Abstract:

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.

Short-Biography

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. For the first
twelve years, at GM Research Labs, he worked closely with global GM
Divisions and proactively evangelized, developed and deployed some of the
earliest automotive industry AI applications for service, sales, design,
marketing, manufacturing, engineering, etc. GM recognized his contributions
with its Charles McCuen Special Achievement Award.

His further research in the applications of machine learning and AI led to
the recognition and need for the development of new techniques to handle
very large data with very high dimensionality. He collaborated with others
in industry and academia with similar needs and co-founded the field of data
mining and knowledge discovery (KDD) by co-organizing the first KDD Workshop
in 1989. He continued this effort by co-organizing and co-chairing
successive workshops and conferences on KDD and collaboratively instituted
processes that made the ACM SIGKDD conferences the premier research and
practice forums. ACM SIGKDD recognized his contributions with its
Distinguished Service Award.

For the next thirteen years, as a technology executive, he provided
leadership to Global GM to investigate, select, assess, pilot, and transfer
to business, relevant emerging technologies. He developed, interacted, and
leveraged relevant internal and external contacts in academia, industry,
government, startups, venture capitalists, and other organizations to
develop and deploy emerging technology solutions that made a difference to
GM business. He again advised, guided, and assisted numerous GM groups in
developing earliest automotive industry KDD applications. He initiated the
temporal data mining (TKDD) area by working with internal GM groups and
externally with academia and industry by organizing and co-chairing the
first four TKDD workshops. Research and development of TKDD applications led
to their deployment and use in GM manufacturing. 

He is a Co-Editor of the book on KDD titled "Advances in Knowledge Discovery
and Data Mining" published by MIT/AAAI Press in 1996. He Co-Edited two
special issues for the Communications of ACM on KDD. He has co-edited five
technical conference proceedings. His other publications include internal
and external technical papers, reports, and book chapters.

He is a founding Editorial Board member of the first and premier
International Journal of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.  He is an
Editorial Board member of both AI Magazine and AI Topics.  He is a member of
the Advisory Board of Computer Science and MIS Departments 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 an elected Director of ACM SIGKDD and a member of the SIGKDD
Executive Committee.  After co-chairing KDD-94 he organized the very first
international conference on KDD in 1995 was its Technical Program and
Conference Co-Chair (KDD- 95) and then served as General Chair of KDD-97.
He has been a member of the Organizing and/or Program Committees of all
SIGKDD conferences and was a member of the Technical Program Committees of
the 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining.
He will be the Co-Conference General Chair of the 2013 ACM SIGKDD
Conference.

He was the Secretary-Treasurer of IJCAI (International Joint Conferences on
AI) from 2002 to 2009. He was a member of the Advisory Board of IJCAI-2011
and of IJCAI- 2001.  He was IJCAI-95 Video Chair; IJCAI-89 Local Chair;
AAAI-04 Senior Program Committee member; and the Technical Program Committee
member of the Innovative Applications of AI (IAAI) Conference since the
first IAAI in 1989. He was Technical Program Chair of IAAI-99 and Technical
Program Co-Chair of IAAI-98. He is Technical Program Co-Chair of the 2002,
2000, and 1998 Indian AI Conference on Knowledge Based Computer Systems
(KBCS).  He was a Technical Program Cluster Chair of ORSA/TIMS-94, the 1994
International Conference on Global Manufacturing in the 21st Century, a
Joint meeting of the Operations Research Society of America and The
Institute of Management Sciences, ORSA/TIMS (now INFORMS). He was Technical
Program Co-Chair of SPIE 1993 AI Conference.  He has been a Program
committee member of many other national and international KDD and AI
conferences. He has Co-Chaired two symposiums on Knowledge Management.

He is a Senior Member of AAAI, Senior Member of IEEE, and Member of ACM and
Sigma Xi. He was one of the 2002 Winter Olympics Torchbearers.