Yogesh Simmhan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computational and Data Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His research explores scalable software platforms, algorithms and applications on distributed systems. These span Cloud and Edge Computing, Temporal Graph Processing, and Scalable Machine Learning to support emerging Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, and won the Best Paper Award at IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD) 2019, IEEE TCSC SCALE Challenge Award in 2019 and 2012, the Distinguished Paper award at EuroPar 2018, and the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing HPC Storage Challenge Award in 2008. He is the recipient of the Swarna Jayanti Fellowship in 2019 and IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing (Mid Career Researcher) in 2020. He is an Associate Editor of Future Generation Computing System (FGCS), and earlier served as Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Systems (JPDC), Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing and a member of the IEEE Future Directions Initiative on Big Data.
Yogesh has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indiana University, Bloomington, and was previously a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, and a Postdoc at Microsoft Research, San Francisco. He is a Distinguished Member of ACM, a Distinguished Contributor of the IEEE Computer Society and serves on the ACM India Executive Council.
Yogesh Simmhan leads the Distributed Research on Emerging Applications and Machines Lab (DREAM:Lab) at the Indian Institute of Science, where he is joined by an enthusiastic team of PhD and Masters students, research staff and interns who conduct cutting-edge research on distributed systems.
Our research vision centers on developing novel programming abstractions, distributed algorithms, and resilient runtime platforms to manage the complexity of next-generation distributed systems and applications. This advances both the foundations and practice of distributed systems across Cloud and Edge Computing, Temporal Graph Processing, and Scalable Machine Learning. While these areas may appear diverse, they are unified by a common focus on emerging computing hardware and evolving data-driven applications, realized through intelligent, scalable middleware and algorithmic innovations that enable next-generation workloads.
This vision responds to a fundamental shift in computing platforms and applications. Infrastructure is evolving from centralized datacenters to a heterogeneous computing continuum that combines high-end cloud platforms with resource-constrained, yet increasingly accelerator-enabled, edge devices. In parallel, applications have moved beyond traditional batch analytics toward time-critical machine learning and decision-making over complex, linked, and continuously evolving data. Together, these trends introduce new challenges in scalability, adaptability, and efficiency that cannot be addressed by existing systems abstractions alone.
Our contributions address both fundamental and systems-engineering challenges arising from these trends, with an emphasis on originality, non-triviality, and demonstrable impact on scientific knowledge, design methodology, and real-world deployments. Our work has appeared in premier systems venues, produced open-source artifacts, and been validated at scale using real applications, production datasets and hardware testbeds.
Our work is organized into four themes: (1) Systems for Edge Intelligence & Federated Learning, (2) Orchestration & Data Management on the Hybrid-Cloud Continuum, (3) Scalable Temporal & Streaming Graph Processing, and (4) Translational Research into Emerging Applications for societal benefit. Explore the research themes of the lab below.
We design next-generation platforms that make ML and LLM training and inference more scalable, efficient and adaptive. Our work explores edge accelerators, GPU clusters and federated environments, enabling models to run seamlessly from cloud data centers to resource-constrained edge devices.
We are engineering resilient hybrid-cloud software and middleware platforms that support serverless execution, agentic workflows and quantum-classical integration. This includes application orchestrating across public clouds, private clusters and emerging quantum backends to deliver scalable, fault-tolerant and cost-effective computing pipelines.
We build distributed systems for billion-scale, real-time graph analytics, including platforms for Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) operating on temporal, streaming and dynamically evolving graphs. Our aim is to push the boundaries of low-latency, high-throughput graph computation at scale.
We apply core distributed systems research to high-impact domains such as smart city infrastructures, autonomous systems (drones/UAVs) and fintech analytics and blockchain platforms. These collaborations with industry and academic partners help validate our innovations in real-world, data-rich environments.
ORCID: 0000-0003-4140-7774 | Google Scholar | DBLP
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My teaching emphasizes systems thinking, hands-on engineering, and exposure to real-world platforms, increasingly augmented by AI agents as instructional tools.
The primary elective course I teach is DS256: Scalable Systems for Data Science (3:1), taught in the Jan semester since 2016. This soft-core course for the M.Tech. (CDS) program covers distributed systems platforms and tools essential for designing algorithms, programming data-intensive applications and analyzing Big Data. A substantial programming project forms the backbone of the course, with students working on large, real-world datasets using distributed and cloud‑scale platforms. In 2026, the students are building an end-to-end LLM data engineering and training pipeline using Spark and DeepStream.
