Brahadeesh Sankarnarayanan

Assistant Professor (Grade II), Department of Mathematics, IIT Jodhpur

I work in combinatorics, with current interests in spectral extremal graph theory, intersection graphs of paths, and combinatorial matrix theory. My past work covers graph coloring on surfaces, intersecting set systems, and the rank of structured matrices arising from tournaments. See the Research and Publications pages for details.

I completed my BS–MS dual degree in mathematics at IISER Bhopal in 2017, and defended my PhD in combinatorics at IIT Bombay in 2024 under the supervision of Niranjan Balachandran. I subsequently held positions as an Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at IIT Bombay (until February 2025) and as a Research Associate at IIT Hyderabad with M. Rajesh Kannan (until September 2025), before joining IIT Jodhpur in September 2025.

• Email
• Google Scholar
• arXiv
• ORCID
• CV (PDF)
• Resources

CAT Lab

The CAT Lab is my research group at IIT Jodhpur, focused on extremal and structural problems in combinatorics. See the Research page for current projects.

Lab members

• Vishnu Kumar — PhD student, enrolled Autumn 2025–26.
• Yash Chawda — PhD student, enrolled Spring 2025–26.

News & Updates

• May 2026

  Launched the new lab website.

• January 2026

  Paper 5-list coloring toroidal 6-regular triangulations in linear time appeared in Discrete Applied Mathematics. [entry]

• September 2025

  Joined the Department of Mathematics at IIT Jodhpur as Assistant Professor.

Working with me

I am happy to hear from prospective postdocs, students, and visitors interested in working in combinatorics. The lab does not currently have funded positions, but I am open to hosting candidates with independent funding — in particular, candidates eligible for the National Postdoctoral Fellowship (NPDF). I do not currently have funding for paid student internships, but I expect to in the future and will update this page when that happens.

I receive a steady volume of generic inquiries that show no engagement with my actual work. To help me distinguish genuine inquiries from these, please include the following in your message:

• A subject line beginning with Postdoc inquiry or Internship inquiry, followed by a one-line description.
• A short paragraph (not just a CV) describing your research interests and recent work.
• A specific paper or research thread of mine that motivated the inquiry, and what you found interesting about it.
• One or two questions or problems — in my area or yours — that you are currently thinking about.