Office

HEC 245E, UCF

Email

karthik.complexity
at gmail.com

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida.

I’m drawn to the philosophy of machines: what can be computed, and at what cost? In other words, I’m a theoretical computer scientist. My research spans algorithms, cryptography, and complexity theory, and I enjoy exploring the connections between them.

Some questions I keep coming back to are:

1. Can randomness help us solve problems more efficiently?
2. Are there problems where brute-force search is the best we can do?
3. How fast can we multiply matrices?

Before joining UCF, I completed my PhD at Georgetown University, advised by the wonderful Alexander Golovnev. My PhD thesis explored connections between randomness, lower bounds and compression (thesis). Before that, I was an undergraduate at UC Irvine, where I was advised by Vijay Vazirani.

This fall I am teaching Honors Discrete Math (COT 3100C).

Prospective students. I am looking for PhD students.

If you’re visiting Orlando or would like to chat about research, please drop me a message.

Here is a flyer for a talk I gave as an undergrad trying to recruit unsuspecting students into complexity theory.