Pradeep Reddy VARAKANTHAM
Full-time Faculty
Professor of Computer Science; Director, CARE.AI Lab; Coordinator, BSc (CS) Artificial Intelligence Track
School of Computing and Information Systems
SCIS
Qualification
- PhD, University of Southern California, 2007
Teaching Topics
- Computer as an Analysis Tool
- Software Systems & Solutions electives
- IS Software Foundations
- Object Oriented Application Development
Research Advisor/Co-Research Advisor to
- Prakhar Gautam
- GE Zichang
- HILLIER Dylan Alexander Slavin
- LU Yuxiao
- JIANG Hao
- Sidney TIO Xi Rong
- BELAIRE Roman Lok-Ming
- Tejas DESHPANDE (tejasd.2019 [at] dba.smu.edu.sg), DBA
Research Areas and Areas of Expertise
Strategic Priorities
HighlightsPradeep Reddy Varakantham is a leading expert in sequential decision making, planning and scheduling under uncertainty, game theory, and reinforcement learning, with impactful contributions to AI-driven resource management, urban mobility, and multi-agent systems.
Combines theoretical innovation in planning, scheduling, and reinforcement learning with real-world deployment in urban mobility, healthcare, and resource management; emphasizes robustness, scalability, and practical impact through collaborations with government, industry, and AI Singapore; recognized for advancing multi-agent systems and AI-driven decision support.
Focused research areas include Sequential decision making and planning in uncertain environments, robust scheduling and resource allocation, decentralized and multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning and imitation learning, constrained optimization, influence maximization in social networks, AI for urban mobility and healthcare.
Combines theoretical innovation in planning, scheduling, and reinforcement learning with real-world deployment in urban mobility, healthcare, and resource management; emphasizes robustness, scalability, and practical impact through collaborations with government, industry, and AI Singapore; recognized for advancing multi-agent systems and AI-driven decision support.
Focused research areas include Sequential decision making and planning in uncertain environments, robust scheduling and resource allocation, decentralized and multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning and imitation learning, constrained optimization, influence maximization in social networks, AI for urban mobility and healthcare.
Areas of Expertise
Planning under uncertainty (MDPsPOMDPsDec-MDPs)scheduling with durational uncertaintygame theory (congestion gamesstochastic gamesselfish routing)reinforcement learning (RLdeep learninginverse RL)influence maximizationonline matchingresource allocationmulti-agent systems.
Past Awarded Grant
- Trust to Train and Train to Trust: Agent Training Programs for Safety-Critical Environments, AI Singapore Research Programme, AI Singapore , PI (Project Level): Pradeep Reddy VARAKANTHAM , Co-PI (Project Level): Akshat KUMAR, Arunesh SINHA, David LO, 2021, S$6,086,963.76
- The "Other Me" : Human-Centered AI Assistance In Situ, AI Singapore Research Programme, AI Singapore , Co-PI (Project Level): Pradeep Reddy VARAKANTHAM, Akshat KUMAR, 2021, S$9,551,520
- Autonomous Onboarding and Periodic KYC review (PKR), AI Singapore 100 Experiments, AI Singapore , PI (Project Level): Alan MEGARGEL, Co-PI (Project Level): Pradeep Reddy VARAKANTHAM, 2020, Š$625,607.6
- Autonomous Prospecting and Product Recommendations, AI Singapore 100 Experiments, AI Singapore , PI (Project Level): Alan MEGARGEL, Co-PI (Project Level): Pradeep Reddy VARAKANTHAM, 2020, S$625,607.6
- MHA-Merlion Initiative - SCDF 02, MHA Merlion Initiative, Ministry of Home Affairs , PI (Project Level): Pradeep Reddy VARAKANTHAM , Co-PI (Project Level): LAU Hoong Chuin, 2019
Latest Publications
Showing up to 6 latest publications from the past 5 years.
- H Jiang, Y Xu, P VarakanthamProceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 40 (45), 38653 …, 2026
- Efficient Unsupervised Environment Design through Hierarchical Policy Representation Learning [2026]D Li, S Tio, P VarakanthamarXiv preprint arXiv:2602.09813, 2026
- Z Gong, P Varakantham, A KumararXiv preprint arXiv:2512.20173, 2025
- SR Chirra, J Teoh, P Paruchuri, P VarakanthamarXiv preprint arXiv:2510.00922, 2025
- A Kumar, S Shah, M Lowalekar, P Varakantham, A Ottley, W YeoharXiv preprint arXiv:2508.11770, 2025
- Automatic LLM Red Teaming [2025]R Belaire, A Sinha, P VarakanthamarXiv preprint arXiv:2508.04451, 2025
This highlights are AI-generated content using the faculty's CV.
Qualification
- PhD, University of Southern California, 2007
Teaching Topics
- Computer as an Analysis Tool
- Software Systems & Solutions electives
- IS Software Foundations
- Object Oriented Application Development
Research Advisor/Co-Research Advisor to
- Prakhar Gautam
- GE Zichang
- HILLIER Dylan Alexander Slavin
- LU Yuxiao
- JIANG Hao
- Sidney TIO Xi Rong
- BELAIRE Roman Lok-Ming
- Tejas DESHPANDE (tejasd.2019 [at] dba.smu.edu.sg), DBA
