Swaprava Nath (pronunciation)

Assistant Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay and an associate faculty member in the Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science (CMInDS). Previously, I was a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur. Even before, I spent two beautiful stints as postdoc at the Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University and at the Economics and Planning Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi. I did my PhD from the Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. My research interest lies at the intersection of Economics and Computation, that has applications in Internet economics, crowdsourcing, resource allocation, online advertising, auctions, matching, social networks, and many more. To know more about my research, please see the research page, and to know about our research group, see the group page.

Full CV: [PDF]

I'm always looking for enthusiastic and self-motivated students for research problems. If you are a student and want to work with me, please read this first.

"If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance."
-- Richard W. Hamming

News and Calls

December 31, 2023: The year ends with several interesting notes that uniquely identify the CompEcon group. First, in academics, a record enrollment of 250+ students in CS 6001, one full paper each in AAMAS 2023, ECAI 2023, and IJCAI 2023, and upcoming one full paper and two extended abstracts in AAMAS 2024. Second, the group is now funded with three SERB, one TCS, one TCAAI, and one Amazon grants -- heartfelt thanks to the funding agencies. Third, in sports, a silver medal in the 28th inter-IIT staff sports meet 2023 (in football) held at IIT Gandhinagar. Finally, a refreshing time out with the group members for food and fun. CompEcon believes in working hard, playing hard, and partying moderate!

May - July 2023: I'm open to mentor an intern under the IKDD Research Internship Program. Here you can find more details about the project. This will be a project in the area of mechanism design. You must have done CS6001 or a similar course (self-study is also okay) as preparation towards this project. For an overview of working with me, please read this first. If you are 'game' for this, I highly encourage you to apply.

July 2022: CS6001 (that's double zero, the first 4 digit course in CSE, IITB): Game Theory and Algorithmic Mechanism Design: an introductory PG elective course which is also open for the second to final year UG and dual degree students (4-minute intro video here). Course details are available here. The course is also accessible from outside IIT Bombay as the same content will be offered via NPTEL. If you are interested, you may consider signing up here.

June, 2022: More accolades to Satyanweshi/सत्यान्वेषी, the truth-seeking chatbot. See below for its details and the team involved in it. The students, Ankur, Yash, and Nithya received the Ranjan Kumar Memorial Award at the 55-th convocation at IIT Kanpur for the best socially relevant project [official notification, page 11].

May 2022: Our work on truthful ownership transfer with expert advice gets accepted in Mathematical Programming.

February 2022: received two grants from MATRICS, SERB, and TCAAI, IIT Bombay. Grateful acknowledgments to the funding agencies.

December 13, 2021: Joined CSE, IIT Bombay

At IIT Kanpur:

January, 2021: When robots are intelligent, one needs mechanism design to prioritize their movements avoiding collision. Here is our paper on competitive robot prioritization that got accepted in ICAPS.

September-November, 2020: The course lectures of "Introduction to Game Theory and Mechanism Design" are now online. See this YouTube playlist.

April-May, 2020: We have developed Satyanweshi/सत्यान्वेषी, the truth-seeking chatbot. Set it up easily and truth-check suspicious messages before forwarding to others. Our solution secured the second place in MHRD AICTE SAMADHAN competition in response to COVID-19 among more than 2500 participants. See this IIT Kanpur twitter announcement or the video. Good work by Ankur, Yash, Nithya, and Prarthana who are currently working towards improving and maintaining Satyanweshi/सत्यान्वेषी. This project is mentored by Prof. Hamim Zafar and myself. Also visit (and "like" if you like) Satyanweshi/सत्यान्वेषी's Facebook page.

February, 2020: Paper on the blockchain-based skill evaluation tool SkillCheck gets accepted in IEEE ICBC. Congratulations to Jay.

January, 2020: Paper on the peer-grading tool SwaGrader gets accepted in CoDS-COMAD. Congratulations to Somu, Ayushi, and Shubham.

January-April, 2020: Teaching Computer Networks.

May, 2019: Press coverage of our work on surprise in elections.

May, 2019: Garima's (PhD student) second paper gets into IJCAI. Congratulations again!

May, 2019: Garima (PhD student) is traveling to Montreal to present her paper in AAMAS. Congratulations Garima!

January-April, 2019: Flown an A380, said differently, taught ESC101: Fundamentals of Computing. The crew after landing it successfully.

August-November, 2018: Taught Introduction to Game Theory and Mechanism Design.

January-April, 2018: Taught a new course, Selected Areas of Mechanism Design.

December 15, 2017: Co-organized a workshop on Computational Social Choice Theory at IIT Kanpur.

My Research Cloud