31 Matt Elliott WORDS Gary Lawson PHOTO What if the cosmos were a computer? If it were, most of us would like to know the code to make us attractive, rich and famous. “Exactly,” laughs Subhash Kak, one of three College of Arts and Sciences faculty members named a Regents Professor in 2010. Kak isn’t your typical computer science instructor. He has written articles on consciousness and the universe, including work debating whether the cosmos is a gigantic computer. His renowned work in cryptography — the study of securing electronic data — and neural networks — a system of circuits acting as nerve cells used in artificial intelligence — has yielded two patents. Kak’s research has been profiled on the Discovery and History television channels, as well as networks in Europe and India. Kak grew up in Srinagar, Kashmir, in India. He has written 12 books on cryptography and further afield subjects such as Indo-Aryan migration, Vedic astronomy (ancient Indians’ study of the stars) and the nature of knowledge, as well as six acclaimed volumes of poetry. His books have been translated into French, Serbian, German, Italian, Korean and Spanish. “You can look at computation in the machine, the hardware, where there are bits of information going back and forth, and you’re using gates that perform logical operations taking you from data to the final result,” Kak says. “Or you can look at it in the brain,” he continues. “Our senses take in data and, somehow, our brain miraculously converts the data into judgments. “Or you can look at computations in the universe. You could say laws are part of the machine transporting the universe from one point to another point,” Kak says. “I would like to work at the deepest levels of these questions.” Kak is head of the computer science department. He came to OSU in 2007 from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He was drawn by the chance to help mold the department and leave a state reeling from the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina. Plus, OSU is the alma mater of the late Ed Roberts, the father of the personal computer. “So this was a position which was very interesting,” Kak says. Kak’s colleague, professor K.M. George, nominated him for the Regents Professor promotion. “As a colleague he’s very easy to get along with,” George says. “As an administrator, he’s very approachable, and he listens to you.” George praises Kak’s work ethic, fundraising and hiring of two faculty members and his efforts to re-establish departmental connections to private organizations and companies. As an instructor, Kak exposes students to the newest and brightest ideas in computer science, such as in his quantum-computing course. The subject is an emerging field examining how different states of matter can expand computing beyond the ones and zeros of standard binary code. “Teaching the course is as fulfilling for me as learning the material is for students,” Kak says. “Because it’s out of the box thinking. You can’t visualize a quantum computer if you’re doing classical Aristotelian logic — this or that. Because in quantum mechanics you have either one or zero happening simultaneously.” Kak’s graduate students describe him as understanding and willing to help when they need it. He has had nearly 20 students writing their theses with him and nearly half of them graduated in May. One of his former students, Abhishek Parakh, followed him to OSU from LSU. Parakh finished his doctorate in May and was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “He goes beyond the textbook material and tells us about cutting-edge research in the field,” Parakh says. “It’s because of his guidance that I have a very good job.” Kak’s coursework is extremely complex, Parakh says. Open to new ideas, Kak encourages his students to adapt to changing technology and learn to write well, useful tendencies if they want to publish as researchers, Parakh says. Kak is the executive editor of the Journal of Cosmology and editor of the Journal of Universal Computer Science. In 2009 he was one of just 15 editors for UNESCO’s ICOMOS project on archaeoastronomy, which examines ancient cultures’ study of the stars, and the keynote speaker at the Astronomy and Civilization Conference in Budapest. In the future he plans to continue his research into data security, cryptography and neural networks, as well as whatever philosophical questions fascinate him. Beyond Ones and Zeros Computer science Regents Professor seeks deeper knowledge. www.sxc.hu COMPOSITE BACKGROUND IMAGES
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