Vivek Shripad Borkar earned his BTech (1976) in Electrical Engg from IIT, Mumbai, MS (1977) in Systems and Control Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, USA and PhD (1980) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He held a Visiting position at the University of Twente, The Netherlands; at TIFR Centre, Bangalore (1982, 1989); at the Indian Institute of Science (1989, 1999); and finally at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai (1999-), where he is currently a Senior Professor in the School of Technology and Computer Science.

Academic and Research Achievements: Borkar's research interests have been in controlled delusions, Markov decision processes, Stochastic approximation algorithms, reinforcement learning, resource allocation problems in communications, hybrid control, etc. In Stochastic control, he has made important contributions to control under partial observations, adaptive control, control with constraints, average cost and risk-sensitive control, and so on. He has also established stability and convergence criteria for Stochastic approximation type algorithms, analyzed their sample complexity, and applied them to problems in communications. He has proposed many new reinforcement learning schemes, justified them analytically, and applied them to wireless communications, rare event estimation, etc. He has some widely cited contributions to hybrid control in the early years of the subject. His current interests are in multi-agent dynamic optimization that involves agent learning. Borkar has published over a hundred research papers in addition to several others in conference proceedings, written four books and edited one.

Other Contributions: Borkar has served on the Editorial Boards of many journals such as SIAM Journal of Control and Optimization; Systems and Control Letters; Journal of Indian Institute of Science; Sadhana; Proceedings of Indian Academy of Sciences (Engineering Science); Applications Mathematicae (Polish Academy of Sciences); Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, etc. and has also served as referee. He was a Member of the Executive Commttee of IEEE, Mumbai Chapter.

Awards and Honours: Professor Borkar won the IEEE Control Systems Society Best Transactions Paper Award (1982); SS Bhatnagar Award (1992) and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT, Mumbai (2000). He was awarded the Homi Bhabha and JC Bose Fellowships and also awarded the Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Medal INSA (2008). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, Indian National Academy of Engineers, and Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).