Phani Raj Lolakapuri was a PhD student at TIFR. He joined in 2014, a year before I did, and then joined me as a research scholar when I started in 2015. He was a bright student, interested in theoretical research, but also excited by the practical applications. Before TIFR, he was a mathematics student at IISER, Trivandrum.

Phani primarily worked on computational game theory, particularly in computation of equilibria in games on networks. His first paper appeared in the European Symposium on Algorithms, in 2018, and was on computing equilibria in atomic splittable routing games (link). His second paper appeared in the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, and was on computing equilibria in discrete preference games (link). This work was done during an internship at IBM IRL, where he worked on various other problems as well. His team was awarded 2nd place in a Hackathon at IBM.

Besides research, Phani had many other interests. His workspace was always covered in books of all kinds. He also enjoyed talking about research, and participated in science outreach in TIFR as well.

Unfortunately, Phani passed away on October 11th. He is survived by his parents, his brother, and his wife. He is remembered fondly as a smiling, cheerful, intellectual, and friendly colleague by fellow students and faculty, both at TIFR and at IISER.

Phani would send part of his stipend as a student to his mother for meeting household expenses. To make up for the absence of this income, if you'd like to make a financial contribution towards Phani's mother, please click here.

If you'd like to share a memory of Phani, please send me an email, and I will include it here.