Ranjan Sarkar

Ranjan Sarkar

PhD Scholar, Artificial Intelligence

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

I am a PhD Research Scholar in the Department of Artificial Intelligence (DoAI) at IIT Kharagpur, advised by Dr. Prabhat Kumar Mishra. I work at the RHPI Lab (Receding Horizon & Predictive Intelligence Lab). My research focuses on the intersection of Reinforcement Learning, Estimation, and Optimization, with applications in LLMs, Computer Vision, and Robotics.

Recent News

Jul 2026

Preprint is available on arXiv.

Jan 2026

Attended Workshop on AI for Science and Technology 2026 at IIT Kharagpur, supported by IndiaAI.

Dec 2025

Delivered Self-Study Seminar on "An Estimation-Control duality and its extension to unknown distributions" . View Slides  

Jan 2025

Started working as a Research Scholar in RHPI Lab.

Research Interests

Machine Learning

Investigating the theoretical and probabilistic foundations of machine learning models to provide mathematical guarantees.

Reinforcement Learning

Focusing on the intersection of stochastic control and sequential decision-making to guarantee system stability and performance.

Stochastic Optimization

Developing scalable optimization frameworks and estimation techniques to handle high-dimensional uncertainty.

Publications

PreprintarXiv:2607.12135

LQG solution for POMDP without estimating states: A minimum variance approach

July 2026

Ranjan Sarkar, Prabhat K. Mishra

This work presents a minimum variance perspective to solve LQG-style POMDP problems without explicit state estimation.

Paper Code (coming soon)

Teaching Assistantship (TA)

Autumn 2026

AI31201 • Reinforcement Learning

Instructor: Prof. Prabhat Kumar Mishra

View Details 

Autumn 2026

AI60209 • AI for Robot Autonomy

Instructor: Prof. Prabhat Kumar Mishra

View Details 

Spring 2026

AI61006 • AI for Cyber Physical Systems

Instructor: Prof. Prabhat Kumar Mishra

View Details 

Autumn 2025

AI60211 • Algorithmic and Mathematical Foundations for AI

Instructor: Prof. Adway Mitra

View Details 

Background

Education

2025 - Present

PhD in Artificial Intelligence

  IIT Kharagpur

2021 - 2023

M.Sc in Mathematics

  IIT Kharagpur

2018 - 2021

B.Sc in Mathematics

  University of Calcutta

Experience

2025 - Present

Teaching Assistant (TA)

Dept. of Artificial Intelligence, IIT Kharagpur

Assisted with UG and PG courses, including preparing assignments, conducting tutorials.

2023 - 2024

Senior Business Analyst

EXL Service, Gurgaon IN

2022 - 2023

Master's Project Student

Dept. of Mathematics, IIT Kharagpur

Supervisor: Prof. Swanand Khare.

Worked on Application of Tensor Decomposition in Image Compression using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Alternating Least Square (ALS) Algorithm

Seminar / Talks

An Estimation-Control Duality and its extension to unknown distribution

Dec 2025 Dept. of Artificial Intelligence, IIT Kharagpur

AI60211

Algorithmic and Mathematical Foundations for AI

Autumn 2025 • IIT Kharagpur

Course Description

This course introduces the fundamental mathematical concepts of linear algebra, probability, statistics, optimization and sorting, searching, graph algorithms. It's designed for first-year MTech students. As a teaching assistant, my responsibilities included conducting tutorial sessions, holding doubt-clearing sessions for the Maths part. The Algorithm part was assisted by other TAs.

Assignments

Assignment 0:  Introductory Session

July 17, 2025
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Assignment 1:  Group, Ring, Field

July 26, 2025
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Assignment 2:  Vector Space

Aug 4, 2025
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Assignment 3:  Linear Algebra

Aug 14, 2025
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Assignment 4:  Probability Theory

Sept 1, 2025
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Assignment 5:  Optimization

Sept 15, 2025
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Course Details

Instructor: Prof. Adway Mitra

TA:

  • Ranjan Sarkar
  • Sushmita Majee

Syllabus

  • Linear Algebra
  • Probability Theory
  • Optimization
  • Graph Algorithms
  • BFS, DFS

AI61006

Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Physical Systems

Spring 2026 • IIT Kharagpur

Coding Tutorials

Tutorial 1:  Introduction to Python

  Jan 12, 2026 Pankaj Maurya,  Ranjan Sarkar
  • Pandas
  • Numpy
  • Matplotlib
  • Sympy
  • CasADi
  • OpenAI Gym
View →

Tutorial 2:  Q-Learning

 Feb 10, 2026 Ranjan Sarkar
View →

Tutorial 3:  Deep Q-Network (DQN)

 Mar 10, 2026 Ranjan Sarkar
View →

Tutorial 4:  REINFORCE

 Mar 17, 2026 Ankam Solomon Surya Sekhar
View →

Course Details

Instructor: Dr. Prabhat K. Mishra

TA:

  • Ranjan Sarkar
  • Anik Roy
  • Pankaj Maurya
  • Ankam Solomon Surya Sekhar

Timings:
Mon 3-5 PM & Tue 2-4 PM

Syllabus

  • Introduction
  • Acting: RL, Q-Learning, SARSA, Gymnasium
  • Planning: A*, RRT, PRM
  • Sensing: Kalman Filter, Sensor Fusion, CNN, YOLO

AI60209

AI for Robot Autonomy

Autumn 2026 • IIT Kharagpur

Coding Tutorials

Tutorial 1:  Introduction to Python & Gymnasium

 Aug 12, 2026 Satvik Jaiswal,  Subhro Halder,  Ranjan Sarkar
  • Numpy
  • Matplotlib
  • Sympy
  • CasADi
  • OpenAI Gymnasium
View  

Course Details

Instructor: Dr. Prabhat K. Mishra

TA:

  • Ranjan Sarkar
  • Samarth Gupta
  • Satvik Jaiswal
  • Subhro Halder
  • Mohit Mishra
  • Pranjul Shukla
  • Ambalika Raj

Timings:
Wed 2-6 PM

Syllabus

  • Module 1:  Foundation of robotics
  • Module 2:  Introduction to RL
  • Module 3:  Autonomy with RL
  • Module 4:  Autonomy with dynamical systems
  • Module 5:  Introduction to Model Predictive Control
  • Module 6:  Autonomy under constraints

AI31201

Reinforcement Learning

Autumn 2026 • IIT Kharagpur

Coding Tutorials

Tutorial 1:  Introduction to Python & Gymnasium

 Aug 7, 2026 Ranjan Sarkar
  • Numpy
  • Matplotlib
  • Sympy
  • CasADi
  • OpenAI Gymnasium
View  

Tutorial 2:  Q-Learning

 Aug 14, 2026 Samarth Gupta
View  

Course Details

Instructor: Dr. Prabhat K. Mishra

TA:

  • Ranjan Sarkar
  • Samarth Gupta
  • Satvik Jaiswal
  • Subhro Halder
  • Mohit Mishra
  • Pranjul Shukla

Timings:
Thu 3-5 PM & Fri 2-4 PM

Syllabus

Talks

An Estimation-Control Duality and its extension to unknown distributions

Dec 2025 Department of Artificial Intelligence, IIT Kharagpur