Mullai Thiagu has research interests in the areas of computational thinking, digital  systems, VLSI & Embedded Systems, image Processing and High-Performance Computing. She completed her Undergraduate Programme in Electronics and Communication at the Saranathan College of Engineering, Tiruchirappalli and Post-Graduation at the Government College of Technology, Coimbatore. 

She began her career at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, Sriharikota, as a Scientist/Engineer-SC. She has hands-on experience in the establishment of measurement and instrumentation systems for the S200 solid propellant production facility of the rocket motor. Subsequently, she also worked as a design engineer in the industry, where she was involved in multiple projects aimed towards design, development, and integration cum board-level testing of system level solutions using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Later, she was involved in capacity building at NIELIT, Chennai, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), as a Scientist/Engineer-SC responsible  for establishment of lab infrastructure, curriculum design, conduction of industry-relevant courses, as well as industry and academic collaborations.

Her current doctoral research work at IIT Madras focuses on real-time measurement of an object subjected to deformation by accelerating the computation speed of an image processing algorithm powered by Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).