Short Bio

Prof. Jagat Sesh Challa is presently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani. He completed his Bachelor's degree - M.Sc. (Tech.) Information Systems (2010), Master's degree - M.E. Software Systems (2012) and Ph.D. in Computer Science (2019), all three from the Department of CSIS, BITS Pilani. He also worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Ultra-Scale Computing and Information Security (CUCIS) Lab in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA (2020), where he worked on Stream Analytics and Materials Informatics. His primary areas of research include – Big Data Analytics , Agentic AI for Education and Human Computer Interaction. He also works in the areas of Computer Vision, Federated Learning, Materials Informatics, Meta Data Analytics and other AI/ML Applications. He has published 15+ research papers in top-tier conferences such as IEEE Cluster, IEEE Big Data, ICDCN, ACE, etc. and top journals such as Big Data Research, JCISE, OJCS, etc. He has also received grants worth INR 70+ Lakhs and is currently working on various sponsored projects in the areas of Agentic AI for Education and HCI. Presently, he is a core researcher at the Advanced Data Analytics and Parallel Technologies (ADAPT) Lab, BITS Pilani. He is presently supervising 7 PhD students and also supervises 30+ UG and Masters Project/Thesis students every year. He is also a member of ACM and IEEE. 

Prof. Challa is also a founding member and is in charge of the BITS Pilani x Postman Innovation Lab at the Rakesh Kapoor Innovation Center at the Pilani Campus. Postman Inc. funds this lab and focuses on promoting API literacy amongst the students. He is also a faculty mentor for the Coding Club, BITS Pilani. Students in these labs work on various projects in domains that include – AR/VR, NueroTech, Game Development, 2D/3D Video Editing, Full Stack Development with APIs, AI/ML Applications, Blockchain, etc. He is also an organizing member of the First and Second International Workshops on Multimedia Computing for Automated Urban Intelligent Systems (MCAUIS 2022/2023) in conjunction with IEEE MIPR 2022/2023.

Prof. Challa also takes great interest in teaching and specialises in teaching fundamental CS courses like Computer Programming, Logic in Computer Science, and Data Structures and Algorithms. Apart from teaching students on campus, he also teaches online for students of B.Sc. in Computer Science online degree offered by BITS Pilani over Coursera. As a part of this program, he has received the 2023 Coursera Global Innovation Oustanding Achievement Award for the course Introduction to Programming. He has also taught various courses to students who are working professionals as part of BITS Pilani’s Work Integrated Learning Programmes. He is also part of the Program and Curriculum Design team for the B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Data Science and AI, online degree programs to be launched by BITS Pilani soon.

Prof. Challa is currently serving as the Faculty-in-Charge of registration and Counselling for BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, wherein he takes care of student course registrations and its allied activities every semester. He also leads the teams that build software tools for various activities related to the registration and counselling of students.