Umakant Kulkarni
Graduate Student
Graduate Research Assistant
Joined department: Spring 2021
Education
I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. I am advised by Prof. Sonia Fahmy at PurNet Lab. Before joining Purdue, I worked as a Software Engineer at Microsoft, with primary focus on software development, architecture designing and building automation infrastructure for Affirmed Networks’ Cloud Native 5G Mobile Core solution. Prior to that, I completed my master’s in Computer Systems Networking & Telecommunications from Northeastern University, Boston, MA USA.
I am on the industry job market this year.
Research: My research focuses on 5G core networks, Wi-Fi networks, and cloud-computing, leveraging learning-based techniques to optimize their performance. Currently, I am working on reinforcement learning (RL) and large language models (LLMs) to enhance 5G cellular network efficiency amd management.
Research Interests: • Cellular Networks • Cloud Computing • Network Security • Wi-Fi Networks • Reinforcement Learning • QoE • LLMs
Selected Publications
Umakant Kulkarni, Khaled Diab, Lianjie Cao, Faraz Ahmed, Shivang Aggarwal, Puneet Sharma, Sonia Fahmy, "Maestro: QoE-Aware Dynamic Resource Allocation in Wi-Fi Networks," Proc. ACM Netw. 3, CoNEXT1, Article 4 (March 2025), 24 pp. [PDF]
Umakant Kulkarni, Sonia Fahmy, "Securing the Cloud-Native 5G Control Plane," In Proceedings of Workshop on Secure FutureG Wireless Communications and Networked Systems (Secure-FutureG), co-located with IEEE MILCOM, 6 pp., October 2024. [PDF]
Umakant Kulkarni, Khaled Diab, Shivang Aggarwal, Lianjie Cao, Faraz Ahmed, Puneet Sharma, Sonia Fahmy, "Understanding the Impact of Wi-Fi Configuration on Volumetric Video Streaming Applications," In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Emerging Multimedia Systems (EMS), 6 pp., September 2023. [PDF]
Umakant Kulkarni, Yufeng Chen, Patrick Melampy, Sonia Fahmy, "Toward QoE-based Routing Path Selection," In Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE 24th International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing (HPSR), pp. 114-119, June 2023 [PDF]
Umakant Kulkarni, Amit Sheoran, Sonia Fahmy, "The Cost of Stateless Network Functions in 5G", In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems 2021 (ANCS '21), 7 pp., December 2021 [PDF]