He moved to UIUC in the fall of 2006 after spending eight years at Lucent Bell Labs. He finished his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University under the supervision of Rajeev Motwani in 1998. Before that he obtained his B. Tech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (now Chennai). He is primarily interested in algorithms for discrete optimization problems with current research focusing on approximation algorithms.