Anil N. Hirani

Anil N. Hirani is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. He holds a PhD from the California Institute of Technology (2003) in Computer Science with minors in Mathematics and Control and Dynamical Systems. His academic journey includes roles as Assistant Professor (Computer Science, UIUC, 2005–2013) and Associate Professor (Mathematics, UIUC, 2013–2022) before becoming a full Professor in 2022.

His research focuses on the interplay between geometry/topology and algorithms, with emphasis on structure-preserving discretizations of exterior calculus and differential geometry. Key areas include Discrete Exterior Calculus (DEC), numerical methods for PDEs, computational topology, and machine learning applications. He has organized workshops, such as the 2025 Discrete Exterior Calculus workshop at IMSI, and contributed to software like PyDEC.

Education: PhD, Caltech (2003); MS in Computer Science (Stanford); Undergraduate degree in Computer Science (BITS Pilani, India). Awards include the NSF CAREER Award (2007–2012).

Teaching includes courses on Differential Geometry (MATH 423), Vector and Tensor Analysis (MATH 481), and Computational Mathematics (MATH 490). He has advised numerous PhD students, notable among them Kaushik Kalyanaraman and Vaibhav Karve.

Articles span DEC applications in fluid dynamics, cohomology computations, and machine learning. His work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications in engineering and computer science.