Ravishankar Krishnaswamy

Ravishankar Krishnaswamy is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India. He earned his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012 under the guidance of Anupam Gupta. From 2012-2014, he held a Simons Postdoctoral Fellowship at Princeton University's Computer Science Department and spent Fall 2014 visiting Columbia University's IEOR Department. He is also an alumnus of IIT Madras.

His research lies at the intersection of algorithm design, optimization, and large-scale data processing. Key contributions include the development of DiskANN, a hybrid data structure for scalable high-dimensional vector search. His work addresses technical challenges in minimizing SSD access latency while maintaining accuracy. DiskANN has been deployed extensively within Microsoft for both first-party and Azure-based third-party applications.

He is also deeply engaged in approximation algorithms for graph problems (connectivity/flow), clustering, and optimization models that incorporate input uncertainty, including online algorithms and stochastic optimization frameworks. His PhD thesis on Approximation Techniques for Stochastic Combinatorial Optimization remains a foundational piece of his research.

Scientific Awards

• Simons Postdoctoral Fellowship

Contact: Vigyan Building, 9, Lavelle Road, Bangalore 560018