sublinear
algorithms, property testing, approximation algorithms,
and computational geometry. Like many of us, I have been
interested in my other problems, and have worked on
machine learning problems.
Again like most of us,
I'm interested in almost all theory.
As the perceptive among you would have guessed, I was a graduate student in the Computer
Science Theory Group at Princeton University. I spent 5 years from 2003 to 2008 in Princeton advised by Bernard Chazelle.
Before that, I was a undergraduate at
the Computer Science department
of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
For detailed information about my
research,
please check out my research statement and publications.
CV - ps pdf
Research Statement - ps
pdf
Publication list
I will now proceed to answer some questions. Some sort of FAQ, but more
like an OAQ (Occasionally Asked Questions).
Q. I see you have very ambiguously written your name in two
different
ways. What is you first name? Why this confusion? Can't you just decide?
A. I'm South Indian, and hence this confusion. I assure you that
I'm not
the only one with this nomenclature issue. My name is Seshadhri. That's
what you should call me. On the other hand, if you insist on calling me
Mr. So-and-so, then call me Mr. Seshadhri.
Q. Then why isn't your name Seshadhri Seshadhri. And what is this
Comandur
doing there?
A. Rather persistent, aren't you? To completely resolve this issue,
my
parents were
going to call me Seshadhri Seshadhri Seshadhri Seshadhri, but decided not
to do so after reading Catch-22. Comandur is a family name, but most
South Indians (for unclear reasons) use their family name as an initial
before their name. And so they prefer being known by their first name,
rather than their family name. This, I agree, can be extremely
disorienting for others. Then again, it's not a bad conversation topic to
break
the ice.
Furthermore, the C before my name allows for many clever
uses. When you spot me in the distance, you can ask yourself, "Do I C.
Seshadhri?" If ever I behave coldly to you, you can say "I C.
Seshadhri". This achieves the double effect of claiming that you can look
at me and that my behaviour is not too warm.
Q. What do you do?
A. I
work in Theoretical
Computer Science. It's essentially a subfield of both mathematics and
Computer Science. We theory CS people don't fit into either group though.
Real mathematicians think we're computer scientists,
and real computer scientists think we're mathematicians. And neither of
them really care much about most of our work. Mathematicians think we're
too applied and computer scientists think we're too theoretical. They're
both sort of right. A vast majority of the things we do are not meant to
have any impact on the real world, yet we keep justifying it by connecting
our work to actual problems out there.
Q. What is it like?
A. I assume that "it" means theory CS. If not, then I don't think
that a polite question. You know how solving puzzles are? That's kind of
what theory CS is like. Lots and lots and lots of puzzles, day in and day
out. Small puzzles, big puzzles. Easy puzzles, but mostly hard puzzles.
Cute puzzles, not so cute...you get the point.
Q. Why do you it?
A. The short answer : I enjoy it. The not-so-short answer : I enjoy
it and I get paid for it. The long answer : I enjoy it and I get paid for
it and I'm probably not fit to do useful things.
Q. Your attempts at being funny and clever are not working at
all.
A. Sorry. This is an OAQ. You can only ask questions, and that's
not one.