Venkataramanan "Ragu" Balakrishnan is an Indian–American engineer. He is the Charles H. Phipps Dean at the Case School of Engineering, having previously served as the Michael and Katherine Birck Head Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. In 2012, Balakrishnan was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contributions to convex optimization in control systems.

Early life and education

Balakrishnan was born and raised in India. His father was a chemistry graduate who worked for a paper company while his sister works in computer systems. He received a

Bachelor of Technology A Bachelor of Technology (Latin ''Baccalaureus Technologiae'', commonly abbreviated as B.Tech. or BTech; with honours as B.Tech. (Hons.)) is an undergraduate academic degree conferred after the completion of a three to five-year program of studi ...

degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIT Madras, receiving the President of India Gold Medal for academic excellence. He then travelled to the United States where he enrolled at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

for his Master of Science (MS) degree in statistics followed by a M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering. Following his PhD, Balakrishnan conducted his postdoctoral research at the

A. James Clark School of Engineering The A. James Clark School of Engineering is the engineering college of the University of Maryland, College Park. The school consists of fourteen buildings on the College Park campus that cover over . The school is near Washington, D.C. and Balti ...

with Andre Tits. During this time, he focused on semi-definite programming and co-authored two papers: "Robustness under Bounded Uncertainty with Phase Information," and ISR Technical Report 97-23, "Absolute Stability Theory, Mu Theory and State-Space Verification of Frequency-Domain Conditions: Connections and Implications for Computation."

Career

Following his postdoctoral research, Balakrishnan accepted an assistant professor position at Purdue University in 1994. He was quickly promoted to

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

of electrical and computer engineering in 1998 and Full professor in 2003. Shortly following his promotion, Balakrishnan also became Purdue's assistant head for strategic initiatives and director of graduate admissions. In 2007, Balakrishnan was named associate dean for research in the College of Engineering. While serving as the associate dean, Balakrishnan was also named the Interim Head of the Purdue University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). As the Interim Head of ECE, Balakrishnan was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for contributions to convex optimization in control systems. The following year, he was named the inaugural Michael and Katherine Birck Head of ECE. In 2018, Balakrishnan left Purdue to become the Charles H. Phipps Dean at the Case School of Engineering.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Balakrishnan, Venkataramanan Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Fellow Members of the IEEE Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni IIT Madras alumni