Biography
Anuran Makur is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science (CS) and the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Purdue University, where he is also affiliated with the Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks (ICON). He received his B.S. (Bachelor of Science) degree with highest honors (summa cum laude) from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS, Honors Program) at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), CA, USA, in 2013. He received his S.M. (Master of Science) degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, in 2015, under the supervision of Prof. Lizhong Zheng in the Claude E. Shannon Communication and Network Group within the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). He then received his Sc.D. (Doctor of Science) degree from the Department of EECS at MIT in 2019, under the supervision of Prof. Yury Polyanskiy in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and Prof. Lizhong Zheng in RLE. From 2019 to 2021, he was a postdoctoral researcher with LIDS, the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC), and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) at MIT, where he was hosted by Prof. Ali Jadbabaie and Prof. Devavrat Shah. His research interests include information theory, theoretical statistics and machine learning, and other areas in applied probability. He was a recipient of the Arthur M. Hopkin Award from the Department of EECS, UC Berkeley in 2013, the Jacobs Presidential Fellowship from MIT in 2013, the Ernst A. Guillemin Master's Thesis Award from the Department of EECS, MIT in 2015, the Jin Au Kong Doctoral Thesis Award from the Department of EECS, MIT in 2020, the Thomas M. Cover Dissertation Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2021, and the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2023.