Madhavan Mukund appointed director of Chennai Mathematical Institute

CHENNAI: Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), a deemed-to-be-university for mathematics, computing and physics studies, has appointed Madhavan Mukund as director effective May 1.
Currently the dean and deputy director, Mukund succeeds Rajeeva Karandikar who would be retiring from the institute after serving as a director for a decade.
Mukund, who has a B Tech from IIT-Bombay and a PhD from Aarhus University (both in computer science), has been associated with CMI since its founding in 1989.He has been dean of studies since 2011 and deputy director since 2019.
Among other positions, he is the director of the International Research Laboratory in Computer Science set up at CMI by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He has also been the national coordinator of the Indian Computing Olympiad since 2002 and served as the executive director of the International Olympiad in Informatics from 2011 to
2014.
“It is a privilege and an honour to be selected as the director of CMI following the legendary Prof C S Seshadri and the respected probabilist and psephologist Rajeeva Karandikar,” Mukund said. “At a time when mathematics and computing are transforming every facet of our lives, I am quite excited about the opportunities for CMI to set benchmarks in teaching, research and industry-sponsored consultancy and to make a meaningful impact on society at large.”
“Prof Madhavan Mukund is a computer scientist of great distinction and scholarship with a passion for evangelizing mathematics and computing right from the school level to high-end research. His continued stewardship at CMI in this elevated role will help the institution make an even bigger impact in the context of a renaissance in learning and research in mathematics,” Lakshmi Narayanan, managing trustee of CMI, said.
CMI also announced the induction of Manindra Agrawal (IIT - Kanpur), V Kumar Murty (Fields Institute, Canada) and V Srinivas (TIFR, Mumbai) -- three mathematicians and computer scientists -- to its governing council to strengthen its prowess in new-age areas including cryptography blockchain, and cybersecurity.