About

Dr. Balladichanda Rachith Aiyappa, an All-Rounder Par Excellence. He has been awarded a Doctorate in informatics (Complex Networks and Systems) from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, where he was part of the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. Rachith is a passionate tennis player. He is an Applied Research Scientist at eBay, California.

Family

Father

Balladichanda Rathan Ponappa

Mother

Apparanda Kushy Muthappa

Education

• 2020-2025- Ph.D., Informatics (Complex Networks and Systems) Indiana University Bloomington, USA (His Ph.D research has been published in high-impact ventures such as Science Advances, the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Nature Human Behaviour and the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).
• Dissertation -Title- “Towards Empirically Validated Models of Belief Dynamics,”Combines physics, cognitive science and natural language processing to understand how interactions between beliefs give rise to large-scale societal phenomena such as polarization, consensus formation and stereotypes.
• Master’s thesis at Humboldt University, Berlin, continuing his investigations into emergent behaviors in complex systems. 
• Bachelor’s thesis at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.
• 2014-2019 – M.Sc. (Hons), Physics, BITS – Pilani, India.
• 2014-2019 – B.E.  (Hons.), Mechanical Engineering, BITS -Pilani, India.
• Pre-University – Narayana College, Hyderabad.
• School- St. Joseph’s Central School – Mysuru.

Career

• 2025 – Applied Research Scientist at eBay, California.

Indiana University Bloomington, USA

• 2023 – Associate Instructor, Network Science (Dr. YY Ahn)
• 2022- Associate Instructor, Data Visualization (Dr. YY Ahn)
• 2021- Associate Instructor, Collective Intelligence (Dr. Johan Bollen)
• 2021 Associate Instructor, Performance Analytics, (Dr. Filippo Radicchi)

Ashoka University, Sonepet, India

• 2019- Teaching Fellow, Principles of Science (Dr. Gautam Menon)

BITS-Pilani, India

• 2018 – Assistant Instructor, Non Linear Dynamics and Chaos (Dr. Gaurav Dar)
• 2016- Assistant Instructor, Introduction to Astronomy and Astrophysics (Dr. Tarun Kumar Jha)

Internships

• 2024- eBay, San Jose, USA, Applied Research Intern in the Search & Content Science team
• 2023 – Fitch Group, New York, USA. Data Science & NLP Intern in the Emerging Tech team.

Academic Service

Journal Reviewer

• 2023- Perspectives on Psychological Science

Sports

• 2024 – Men’s Singles Winner, ITA Summer Tennis Circuit (UC Davis, California)
• 2023 – Men’s Singles Winner, ITA Summer Tennis Circuit (Cracked Racquets, Indiana, USA)
• 2028 – Men’s Doubles Winner, Garde Clube de Gaspar Dias Lawn Tennis Open (GSTA)
• 2017, 2018 – Men’s Runner , Garde Clube de Gaspar Dias Lawn Tennis Open (GSTA)
• 2015, 2016 – Men’s Singles winner, the Cidade De Goa Lawn Tennis Open (GSTA)
• 2016 – Men’s Doubles Winner, the Cidade De Goa Open Lawn Tennis (GSTA)

Awards

• 2024 – Institute for Humane Studies Fellowship
• 2023 – Luddy Informatics Excellence Award for Associate Instructorship
• 2022 – MISDOOM: Best Student Extended Abstract 
• 2022 – Aspen Institute Information Disorder Competition: Semi-finalist
• 2021, 22 – NSF-NRT: An interdisciplinary Summer Research Fellowship
• 2019 – Travel Grant for Master Thesis by BITS-IPCD
• 2018 – Charpak Summer Research Internship Scholarship by the Embassy of France in India (He was one of 13 students in India to receive the prestigious Charpak Research Internship Scholarship, which enabled him to pursue research on collective dynamics in biological systems at CNRS and the University of Toulouse, France. 
• 2014-2019 – Merit cum Need Scholarship by BITS-Pilani, India
• 2010 – Clearing the first round of the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) by the Indian Government