Koustubh Phalak, a doctoral student in computer science and engineering at Penn State, poses for a headshot. Credit: Courtesy of Koustubh Phalak.
Computer science doctoral student named to BITS Global 30 Under 30 list
Jan 13, 2026
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Koustubh Phalak, a doctoral student in the computer science and engineering department at Penn State, has been selected for the Birla Institute of Science and Technology Global 30 Under 30 Award under the Research Leadership category for 2025. The award recognizes emerging leaders worldwide who demonstrate exceptional research impact and leadership potential before the age of 30.
According to BITS Global, Phalak was selected for his contributions to quantum computing research, including work on optimization, error correction and quantum machine learning. He is currently a graduate teaching assistant at Penn State, where since August 2024 he has supported instruction for CMPSC 131: Programming and Computation I: Fundamentals.
Phalak is advised by Swaroop Ghosh, professor of electrical engineering and computer science.
Koustubh has published multiple academic papers in the field of Quantum Machine Learning which tackles the utility of Quantum Neural Networks in the Noisy Intermediate Quantum Scale era. Additionally, he has also worked in Quantum Security to fingerprint quantum hardware accessible via third party cloud services. Overall, during the course of his PhD Koustubh’s works have garnered more than 300 citations.
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