The Grainger College of Engineering

Indranil Gupta

Indranil Gupta
Indranil Gupta
  • Professor
(217) 265-5517
3112 Siebel Center for Comp Sci

For More Information

Education

  • Ph.D., Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 2004
  • Bachelor of Technology, Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, India, 1998

Biography

TL;DR: Today, one can't escape Distributed Systems. They are all around us---from the datacenters and clouds we use directly or indirectly every day; to smart devices, smart homes, and smart buildings/cities; to machine learning running inside AI systems online and in the physical world. Yet many common concepts, algorithms, and systems design and implementation techniques, pervade and permeate through many of these seemingly disparate types of distributed systems. Prof. Indranil Gupta (Indy) does research and teaching on these topics. His research is driven by a love of working on real problems (very often motivated by industry), devising solutions with intellectual depth, and then implementing and evaluating them with real testbeds and systems. He also collaborates with industry production teams. His group is one of the most diverse in the CS department. He teaches the world's largest (online) class on distributed systems, apart from regular on-campus teaching. Sometimes he improvises music to teach Computer Science.

In Detail:

Prof. Indranil Gupta (Indy) is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Indy leads the Distributed Protocols Research Group in the CS Department at UIUC. He is interested in research on distributed systems, with specific focus on large-scale distributed systems such as datacenters. cloud computing systems, IoT, Distributed Machine Learning, etc. Indranil Gupta is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and IEEE Senior Member. Indranil is recipient of the the NSF CAREER award in 2005, the Junior Xerox Award for Faculty Research in 2008, the CAS/Beckman Fellowship in 2009, and the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership Faculty Fellowship in 2010. He has won Best Paper Awards at IEEE IC2E 2018, IEEE/ACM CCGrid 2017, IEEE IC2E 2016, IEEE ICAC 2015 and BigMine 2012. Indranil has received teaching recognition in the UIUC "List of Teachers ranked as Excellent" multiple times since 2003. He served as General Chair of ACM PODC 2007; PC co-chair at multiple conferences over the years (Usenix HotCloud 2018, IEEE IC2E 2017, LADIS 2017, IEEE ICCAC 2016, ACM DeMiST 2016, IEEE P2P 2014, ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware 2010, IEEE SASO 2010 and StoDiS 2005). He is on the editorial board for both ACM TAAS (Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems) and IEEE TCC (Transactions on Cloud Computing). Previously, Indranil received his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2004. He has worked at Google (2011-12), IBM Research (T.J. Watson) and Microsoft Research (Cambridge, UK). Indranil obtained his Bachelor of Technology (Computer Science) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai/Madras, in 1998.

Indy is a world leader in inventing and implementing novel systems techniques that make distributed systems more reliable, predictable, and manageable. These include contributions and interests in both: a) core Distributed Systems topics, as well as b) Distributed Systems + X topics. Core distributed systems topics include batch processing, stream processing, and distributed storage---in all these areas his work has solved problems faced by open-source distributed systems used widely in industry. In the past he has worked on peer to peer systems, and nature-inspired distributed systems. Distributed Systems + X topics include collaborations and research results in Distributed Machine Learning, Distributed Systems + IoT, verification of Distributed Systems, and others. Prof. Gupta also collaborates with industry, contributing to their production systems as well as helping shine light on their production systems. His research results are in use by multiple prominent companies. Prof. Gupta runs one of the most diverse groups in the CS department---about 50% of his PhD students are women.

For more research information, papers, slides, and software see the website of Prof. Gupta's "Distributed Protocols Research Group" (DPRG): http://dprg.cs.uiuc.edu/

Prof. Indranil Gupta (Indy) is also a leader in democratizing the teaching of distributed systems. He teaches the world's largest (online) course on Distributed Systems. Offered via Coursera, his "Cloud Computing Concepts" courses (Parts 1 and 2) together have about 100k students annually, and are used by companies, startups, and taken by students of all generations, across 198 countries. In addition, Indy loves teaching in the classroom and handles classes of up to 500 students per semester, who are all excited to learn about distributed systems!

Since you made it this far in the bio (or perhaps you jumped ahead strategically---either way, nice work!), you get a prize! Did you know that Indy has a Youtube channel where he improvises songs to teach Distributed Systems concepts and on topics related to CS Research? Check out one of his videos here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2wmdkkeY0

Professional Registrations

  • IEEE Senior Member
  • ACM Distinguished Scientist

Research Interests

  • Large-scale Distributed systems
  • Distributed Systems + X
  • Distributed Systems + IoT/Edge Systems

Research Areas

Selected Articles in Journals

  • For all papers, slides, and software see: Distributed Protocols Research Group webpage: http://dprg.cs.uiuc.edu/

Recent Courses Taught

  • CS 425 (ECE 428) - Distributed Systems
  • CS 525 - Advanced Distributed Systems
  • CS 591 IG - ADV Sem in Distributed Systems
  • CS 591 IG - Advanced Seminar
  • CS 591 IG - Distributed Systems Seminar
  • CS 591 JI - Just Infrastructures
  • CS 591 SN - Systems and Networking Seminar

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