Vallury Visweswara Subrahmanya Sarma received BSc (1961) from Andhra University, after which he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore from where he obtained BE (1964) and ME (1966) and PhD (1971) in optimal control theory working under the guidance of BL Deekshatulu. He also worked associated with Thomas Kailath at Stanford University on stochastic differential games. In 1967 he joined the Electrical Engineering and in 1973 he moved to the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering as Assistant Professor and was also associated with the Department of Computer Science and Automation (CSA) since its inception (1969), all at IISc, Bangalore where he became Associate Professor (1980) and Professor (1983). He was Visiting Professor (1984-86), University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette and Visiting Scientist, Tata Research Development and Design Centre, Pune (1995-97). After retiring in 2006, he was Honorary Professor (2007- ) and also INAE Distinguished Professor of Engineering at CSA, IISc.

Academic and Research Achievements: Sarma's research has spanned several areas that include control systems, systems engineering, reliability and maintainability, pattern recognition, software engineering, artificial intelligence, knowledge-based systems and Indian logic. He explored the adaptation of Indian logic methods to information technology problems. He authored over 80 technical papers, a large number of conference papers, five book chapters, guided 18 PhD and five MSc (Engineering) students.

Other Contributions: Sarma has written several articles in Telugu on Indian Logic (ny?ya and vai?eshika). He was on the Editorial boards of Sadhana and Journal of Indian Institute of Science.

Awards and Honours: Professor Sarma received the Alumni Award for Excellence in Research in Engineering (1998) from IISc. He was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1989); and the Indian National Academy of Engineering (1992). He was awarded with Gold Medal from Andhra university in 1961.