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 General Motors 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.

 

At GM, he led the emerging technologies initiatives in the Global Technology Management Group headed by GM Chief Technology Officer. Currently his research interests and expertise spans four major areas: Knowledge Discovery in Databases and Data Mining (KDD); Artificial Intelligence (AI); Knowledge Management; and Advanced Web Technologies. He assessed, evaluated, piloted, and developed GM specific proof-of-concepts of promising new information technologies as part of his responsibilities. He worked with and leveraged his extensive internal and external contacts in academia, industry, government, and relevant organizations. His professional activities include serving on the editorial board of journals, reviewing technical publications, and serving on conference steering committees. 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 data mining. He is the Secretary-Treasurer of the International Joint Conferences on AI (IJCAI).

 

He received the "Distinguished Service Award" from ACM SIGKDD for his active involvement in KDD from the beginning. He received the Charles McCuen Special Achievement Award from General Motors R&D Center for part of his work in GM-specific applications in these areas. He is a member of the Advisory Board of four University Computer Science and MIS Departments. He was one of the 2002 Winter Olympics Torchbearers.

 

He has co-edited five technical conference proceedings. His other publications include internal and external technical papers, reports, and book chapters. He has presented numerous Distinguished Lectures, Keynote and Invited Talks in the USA, Germany, Australia, India, South Korea, etc., on KDD, AI, Machine Learning, etc. He has been a panelist including panel chairman on many technical conferences and workshops on KDD, AI, etc.

 

He was an elected Director of ACM SIGKDD and a member of the SIGKDD Executive Committee. Specifically for conferences in the area of Data Mining he was the General Chair of KDD-97, Technical Program Co-Chair of KDD- 95 and KDD-94, Member of Organizing and Program Committees of almost all of the KDD conferences; and member of the Technical Program Committee of the 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining.

 

He is the Secretary-Treasurer of the International Joint Conferences on AI (IJCAI). He was a member of the Advisory Board of IJCAI- 2001; 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 every year since 1998 and of 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 AI conferences. He has Co-Chaired two symposiums on Knowledge Management. He is a member of AAAI, IEEE, ACM, and Sigma Xi.