Sreeram Kannan

Sreeram Kannan is an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research spans multiple interdisciplinary domains including information theory, blockchain systems, machine learning, and computational biology.

Dr. Kannan received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting postdoc at Stanford University between 2012-2014.

His research interests focus on the theoretical foundations of information processing with applications to blockchain systems, machine learning, computational biology, and wireless networking. He works on both mathematical theory and engineering system development, with particular emphasis on how information theory principles can solve practical problems in these domains.

His publication record shows a consistent trajectory of high-impact research in top venues including NIPS, ICML, ISIT, and specialized conferences in bioinformatics. His work demonstrates a unique bridge between theoretical information theory and practical applications, particularly in blockchain algorithms and RNA sequence analysis.

• Early Faculty Career Award from NSF for project on Information theoretic methods for RNA Analytics
• NIH R01 Award for Optimal Algorithms for RNA Sequence Assembly (with Lior Pachter and David Tse)

Dr. Kannan leads the UW Blockchain Lab and the Information Theory Lab, where he mentors students and researchers working on cutting-edge problems at the intersection of information theory and practical systems. His lab develops both theoretical frameworks and practical tools like the Shannon RNA-Seq assembler, which applies information-theoretic principles to genomic sequence assembly problems.