Purna Dutta

Purna

Hi, I am a third-year PhD student in the theoretical computer science group at University of Massachusetts Amherst. I am very fortunate to be advised by Prof. Hung Le and Prof. Andrew McGregor. I work on graph algorithms, streaming algorithms, and have worked on similarity search in large datasets.

I finished BS and MS in Mathematics and Computer Science from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Berhampur. I pursued my MS thesis project in theoretical computer science under the guidance of Prof. Saket Saurabh at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.

Research

  1. NeurIPS
    On Worst-Case Guarantees for Graph-Based Nearest-Neighbor Search
    Majid Daliri, Mohammadreza Daneshvaramoli, Purna Dutta, and 4 more authors
    In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 2026
    Accepted
  2. Vertex-Fault-Tolerant Spanners and Sparsifiers in Dynamic Streams
    Purna Dutta, Hung Le, and Andrew McGregor
    2026
    Under submission

News

Oct 02, 2026 Presented a poster at New England Theory Day.
Sep 24, 2026 One paper accepted at NeurIPS 2026.
Jun 02, 2026 Attended SoCG 2026 at Rutger University, NJ.
Jul 23, 2025 Attended DIMACS Workshop on Hardness of Approximation in P at Rutgers University, NJ.
Jun 06, 2025 Attended Women in Theory at Simons Institute, Berkeley, CA. Check out this fun video
Feb 11, 2025 Received James Kurose Scholarship in Computer Science: awarded as part of donor-funded scholarships by UMass Amherst Computer Science department
Nov 15, 2024 Attended Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry at Tufts University, Medford, MA.

Teaching

Teaching assistant at University of Massachusetts Amherst for:

  • CS 611, graduate course in design and analysis of algorithms (Fall 2025).
  • CS 311, undergraduate course in design and analysis of algorithms (Spring 2025).

Service

Conference reviewing: COCOON 2026.