Myself
I serve at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad as an Assistant Professor. Formally called Allahabad, the sacred land of Prayagraj is known for the confluence of the rivers (sangam) of Ganga, Yamuna and (an invisible) Saraswati. At this institute we strive to get a sangam of teaching, administration and (what sometimes becomes visible) research. Our specialty is screaming out to over 200 students per course (in 2 or more batches) for under-graduate courses, in an annoying voice that disturbs their sleep. The labs are where we play a fun game, where first I give unusual problems in a hard to decipher language, evaluated automatically online on (sometimes) correct test cases; and in retaliation a reasonable subset decide to make me feel like a celebrity by paying frequent visits irrespective of time. We extend it to a classic cat and mouse game in the modern context of plagiarism.
I belong to the brand new Centre of Intelligent Robotics, which as per the institute map is not the center by any known metric. Here I used to solve all challenging global world problems, play with expensive robotic toys, post fun videos online and exhibit the same videos in research conferences/journals; until some sponsors from ministry and industry bribed me for solving their problems. Now I stare at humans walking so as to imitate the same social primitives in robots; look around beautiful places to assess if self-driving cars can register those as landmarks for localization; solve world health problems by learning; and give as complex tasks for robots to plan as the question papers given to the students to solve. Each category has its own dark pleasure.
Currently I’m also coordinating the incubation activities. I spend a significant time convincing people to open startup on Government money and get successful within a few years; so that I get a better position and a bigger pay cheque at their startup. Until then, I’m on a hunting mode to spot projects that do not immediately go into the dustbin and spot students whose rate of changing projects is less than the rate of changing clothes.
Short Biography
Rahul Kala received the B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees in Information Technology from the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior, India in 2010. He received his Ph.D. degree in cybernetics from the University of Reading, UK in 2013. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, India in the Centre for Intelligent Robotics. He is the author of four books and over 100 papers. He has numerous funded projects from Government agencies and industry to his name. He is an active reviewer of leading journals of the domain. He is a recipient of the Early Career Research Grant from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He is a recipient of the Best PhD dissertation award from the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society; and a scholarship under the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Program from the UK Government.
What next?
I love to maintain and advertise a stunning looking research profile. If you’re my future recruiter, as of now there are two versions, the stuff that I wanted to do and stuff that I was given money to do, both good pages to hang around. If you’re a young researcher and got a life-changing transformation instead, feel free to download some cool papers available free of cost.
If you like puzzles, here’s one. This is what I was asked to teach in the past. If you find similarities between the courses that indicate my specialization, please let me know. If you’re a student looking for the syllabus of the exam tomorrow and hints of what is more likely to come, the public version is to make me look intellectual and not the truth.
If you knocked this door to transform your career, here’s the golden chance. An understandable version of my works is in my books. If you buy one, you’d be contributing in making someone happier, which is me who gets a small share. If you can neither buy one, nor pirate one, these are amazing videos to cheer you up that cover most of it.
My standup is now not only restricted to my classes and exam, and a listing is available here. If you fancy calling me for a show, you may want to avoid taking a feedback from the people in the listing. This is what I used to speak a few decades ago. Because now I usually speak at exotic venues, there’s no time to make or carry presentations and the list is no longer updated. For bookings my CV to get an approval is here and contact me here.