I have resumed offering DS252: Introduction to Cloud Computing (3:1) in the Aug 2025 semester, redesigned around a novel pedagogical paradigm that actively incorporates AI Agents into the teaching workflow. The course uses Agentic Instructors to lead students through inquiry‑driven learning paths, with human instructors providing conceptual grounding, supervision, and critical intervention where needed. Students also undertake a major capstone project centered on designing and deploying AI Agents, making the course an experiment in the future of AI‑augmented higher education.
I also teach the online core course DA231: Data Engineering at Scale (3:1) for the M.Tech. in Data Science and Business Analytics (DSBA) program, initiated in Aug 2021 as part of IISc's strategic expansion into high-quality online professional degrees. This course trains students in the use of modern Big Data platforms to acquire, manage, process and derive insights from large-scale, high-velocity and linked datasets, while grounding them in the distributed systems principles that enable scalability and reliability.
I periodically co-teach DS221: Introduction to Scalable Systems (3:0) in rotation with Profs. Sathish Vadhiyar and Chirag Jain. This core course introduces students, particularly those without an undergraduate CS background, to essential systems topics including computer architecture, operating systems, data structures, algorithms, parallel computing and Big Data platforms.
In addition, I regularly deliver lectures on data engineering, cloud systems and IoT as part of multiple IISc-TalentSprint online certification programs, including the Advanced Certification Programs in Computational Data Science.
Earlier, I taught DS286: Data Structures and Programming (2:1) and co-taught SE292: High Performance Computing (3:0); both have since been discontinued, with their content absorbed into DS221. I also previously offered SE252: Introduction to Cloud Computing (3:1) as an elective, covering foundational concepts in parallel/distributed computing, Cloud service models (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS), Big Data computational patterns, and Cloud performance evaluation—topics now partly included within DS256.
Yogesh has been the recipient of numerous sponsored research grants from major Government of India agencies, including the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Ministry of Education (MoE/MHRD), Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT), along with international support from the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). He has been an investigator on sponsored projects cumulatively funded at about INR 20 Crores (USD 2.25 Million) at IISc, and has previously received competitive grants from the US NSF, DARPA and DOE.
In parallel, he has built a strong ecosystem of industry-aligned research, securing faculty fellowships, unrestricted grants, CSR support, and cloud credits from organizations such as NPCI, IBM Research, Microsoft, Accenture, VMWare, Facebook, NetApp ATG, Huawei, AWS and TechMahindra. These sustained collaborations, totalling over INR 15.5 crores (USD 1.7 Million), have also enabled the establishment of multiple Centers of Excellence in partnership with IBM, NPCI and Accenture, advancing research in hybrid cloud platforms, quantum-classical orchestration, scalable fintech analytics, and distributed AI systems.
Together, these grants and partnerships support his lab's research activities and provide the foundation for high-impact, translational research that connects rigorous systems innovation with real-world national-scale deployments.
Yogesh coordinates the NPCI-IISc Center of Excellence on Deep Tech R&D, an initiative to strengthen the scalability, reliability and intelligence of India's Digital Public Infrastructure. The engagement between IISc faculty and NPCI researchers contributes to high-throughput consensus mechanisms for private blockchain deployments, large-scale fraud detection using graph learning, and resilient data-management platforms for UPI-scale transaction flows. They also host a Research Fellows (RF) program. This enables deep, sustained industry-academia collaboration to shape next-generation fintech systems for India.
We are actively looking for motivated Ph.D. and M.Tech (Research) students, high‑commitment interns, and skilled R&D staff to contribute to cutting‑edge research in distributed systems, cloud/edge platforms, scalable AI/ML systems, and large‑scale data analytics.
If you are passionate about building real systems, enjoy deep technical thinking, and have solid skills in programming, algorithms, distributed systems and/or applied ML, we encourage you to apply through the IISc CDS Research Admissions and list DREAM:Lab among your preferred groups. You will need a GATE score in CS/EC/EC/IN subjects, or have a UG degree from a CFTI University (IIT/NIT), or have a prior Masters degree. Admissions are open in March of each year and interviews happen in May.
We welcome highly driven interns who can spend 6+ months full-time on campus and eager to gain hands-on research experience in systems and AI, and contribute meaningfully to ongoing projects. You need to have demonstrable experience in programming/data structures/alorithms (e.g., competitive coding) and have worked with large code bases and distributed/ML platforms.
We also recruit R&D staff with strong programming and systems backgrounds, usually with 1-5 years of industry experience, who seek exposure to research and want to strengthen their profile for future higher-education (MS, PhD) applications. Please note that these roles follow the standard GoI pay scales for Project Associates, which are much lower than industry payscales, but offer the opportunity to build a strong research portfolio.