PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Bhargava Rama Chilukuri

Bhargava Rama Chilukuri is a civil engineering researcher whose work applies reinforcement learning and traffic-flow theory to signal control and mixed traffic. He earned degrees at IIT Kharagpur and the University of Utah, worked as a traffic engineer, completed a Georgia Tech PhD on freeway ramp metering, and served as a postdoctoral fellow there. At IIT Madras, he worked on long-corridor control and the Connected Intelligent Urban Transportation Lab, then coauthored a 2021 reinforcement-learning paper on isolated-intersection signals. His traffic-signal research earned a 2022 Best Paper award at the 4th National Conference on RATE, and his later papers study leader-follower behavior and vehicle segregation in mixed traffic. He is an associate professor in the Civil Engineering Department at IIT Madras.

Timeline

  1. 2000–2015

    Degrees and traffic engineering

    He earns a B.Tech. in Civil Engineering at IIT Kharagpur in 2000 and an M.S. in Civil Engineering at the University of Utah in 2004. He works as a traffic engineer for multiple companies from 2002 to 2008, then completes a Civil Engineering PhD at Georgia Tech in 2015 with a dissertation titled “Optimal Ramp Metering of Freeway Corridors.”

  2. 2015–2016

    Postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech

    He serves as a postdoctoral fellow in Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech from 2015 to 2016.

  3. 2017–2026

    Traffic-control projects at IIT Madras

    He studies analytical solutions for optimal control of long corridors under non-linear merging from 2017 to 2019. From 2021 to 2026, he works on IIT Madras’s Connected Intelligent Urban Transportation Lab project.

  4. 2021

    Reinforcement learning for signals

    He coauthors the conference paper “Traffic Signal Control for An Isolated Intersection Using Reinforcement Learning” with Nandan Maiti in 2021.

  5. 2022

    A traffic-signal best paper

    He and coauthors Rashmi Dokuburra and Lelitha Devi Vanajakshi receive the Best Paper award at the 4th National Conference on RATE in 2022 for “Bandwidth Maximization of Split Phase Traffic Signals.”

  6. 2024

    Models for mixed traffic

    In 2024, he and five coauthors propose a joint framework to identify leader-follower pairs and estimate vehicle-following parameters from high-resolution Chennai trajectories in traffic without lane discipline. He also coauthors a 2024 IEEE Access paper with Aathira K. Das that models vehicle-class segregation in mixed-traffic networks, using total system travel time and network crash risk as objectives.

  7. 2025–July 2026

    Vehicle-following methods

    In 2025, he coauthors an adaptive method that uses vehicle-type- and speed-specific desirable gap thresholds and wavelet analysis to identify leader-follower pairs in heterogeneous traffic. In July 2026, he coauthors a study that tests Newell’s car-following model against UAV trajectories from a lane-free Chennai highway and introduces a boundary-corrected method for parameter estimation.

  8. Since 2022

    Associate professor at IIT Madras

    In 2022, he becomes an Associate Professor in the Civil Engineering Department at IIT Madras. He holds that position as of October 2026.

Career

  1. Since 2022IIT MadrasAssociate Professor
  2. 2015–2016Georgia Institute of TechnologyPostdoctoral Fellow in Civil Engineering

Education

  1. 2015Georgia Institute of TechnologyPhD in Civil Engineering
  2. 2004University of UtahM.S.
  3. 2000Indian Institute of Technology KharagpurB.Tech. in Civil Engineering

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Bhargava Rama Chilukuri. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes IIT Madras. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes IIT Madras. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes IIT Madras. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. TR : Department of Civil Engineering-IIT Madras civil.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. TR : Department of Civil Engineering-IIT Madras civil.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Bhargava Rama Chilukuri csauthors.net. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Leader-Follower Identification with Vehicle-Following Calibration for Non-Lane-Based Traffic arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Multi-Class Vehicle Segregation for Enhanced Safety and Efficiency of Mixed Traffic Networks wsai.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Leader-Follower Identification Methodology for Non-Lane Disciplined Heterogeneous Traffic Using Steady State Features arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Temporal Boundaries of Newell’s Car-Following Model: Insights from Lane-Free Traffic arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Bhargava Rama Chilukuri | Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence wsai.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.