[Colloquium] REMINDER - Today at 1pm: Seminar on Strategic and Data-Driven Decisions and Their Implications for Research in KCBD 10th floor North

[Ninfa Mayorga]

REMINDER:

Seminar on Strategic and Data-Driven Decisions and Their Implications for Research
Speaker: Ramasamy Uthurusamy, former General Director of Emerging Technologies, Information Systems and Services Division of General Motors Corporation
Date: Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Location: Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery (KCBD) 10th Floor North Conference Room

Strategic and Data-Driven Decisions and Their Implications for Research

This presentation will outline many real world strategic and data-driven decisions and explore their implications for research. These anecdotes will illustrate novel research and development that identify new opportunities and provide insight into the right strategies and policies to solve short term and long term challenges and to develop innovative solutions implementing the strategies. Strategy-driven solution development and research-and-data-driven strategy formulation are keys to turn research results into useful applications. The intent of this presentation then is to share personal observations, experiences, and assessment of emerging trends in academic and industrial research and to discuss what should be the appropriate strategic intent that leverages the evolution of science, technology, and research.

Dr. Ramasamy Uthurusamy Bio

Dr. Ramasamy Uthurusamy was General Director of Emerging Technologies, Information Systems and Services Division of General Motors Corporation. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University. Prior to joining GM he was with Exxon Production Research Company where he was involved in applied AI research. He has taught at Purdue University and at the University of Idaho. Currently his research interests and expertise span four major areas: Knowledge Discovery in Databases and Data Mining (KDD); Artificial Intelligence (AI); Knowledge Management; and Advanced Web Technologies.

For about twenty-five years at GM, he was first involved in AI and KDD research and later as a technology management executive. He developed and deployed some of the earliest automotive industry AI and KDD applications for service, sales, design, marketing, manufacturing, engineering, etc. His publication in 1993 on extracting knowledge from GM diagnostic databases was an early research on handling unstructured data.  GM recognized his contributions with its Charles McCuen Special Achievement Award.

His doctoral dissertation in 1979 was one of the earliest applications of AI in Medicine. His research at Exxon and GM in the applications of machine learning and AI lead to the development of new techniques to handle very large data with very large number of dimensions. He collaborated with others in industry and academia with similar needs and co-founded the field of KDD by co-organizing the first KDD Workshop in 1989. He continued this effort by co-organizing and co-chairing successive KDD workshops and conferences. He co-edited the very first book on KDD in 1996 that set standards for the field and is still being used as a text and a reference. His chapter on KDD challenges and future directions in the very first KDD book was a call to researchers and practitioners, some of which still remain as challenges. He co-edited the first special issue on KDD for CACM in 1996 and by invitation co-edited the second special issue on KDD for CACM in 2002. ACM SIGKDD recognized his contributions with its Distinguished Service Award.

He was an elected Director of ACM SIGKDD and a member of SIGKDD Executive Committee.  He has been active in KDD continuously since 1989 and will be 2013 SIGKDD Conference Co-General Chair.  He is a founding Editorial Board member of the first and premier International Journal of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery and Editorial Board member of both AI Magazine and AI Topics.  He is on CS Departmental Advisory Boards at four Universities. He has presented numerous Distinguished Lectures, Keynotes and Invited Talks in the USA, Germany, Australia,India, South Korea, etc., on KDD, AI, Machine Learning, etc.

He was the Secretary-Treasurer of IJCAI from 2002 to 2009; Advisory Board Member of IJCAI-2011 and of IJCAI- 2001; IJCAI-95 Video Chair; IJCAI-89 Local Chair; AAAI-04 Senior Program Committee member; Technical Program Chair of IAAI-99 and IAAI-98; Technical Program Co-Chair of three Indian AI Conferences; Technical Program Cluster Chair of ORSA/TIMS-94; Technical Program Co-Chair of SPIE 1993, etc.  He is a Senior Member of both AAAI and IEEE, and Member of Sigma Xi. He was a 2002 Winter Olympics Torchbearer.

Information: Laboratory for Advanced Computing, 900 E 57th Street KCBD 10146.  Email Cindy Rogowski at cindy.rogowski at uchicago.edu or call 2-9765.


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