Prof. Phani Motamarri 

You can find me in my office at CDS 316                  

Interact with our research group at MATRIX Lab located at CDS 309  and CDS 310              

Email me at phanim@iisc.ac.in.

Find us on Twitter 

Find here my detailed CV

Research Interests:

• Mathematical techniques and hardware-aware algorithms for quantum modelling of materials on emerging computing architectures.

• Quantum modelling of structural and functional materials, Multi-scale modelling methodologies.

• Machine learning frameworks to accelerate materials discovery.

• Quantum computing based algorithms for scientific computations geared towards quantum-centric supercomputing.

• Finite-element methods, Numerical analysis.

• Large-scale scientific software development [One of the lead developers of open source code DFT-FE, massively parallel finite-element code for density functional theory calculations (ACM Gordon Bell Prize 2023, ACM Gordon Bell Prize 2019 Finalist)]

Education: 

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Mechanical Engineering (2014) at University of Michigan Ann Arbor, USA

 (PhD Dissertation Advisor: Prof. Vikram Gavini)

• Master of Engineering (ME) in Mechanical Engineering (2007) at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore India

      (Masters Thesis Advisor: Prof. C. S. Jog)

• Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Mechanical Engineering (2005) at National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), Surathkal, India.

 Research/Professional experience of the PI:

• Associate Professor (Dec 2025 onwards): Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

• Assistant Professor (Dec 2019 - Nov 2025): Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS), Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India

• Research Faculty (Assistant Research Scientist) (Apr 2015  - Nov 2019): Mechanical Engineering., University of Michigan Ann Arbor, USA.

• Affiliate Faculty (Apr 2015 - Nov 2019): Michigan Institute of Computational Discovery and Engg. (MICDE), University of Michigan Ann Arbor, USA.

• Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Sept 2014 - Mar 2015): Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, USA.

• PhD Graduate Student Research Assistant (Sept 2009 - Aug 2014): Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, USA

• Researcher (July 2007 - June 2009): India Science Lab, General Motors Research and Development Center, Bangalore, India

Honors & Awards:

• Professor Priti Shankar Teaching Award 2026 :  IISc Teaching Excellence award, recognising exceptional dedication to teaching.

• Dr A P J Abdul Kalam HPC Award 2025 (Young Researcher Category): Prestigious award recognising outstanding contributions to High Performance Computing (HPC) in India.

• ACM Gordon Bell Prize 2023 (highest honor in high-performance computing applications) : This is the first time since the award’s inception in 1987, a research group from India has been a recipient of this prestigious international accolade as a part of an international team.

• Google India Research Award 2023: One of the eight award recipients from all over India funded by Google to support excellent research in academia. 

• INCITE Award (Jan 2020): US Department of Energy (DOE) Leadership Computing award to solve grand scientific challenges (Role: Co-Principal Investigator).

• Finalist - ACM Gordon Bell Prize Competition (Nov 2019): SC'19 in Nov 2019, Denver Colarado, USA -- One of the lead authors in the Gordon Bell Prize nomination, the prestigious prize in high-performance computing.

• Finalist - Alston S. Householder Fellowship (2016) : Computational and Applied Math Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA.

• Robert J Melosh Medal (Apr 2014):  Best PhD student paper in finite-element methods awarded by International Association of Computational Mechanics (IACM) in collaboration with Duke University, North Carolina, USA.

• Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship (2013-2014): Awarded by the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, for outstanding doctoral students across various disciplines who have achieved PhD candidacy.

• Dwight F. Benton fellowship (2009 -2010): Awarded to incoming PhD students at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA based on prior academic accomplishments.

• Indian Academy of Sciences Summer Research Fellowship (2004): Awarded to few chosen undergraduate students by Indian Academy of Sciences for conducting summer research at prestigious academic institutions in India.

• All India Rank 25 (2004): Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE -- ME) for post-graduate admissions at institutes of higher education in India.

• Certificate of Merit (1999): District rank 1 in Andhra Pradesh State Secondary Certificate exam (SSC-Grade 10);   Invited by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)  for a three-day camp at their labs (NGRI, CCMB and IICT) in Hyderabad for outstanding performance in Grade10-SSC exam in 1999.