Researchers Journey: Sreedurga Gogulapati

[08/10/2024] This year we celebrate Ada Lovelace Day by looking at the journey of Dr Sreedurga Gogulapati, a Google DeepMind Academic Fellow in the School of Informatics. Sreedurga joined the School in November 2023.

Ada Lovelace Day is an annual event held on the second Tuesday of October to celebrate and raise awareness of the contributions of women to science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields. It is named after mathematician and computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace. It started in 2009 as a "day of blogging" and has since become a multi-national event with conferences.

By: Sreedurga Gogulapati

Computational Social Choice

I am Sreedurga Gogulapati, a Google DeepMind Academic Fellow at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. I primarily work on algorithmic game theory, and more specifically, computational social choice. Briefly speaking, my job is to design algorithms for preference aggregation problems such as participatory budgeting, voting, and matching. When it is in-tractable to propose computationally efficient algorithms, I propose approximation algorithms or results on the fixed parameter tractability. Further, I analyse the computational and axiomatic properties of the proposed algorithms through theoretical bounds and/or experiments.

First step to gain the ‘highest’ teaching position

I hail from Machilipatnam, a town in the southern part of India. I spent my childhood at various places in South India, due to the transferable jobs of my parents. Consequently, I studied in no less than 6-7 schools. Since my childhood, I have always been very fond of math and thoroughly enjoyed solving challenging problems and appearing in exams such as Olympiads. I also used to immensely enjoy teaching my friends and was determined to become a teacher (I asked my mom what the ‘highest’ teacher position would be - and she replied that it is a professor and that I should do a PhD to become a professor). During my tenth standard, one of our relatives suggested that a computer science major entails a lot of math and logic. This prompted me to join in B.Tech. of Computer Science and Engineering, after my twelfth class in 2014. Given the very limited exposure I had to computer throughout my schooling, I had absolutely no idea about programming or anything else that the degree entails.

Towards the PhD at India’s top institution

Shortly into my Bachelors, I fell in love with programming, and all the theoretical subjects of computer science, especially automata theory, databases, data structures, algorithm design and analysis, and computer networks. During this phase, I also took a course on game theory and absolutely enjoyed every bit of it. In addition to the computer science subjects, I also enjoyed courses on discrete math. I graduated from my Bachelors as the gold medallist by topping all the engineering disciplines. My fascination towards CS and math subjects made me want to become like my professors and teach these subjects to students. I was confident that this is indeed my final goal and thus, I submitted a withdrawal request from the campus placements. I prepared for the entrance exam (typically in India, we have an entrance exam followed by PhD interviews) and got a very good rank. I secured a PhD seat at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which is ranked to be the topmost research institute in India. I was also awarded Prime Minister Research Fellowship (PMRF), which was the most prestigious fellowship in India.

Against the odds

Meanwhile, my parents and I received a lot of advice against my PhD, since back in my home country and state, it is relatively common that the girls stop education right after their bachelors or masters and get married soon after. It is deemed undesirable to be more qualified/successful than husband and women are discouraged from PhD since finding a suitable guy could be hard. But thankfully, my parents did not pay any heed to such advice and wholeheartedly encouraged me to pursue whatever I want. In fact, not just this, I am proud to admit that my parents never imposed any kind of gender stereotype upon us or even upon themselves. My sister and I grew up seeing a quite progressive lifestyle, which is rather uncommon within most social classes of India.

Finally, my PhD journey began at IISc under the supervision of Prof. Narahari in 2018.

Getting to grips with research

I got good grades in the coursework, but initially took some time to get the hang of research. My professor suggested me to read a few papers from the ACM EC conference proceedings of the past 2-3 years and I stumbled upon a paper on participatory budgeting which interested me. I slowly identified various gaps in the state-of-art on participatory budgeting and started working towards solutions. After being clueless due to a streak of rejections in my second year, I eventually got a hang of how the research works and finally got several publications at top venues such as IJCAI and AAMAS, some of them being single author works. My supervisor encouraged me to take up internship positions at the University of Amsterdam (under Prof. Ulle Endriss) and the University of Warwick (under Prof. Markus Brill). Meanwhile, just before the last semester of my PhD, I got married and shifted to the UK.

As I was writing my thesis or research papers, my husband has been an extremely supportive partner in every way - physically, mentally, and emotionally. This helped me focus on my work and submit a thesis that received good reviews and appreciation.

Arriving at Edinburgh

Meanwhile, I came across the call from the University of Edinburgh for the Google DeepMind Academic Fellowship, got selected for it, and joined the LFCS group in the school of informatics. Dr Aris Filos-Ratsikas kindly agreed to be a mentor and has been super responsive and attentive to all my needs. I find that the environment at the school is very healthy, fair, and diverse. Everyone I came across made me feel home and very comfortable.

Currently, I am continuing to work on computational social choice but am also slowly expanding to other domains through collaborations, given the wonderful diverse expertise in our school. I have also co-supervised a masters student last semester (along with Dr Aris Filos-Ratsikas) and am supervising a bachelors student in the current academic year.

Gender equality and the importance of a supportive environment

Gender equality and awareness is essential in every facet of life – career, household, family, societal structure, finances, and much more. It helps women feel valued, liberated, and lets them realize their true potential. Every woman is unique - embracing her uniqueness without confining her to stereotypical expectations eventually enriches the family and society. A work environment must be unbiased, encouraging, and empathetic to all the genders, and thankfully our university excels in it. As for the family support, coming from a deeply patriarchal society, I feel incredibly fortunate to have a husband who treats me as an equal, valuing my career, interests, and time just as much as his own. I am keenly aware that the absence of unfair gender-based expectations has been essential to my personal and professional growth. My journey highlights the vital role a supportive, progressive family—especially, parents before marriage and a partner afterwards—plays in fostering gender equality in today’s world. Additionally, I am very fortunate to have loving in-laws and close friends who cheer for and celebrate each of my achievements, making this journey all the more rewarding.