Prospective Students

🚀 Are you excited by the idea of developing cutting-edge mathematical techniques and computational algorithms that can harness the world’s fastest supercomputers and quantum computers?

⚛️ Do you dream of working on highly interdisciplinary research that pushes the limits of today’s predictive capabilities in ab initio materials design?

💡 Do you want your research to power open-source, exascale-ready scientific software that places India on the global HPC stage?

If yes — the MATRIX Lab (Materials-physics & Algorithmic Techniques Research In eXtreme-computing) at IISc Bangalore in the Department of Compuational and Data Sciences (CDS) is looking for motivated and passionate PhD/Research students for August 2026 term  (Research interviews in May). 🌟

At MATRIX Lab, our research thrives at the crossroads of quantum mechanics, continuum physics, material modelling, numerical linear algebra, HPC and AI for science. In particular, the focus is on developing scalable algorithms, advanced computational methods, machine learning frameworks and exascale-ready codes for accelerating quantum simulations of materials and drive next-generation scientific discovery by attacking novel applications involving complex materials systems. As a part of their work, students will also contribute to massively parallel open-source code DFT-FE, the workhorse behind the 2023 ACM Gordon Bell Prize — the prestigious prize in high-performance computing. 🏆 Additionally, our recent research involves developing quantum computing based algorithms for accelerating scientific computations geared towards quantum-centric supercomputing era.

If you’re someone who are passionate about coding, mathematics, and physics-driven computation — you’ll find yourself at home here. This is an exciting opportunity for students from engineering (non-CS) and science backgrounds to engage in multidisciplinary research at the forefront of computational and data sciences.

🔗 Learn more: https://sites.google.com/view/matrix-lab

📅 Apply by Mar 23, 2026:  https://admissions.iisc.ac.in/

Note:  Undergraduate students (4 year BS/BTech) from centrally funded institutes—including IISc, IITs, IISERs, NITs—do not need to write national tests (e.g., GATE) and are eligible to apply for the direct PhD program at IISc. Please visit  https://admissions.iisc.ac.in/ for more details about the admission procedure.

Internship/project associate positions can be considered on a case-by-case basis (only if a minimum of 1-2years of commitment can be provided). Postdoctoral fellows who can bring in their funding (IOE, C V Raman Fellow, NPDF etc) can be considered if there is a strong match of research interests.