Anurag Kumar obtained his BTech (1977) in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. He obtained his PhD in Electrical Engineering (1981) from Cornell University, Ithaca. Kumar was then with AT&T Bell Labs as a Member of Technical Staff (1981-88), where he worked on mathematical modelling and performance analysis of telecommunication systems, distributed computing systems and manufacturing systems. He returned to India to join the Faculty of the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. Presently, he is a Professor and Chair of the Division of Electrical Sciences at IISc.

Academic and Research Achievements:Professor Kumar teaches and conducts research in the area of communication networking, specifically in wireless networking. The focus of his research is to use mathematical models for describing various problems in networking, and then to study these problems using the models, in an attempt to gain insights into network performance, design, control and management. Some of his research contributions are: (i) First analysis of the performance of TCP over lossy and fading wireless links, (ii) Optimal load allocation in distributed computer systems with dedicated loads, (iii) Generalization of a modelling technique for wireless local area networks (WLAN), leading to new insights, and (iv) Minimum delay cross-layer scheduling algorithm for fading wireless links with power constraints. In addition to his theoretical and modelling research, he has developed practical solutions to traffic control and scheduling problems arising in the C-DOT digital switching system. He has also conceived, architected, and developed control algorithms for the management of quality of service (QoS) at an Internet access link and for the QoS management of WLAN. He has published about 140 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has coauthored the postgraduate textbooks Communication Networking: An Analytical Approach and Wireless Networking (Morgan-Kaufman/Elsevier, 2004, 2008).

Other Contributions: Kumar was the Coordinator of the Education and Research Network Project (ERNET) at IISc, India’s first wide-area packet switching network (1988-2003). He has been an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Networking and IEEE Communications Survey and Tutorials.

Awards and Honours: Professor Kumar received the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers (IETE) CDIL Best Paper Award (1993). He is a recipient of the COMSWARE 2008 Conference Best Paper Award, and also the IISc Alumni Award for Excellence in Engineering Research (2008). He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (1998) and Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA (2006).