PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Manikandan Narayanan

Also known as Mani Narayanan

Manikandan Narayanan is a computer scientist whose work applies causal inference, network algorithms and machine learning to genomic data. He earned a Ph.D. under Richard Karp at the University of California, Berkeley in 2007, worked at Merck Research Labs, and was a research scientist at NIAID, part of the National Institutes of Health, from 2010 to 2017. In 2013, he coauthored a Cell study of gene regulatory networks in late-onset Alzheimer's disease, and in 2018 he joined IIT Madras. MultiCens, a multilayer network centrality method he coauthored, appeared in 2023, and the nonlinear causal discovery method NLCD followed in 2026. He is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at IIT Madras and leads the BIRDS research group.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2001–2007

    Berkeley PhD with Richard Karp

    He earns a B.E. in computer science and engineering from the College of Engineering at Guindy, Anna University in 2001, then an M.S. in 2003 and a Ph.D. in 2007 in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He completes his doctorate under the mentorship of Richard Karp, with an emphasis in computational and genomic biology, and his dissertation is titled Comparative and Evolutionary Analysis of Cellular Pathways. He is a Siebel Scholar in the class of 2003.

  2. 2007–2010

    Research scientist at Merck

    He joins Merck Research Labs as a postdoctoral researcher in 2007 and becomes a senior research scientist, first in Seattle and then in Boston.

  3. 2010–2017

    Staff scientist at NIAID

    From 2010 to 2017, he is a senior research scientist and staff research scientist in the Systems Genomics and Bioinformatics Unit of the Laboratory of Systems Biology at NIAID, part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. In a 2015 seminar, he presents a graph-theoretic algorithm that aligns gene networks from more than 600 human postmortem brain tissues to study dysregulation in two neurodegenerative diseases.

  4. 2013

    Alzheimer's networks in Cell

    In 2013, he is among the authors of a Cell paper that builds gene regulatory networks from 1,647 postmortem brain tissues of late-onset Alzheimer's disease patients and non-demented subjects. The network analysis highlights an immune and microglia-specific module with TYROBP as a key regulator.

  5. 2018

    Joining IIT Madras

    After working at the NIH until December 2017, he joins the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras as an associate professor in 2018. His research interests there are bioinformatics, computational network biology, and systems biology and genomics in health and disease.

  6. 2022–2023

    Word embeddings and MultiCens

    In 2022, he is a coauthor of a Bioinformatics paper on predicting cross-tissue hormone-gene relations using balanced word embeddings. In April 2023, PLOS Computational Biology publishes MultiCens, a multilayer network centrality method he coauthors with Tarun Kumar and Balaraman Ravindran, among others. MultiCens identifies genes that mediate communication between tissues and reveals shifts in gene network architecture among four brain regions in Alzheimer's disease.

  7. July 2026

    NLCD for nonlinear causal discovery

    In July 2026, PLOS Computational Biology publishes NLCD, which he develops with Aravind Easwar to discover nonlinear causal relations among genes from genomics data. The method uses nonlinear regression modeling and conditional feature importance scoring, and on simulated datasets it outperforms CIT, Findr and MRPC at detecting nonlinear relations between two genes.

  8. As of October 2026

    Associate professor at IIT Madras

    He is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras, principal investigator of the Bioinformatics and Integrative Data Science (BIRDS) Group, and a faculty member of the Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI. His research areas include bioinformatics, computational network biology, and systems biology and genomics in health and disease.

Career

  1. Since 2018IIT MadrasAssociate Professor
  2. 2010–2017United States Department of Health and Human ServicesSenior Research Scientist; Staff Research Scientist
  3. 2007–2010Merck & Co.Postdoctoral Researcher; Senior Research Scientist

Education

  1. 2007University of California, BerkeleyPh.D.
  2. 2003University of California, BerkeleyM.S.
  3. 2001Anna UniversityB.E.

From the biography.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes IIT Madras. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

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. Home (News) | Manikandan (Mani) Narayanan's academic website maninarayanan.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Computational Challenges in Network Biology: From Brain Tissues to Single Cells tcs.tifr.res.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Ph.D. Dissertations | EECS at UC Berkeley www2.eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Integrated systems approach identifies genetic nodes and networks in late-onset Alzheimer's disease - PMC pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Welcoming Dr. Manikandan Narayanan to IBSE ibse.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Predicting cross-tissue hormone-gene relations using balanced word embeddings ibse.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. MultiCens: Multilayer network centrality measures to uncover molecular mediators of tissue-tissue communication | PLOS Computational Biology journals.plos.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. NLCD: A method to discover nonlinear causal relations among genes | PLOS Computational Biology journals.plos.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Manikandan Narayanan | Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence wsai.iitm.ac.in. Checked 21 October 2026.