Profession: Nitin was born, in 1981, and brought up in Prayagraj, UP, India. He did his BTech CSE at IIT Kanpur (1998-2002). He worked on computational complexity/algebra/number theory in his PhD (2002-06) in IIT Kanpur under Manindra Agrawal. In this period he traveled world-over; in particular, an year-long research visit each in Princeton University, USA (2003-04) and National University of Singapore (2004-05). Nitin joined CWI Amsterdam, The Netherlands as a Scientific Researcher (2006-2008). Later, he moved to Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) in University of Bonn, Germany with a faculty position (2008-2013). In 2013, Nitin joined as Associate Professor in CSE, IIT Kanpur; where he was promoted to Professor (2018--) and N.Rama.Rao.Chair (2019--) positions. He is an Adjunct Faculty in Chennai Mathematics Institute (2018--). He is a founding Coordinator of the "Center for Developing Intelligent Systems" (CDIS) -- a new entity to solve governance problems at scale.

Research: The area of algebraic complexity has seen an intense revival in the last three decades. Many famous open problems in this area have been solved by Nitin in his co-authored papers in the last two decades; inventing highly technical algorithmic-algebra tools. He leads globally in an astonishingly wide area with contributions in--- primality testing, blackbox PIT (polynomial identity testing, or its famous cousin, the VP≠VNP question), border-complexity analyses in GCT (geometric complexity theory), algebraic dependence, factor-/root-finding (in diverse rings), computing famous topological invariants like the Igusa local-zeta function (via Galois rings) and the Hasse-Weil zeta function (via Galois fields). 

Activities: Nitin is a proactive member of the scientific, academic community and contributes to the institute, national, and international committees and policy-making. He chaired the UGRC (UnderGraduate Review Committee) to design a modern curriculum for the decade of 2020-30; its key features were reported by the national media. He is the founding coordinator of "Center for Developing Intelligent Systems" to solve governance problems at scale. Nitin is a Member of the (founding) Editorial Board of the journal TheoretiCS. He chaired the premier CS Conference in India—FSTTCS’20 (Track A). He has served in the Program Committees of STOC’24, ISSAC’23, CCC’22, ITCS’22, FOCS’19, FCT’19, FSTTCS’18, STACS’14, CSR’11, CCC’11. He has mentored 16 PhDs and 25 Masters, and has taught more than 21 courses, 8 of which are now MooC (massive open online courses) on Swayam. He has given 75+ invited talks in inter/national venues.

Awards: IITK Distinguished Alumnus Award (2003), MIT Global Indus Technovators Award (2003), IBM Outstanding PhD Award (2005), Gödel Prize (2006), Fulkerson Prize (2006), INSA.Young.Scientist Medal, DST.Swarna.Jayanti Fellow (2015); Shanti.Swarup.Bhatnagar Prize (2018); N.Rama.Rao Chair (2019); IIT Bombay International Award (2023); J.C.Bose.Fellowship (2023); Fellow of all Indian Academies: FASc, FNASc (2021), FNAE (2022), FNA (2023). In 2022, DST & Ministry of Science & Technology profiled him in the top scientists "shaping today's India". His papers won the ``Best Paper (Track A)'' at the flagship ICALP'11 conference, "Best Paper & Best Student Paper Awards" at the IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity CCC'06, and "Best Student Paper Award" at MFCS'22.