Ramanujam R
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- Decidability Theory
- Automata Theory
- Modal, Temporal and Epistemic Logics
- Theory of Distributed Systems
- Security Theory
- Game Theory
Biography
Ramanujam obtained his PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. He was a postdoctoral fellow at City University of New York (CUNY), USA, and then joined The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai where he was a faculty member for more than three decades until he superannuated in July 2021.
His doctoral work in the 1980s was in the area of logic programming. Along with Rohit Parikh (CUNY), he was among the early researchers to study epistemic logic to reason about distributed systems.
In the 1990s, he contributed to developing partial order models of concurrency and local temporal and epistemic logics over them. Since 2000, he has worked on the verification of cryptographic protocols, automata theory and logical foundations of game theory, definability in first-order theories of graph orderings, and decidable fragments of first-order modal logic.
Ramanujam is on the Editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Computational Logic and Journal of Philosophical Logic. He is currently the Chief Editor of the ACM Minigraphs series. He is also Chairperson of the Commission on Logic Education of IUHPST/DLMPST, a UNESCO division.
Ramanujam has been associated with Tamil Nadu Science Forum (TNSF), a voluntary group of science communicators, and is the Editor of Thulir, a monthly children’s science magazine in Tamil.
He was a member of the Steering Committee of the National Curriculum Framework 2005 (NCF 2005), and chaired the National Focus Group for Teaching Mathematics. He is a member of the committee set up by Government of Tamil Nadu to formulate the state’s education policy.
In 2020, he was awarded the Indira Gandhi Prize for science popularisation by Indian National Science Academy (INSA).
Courses
Teaching Mathematics in the Secondary Stage
For Mathematics Majors: Here you will learn how to teach Mathematics at different
stages in schoolIntroduction to Mathematical Explorations II
Introduction to Mathematical Explorations I
Taught through inquiry-based learning, this course, is an exploration of geometry and algebra motivated by questions of congruence of triangles, along with the nature and language of mathematics.
Introduction to Algorithms
This course is intended to give undergraduate students of mathematics an introduction to algorithmic reasoning.
Nature of Mathematics
A study of the structure of mathematics as a discipline and its processes
Linear Algebra
The plane is thought to be two-dimensional, experienced space as three-dimensional and represent them by coordinate systems. This course leads to vector spaces and linear maps which crop up everywhere in mathematics.
Recent publications
Journal Articles
- Sud, R., & Ramanujam, R. (2024). The STEM arena in India: A story of exclusion in many colors, GEN Biotechnology, 3(4), 207 – 214. https://doi.org/10.1089/genbio.2024.0021
- Liu, M., Padmanabha, A., Ramanujam, R., & Wang, Y. (2023). Are bundles good deals for first-order modal logic? Information and Computation, 293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ic.2023.105062
- Padmanabha, A., & Ramanujam, R. (2023). A decidable fragment of first order modal logic: Two variable term modal logic. ACM Transactions on Computational Logic, 24(4), 29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3593584
- Das, R., Padmanabha, A., & Ramanujam, R. (2023). Implicit quantification for modal reasoning in large games. Synthese, 201(163). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023 – 04156‑9
- Jayasree, S., Subramaniam, K., & Ramanujam, R. (2022). Coherent formalisability as acceptability criterion for students’ mathematical discourse. Research in Mathematics Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/14794802.2022.2041469
- Ramanujam, R. & Thinniyam, R.S. (2020). Definability in first-order theories of graph orderings. Journal of Logic and Computation, 30(1), 403 – 420. https://doi.org/10.1093/logcom/exaa017
- Ramanujam, R., Sundararajan, V.,& Suresh, S.P. (2020). The complexity of disjunction in intuitionistic logic. Journal of Logic and Computation, 30(1), 421 – 445. https://doi.org/10.1093/logcom/exaa018
Conference Papers
- Ramanujam, R., & Shah, V. (2025). Curricular choices for computational thinking in large scale low resource environments. In H. Fernau, I. Schwank, J. Staub (Eds.), Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication. Springer, 15229, (pp.117 – 129). https://doi.org/10.1007/978 – 3‑031 – 73257-7_9
- Ramanujam, R., Sundararajan, V., & Suresh, S.P. (2024). Solving the insecurity problem for assertions. In 2024 IEEE 37th Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF), Enschede, Netherlands (pp 112 – 126). IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/CSF61375.2024.00008
- Rajaona, F., Boureanu, I., Ramanujam, R., & Wesemeyer, S. (2024). Epistemic model checking for privacy. In 2024 IEEE 37th Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF), Enschede, Netherlands (pp. 299 – 314). IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/CSF61375.2024.00020
- Das, R.,Ramanujam, R., & Simon, S. (October 2023). A logical description of priority separable games, Proc Logic, Rationality and Interaction, Jinan, Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS) 14329, 31 – 46. Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978 – 3‑031 – 45558-2_3
- Ghosh, S., Li, L., Liu, F., & Ramanujam, R. (2023). A modal logic for reasoning in distributed games. Antwerp Workshop on Recent ADvances In Concurrency And Logic. (RADICAL). https://sites.google.com/site/radicalconcur/Home?authuser=0
- Ramanujam, R. (2023). Big ideas from logic for mathematics and computing education. In M. Banerjee, A.V. Sreejith (Eds.), Logic and its applications: Vol 13963. ICLA 2023 (pp 79 – 91). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978 – 3‑031 – 26689-8_6
- Liu, M., Padmanabha, A., Ramanujam, R., & Wang, Y. (2022). Generalized bundled fragments for first-order modal logic. In S. Szeider, R. Ganian, & A. Silva (Eds.), 47th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS), 241 (pp. 70:1 – 70:14). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs). Dagstuhl Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2022.70
- Ramanujam, R. (2021). Reasoning about emergence of collective memory. In J.Y. Halpern & A. Perea (Eds.), 18th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, 335 (pp 269 – 280). Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science (EPTCS). https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.335.26