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I am Vaishali Surianarayanan, a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz working with Seshadhri Comandur. I will continue as a Toni Massini Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University with Quanquan C. Liu in 2026. I graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) where I was advised by Prof. Daniel Lokshtanov.
I work broadly in theoretical computer science, database theory, and data mining. During my PhD, my research focused on the parameterization and approximability of graph and hypergraph optimization problems. This work uncovered structural insights in problem instances and leveraged small parameters to design theoretically sound algorithms that enable practically scalable solutions. A core part of my research and thesis involved computing and using tree decompositions - a way to decompose a graph into a tree (acyclic graph) like structure. More recently, my research also focuses on designing efficient algorithms for problems arising in data mining and database query optimization. I have contributed to fundamental graph problems such as Min k-Cut, Dominating Set, Bisection, Path & Cycle Packing, and Capacitated Vertex Cover from parameterized and approximation perspectives. In addition, I have designed algorithms addressing fairness and anonymity concerns as well as tackled real-world challenges such as kidney exchange optimization, clustering tabular data and subgraph counting. My research has been published at top theory, AI, and database conferences such as FOCS, SODA, SOSA, ICALP, ESA, IJCAI, PODS, and SIGMOD. In the past, I obtained an Integrated MSc in Theoretical Computer Science from PSG College of Technology, India. During that period, I was fortunate to pursue research under Prof. Venkatesh Raman, and Prof. Saket Saurabh at Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai. I am also passionate about Databases and Distributed Systems and have pursued multiple research and systems & engineering internships in the industry. Beyond research, I love teaching and mentoring. I have taught multiple CS courses at UCSB and mentored both undergraduate and graduate students. I also enjoy fostering community; during my PhD I was an active member of Women in Computer Science and UCSB's graduate student body. Alongside my PhD, I received the UCSB CCUT - Certificate in College and University Teaching; see more about it here. My teaching portfolio can be found below. I am on academic job market this year - The Chancellor’s Postdoc comes with a hiring incentive of $85K/year for 5 years and 20% of the startup package (capped at $150K) to any UC department that hires a Chancellor’s Postdoc, as well as a waiver of open search for the position. 
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News:
May 2026: Invited to VLDB 2027 Review Board
May 2026: Held Spring'26 Mentorship and Teaching Workshop at UCSC April 2026: PPFP Academic Spring Retreat at Lake Arrowhead April 2026: Received UCR FAME Award, will be attending the workshop from April 8-10 and giving a talk. March 2026: Invited for Dagstuhl workshop on Graph Algorithms: Making Theoretical Breakthroughs Practical (Jan 2027). Jan 2026: Received YAM (Young Alumni Award) 2026 at PSG College of Technology. Jan 2026: Presented our 3-coloring circle graphs work at SOSA 2026. Nov 2025: Gave a talk on at TOCA, Stanford in graduating bits. Nov 2025: Gave a talk on relational clustering at Networks for Science Workshop, Berkeley. Berkeley. Oct 2025: Paper on 3-coloring circle graphs accepted to SOSA with best paper award :) Aug 2025: Paper on relational clustering with outliers accepted to PODS. July 2025: Paper on stack and queue layouts accepted to ESA. May 2025: Gave a talk on at Socal DB Day, USC on our SIGMOD work. Feb 2025: Our paper on computing hypertree decompositions in practice accepted at SIGMOD 2025 ( my first database paper :) ) Feb 2025: Fusing Theory and Practice workshop at Brown University. Jan 2025: Gave a talk at Boston University. Jan 2025: At Simons Institute, Berkeley for a workshop. Jan 2025: Attended SODA 2025 and gave a talk on Capacitated d-HS. Dec 2024: Gave a talk at Yale FDS Seminar. Dec 2024: Attended Junior Theorists Workshop at NU & TTIC (talk). Nov 2024: Attended Fairness workshop at NU Ideal Institute. Nov 2024: Attended FOCS 2024 at Chicago and gave a talk. Oct 2024: Attended Dagstuhl workshop on width parameters and gave a talk on our recent SODA paper. Sep 2024: Our Capacitate d-HS paper accepted at SODA 2025 Sep 2024: Visited Robert Ganian at TU Wien Sep 2024: Attended Graph Optimization and Width Parameters workshop (GROW 2024) in Germany and gave a talk. Aug 2024: Attended IJCAI 2024 at Jeju, South Korea and gave a talk. July 2024: Attended DiMACS workshop on Fine Grained Complexity. June 2024: Taught a summer course on Discrete Mathematics as instructor at UCSB. June 2024: Paper on hypertree decompositions accepted at FOCS 2024. June 2024: Attended Extroverted Sublinear Algorithms Workshop, Simons Institute and gave a talk during student presentations. April 2024: Visited IIT Jodhpur, India. ...
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