Lalitha Sankar

Lalitha Sankar is a Professor at Arizona State University's School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. She joined ASU in 2012 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2018 before becoming a full professor. Her research focuses on robust, fair, and privacy-preserving machine learning with applications to critical infrastructure networks like smart grids and healthcare systems.

• Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Rutgers University (2007)
• M.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland
• B.Tech in Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

Research Interests:
Led NSF-funded projects on data privacy in distributed systems and robust machine learning for power grids. Expertise spans information theory, cybersecurity, and game-theoretic approaches for data sharing incentives.

Scientific Awards:

• Rutgers University Academic Achievement Award (2007-2008)
• IEEE Globecom Best Paper (2011)
• NSF CAREER Award (2014)
• IEEE Information Theory Society Distinguished Lecturer (2020-2022)

Grants: Currently holds six active NSF grants including collaborations with Harvard and Stanford, plus a Google AI for Social Good grant. Notable projects include "Fundamental Limits of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies" (NSF CIF-2312666, $764,000) and "Fair Federated Representation Learning for Breast Cancer Risk Scoring" (NSF SCH-2205080, $1.1M).