Current Research Themes

Reproducibilty/Replicability in Randomized Computations: Can monte-carlo approximation algorithms be made reproducible (output a unique value on all runs of the algorithm)? Current investigations on this question reveal surprising connections to several other notions in foundations of computation such as circuit complexity, hierarchy theorems, Sperner/KKM Lemma and certain partition problems in geometry. Recent contributions on this topic are available at proceeding of  ITCS 2021 and STOC 2022. This research led us to the discovery of a new Euclidean partition problem first reported in arXiv 2022, which is of independent mathematical interest. A recent work applies the techniques that we developed to understanding list and certificate complexity of replicable/reproducible learning algorithms. Resulting publications are in NeurIPS 2023 (spotlight) and NeurIPS 2024 (to appear).   

Sample Efficiency in Learning and Testing: Learning distributions from observations is a fundamental problem in machine learning. Establishing optimal bounds on the number of observations needed to learn is a central research question especially for high-dimensional distributions. Our recent research establishes new upper and lower bounds on learning and testing high-dimension distributions including Bayes nets and interventional distributions. Recent publications are available in proceedings of ICML 2020, NeurIPS 2020, ALT 2021, STOC 2021, and AISTATS 2022.

Algorithms for Streaming Data: The data streaming model is one of the well-established models for computation over large data sets. It  is a model for real-time computation that limits storage capacity and processing time. Since the velocity and the volume of the data are expected to be very high, algorithms processing them can not revisit an item or spend too much time on a single item.  Our research on this topic has led to contributions not only in foundations of data analysis but also in applied areas including bioinformatics, databases, and software engineering. Recent publications are available at proceedings of SWAT 2016, ACM BMB 2017, PODS 2021, PODS 2022, ICSE 2022, ESA 2022, and PODS 2024. A work, appeared in PODS 2021, made a striking discovery that certain algorithms developed independently in model counting and data streaming are the same. This work won several recognitions including Best of PODS 21, SIGMOD Research Highlight Award, and CACM Research Highlight Award.

Some Recent Publications (by year):
2020: ICML 2020, NeurIPS 2020, TCC 2020
2021: STOC 2021, ALT 2021, ITCS 2021, PODS 2021, PODS 2021
2022: STOC 2022, PODS 2022, ICSE 2022, AISTATS 2022, ESA 2022
2023: NeurIPS 2023, DISC 2023 (BA), IJCAI 2023, AAAI 2023
2024: NeurIPS 2024, ICML 2024, PODS 2024, APPROX 2024
2025: ICLR 2025, ICLR 2025  

Complete publication list at DBLP

A note on the name on publications: In scientific publications, name appears as N. V. Vinodchandran.

Current Funding: NSF CCF 2130608, NSF CCF 234224, NSF CCF 2413848, UNL Grand Challenges Grant.