Rajendra Akerkar

Professor

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Rajendra Akerkar is a professor and coordinator of Big Data and Emerging Technologies research at Western Norway Research Institute (Vestlandsforsking). He holds Masters in applied mathematics and doctorate in computer science. His research interests include broadly the development and application of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Semantic Technologies and Applied Machine Learning methods to real-world challenges in emergency management (esp. community resilience, situational awareness, cybersecurity, disaster risk analytics), social cybersecurity (esp. information disorder, information threats, online violence prevention), transport (esp. policy issues, opportunities and barriers in data driven intelligent transportation and mobility) and energy (data analytics for energy optimization, data-driven decision making, etc.). He aims to combine strong theoretical results with high impact practical results. He has made contributions to semantic technologies and intelligent information systems fields. He spent the decade 1996-2006 in artificial intelligence and machine learning related research and teaching in India. His research and teaching experience includes over 30 years in academia spanning different universities in Asia, Europe and North America.
He received the DAAD fellowship (Germany) in 1990 and also received the prestigious BOYSCASTS Young Scientist award of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, in 1997. From 1998 – 2001, he served as the UNESCO-TWAS associate member at Hanoi Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam. He was also DAAD visiting professor at Universität des Saarlandes and University of Bonn, Germany in 2000 and 2007 respectively.
Currently he is serving as an Associate Editor of International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies (IJMSO), Associate Editor of IEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society (OJ-CS) and Knowledge Management Track Editor of Web Intelligence, an international journal. He is a co-organizer/scientific committee member of several workshops and international conferences. He serves or has served on the scientific advisory boards for companies and academic institutions, including the Intelligence Research Institute, San Diego, USA (Think Tank that focuses on Technology, Healthcare, and Security). He coordinated ISO15926 and Semantic Web Technologies Network, supporting data integration and reasoning, that includes Norwegian universities, the major research institutions and representatives from the public sector, the Oil and Gas industry and the Defense industry. He serves on several grant review boards for public agencies, including the European Commission.
His publications include 16 books, 148 research papers, co-edited 2 e-Books and edited 19 volumes of international conferences and workshops. He coordinates several large collaborative research and innovation projects. He is also actively involved in several transnational ICT initiatives for more than 25 years. In 2010, he initiated a worldwide network on Web Intelligence, Mining and Semantics and, in 1997, he founded the Technomathematics Research Foundation in India.

My ORCID.

PREVIOUS AFFILIATIONS

  1. Adjunct professor, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway (2014 -2017)

  2. Visiting Professor of Web Intelligence, University of Jean Monnet – Université de Lyon, France (2013)

  3. Adjunct Professor, International School of Information Management, Mysore, India (2011- 13)

  4. Guest Professor, Department of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Norway (2007 - 2009 )

  5. DAAD Visiting Professor, Informatik III, University of Bonn, Germany ( May - July 2007)

  6. Professor, Computer & Information Science, American University of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia (Affiliated to University of California, USA) (2004-06)

  7. Visiting Professor, Department of Computing Science, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada (July – August 2005)

  8. TWAS-UNESCO Associate Member, Hanoi Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam (1998 – 2001, Three visits, each of three months)

  9. DAAD Guest Professor, Department of Computational Mathematics, Universität des Saarlandes, Germany (March 2000 - June 2000)

  10. Visiting NBHM Researcher, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai (October 1999 - December 1999)

  11. Visiting Professor of Computational Mathematics, Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Norway (April 1998 - June 1998)

  12. Professor & Head, Department of Computer Studies, Chh. Shahu Institute of Business Education & Research, Kolhapur, India (2001 -2007)

  13. Reader (Associate Professor), Department of Computer Studies, Chh. Shahu Institute of Business Education & Research, Kolhapur, India (1996 -2000)

  14. Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Shivaji University (December 1995 - April 1996)

COMMISSIONS OF TRUST IN ACADEMIC, PUBLIC OR PRIVATE ORGANISATIONS

  1. Associate Editor of IEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society (OJ-CS)

  2. Editorial board member, Web Intelligence, an international journal

  3. Associate Editor, International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies (IJMSO)

  4. Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Computer Science and Applications (2004-2020)

  5. Member, IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee for Semantic Computing

  6. Member, IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Intelligent Informatics

  7. Guest editor, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (SI on Multimedia Big Data for Extreme Events), 2018.

  8. Editorial Board Member, International Journal of Bio-inspired Computation.

  9. Advisory Board Member, Swiss Innovation Valley, Switzerland.

  10. Scientific Advisor (Big Data Tech.), Intelligence Research Institute, San Diego.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE

Major R&D Project: 18 International and 23 National (India and Norway)

Funding received from: European Commission (Horizon2020, FP7, COST Action), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), UNESCO, The Research Council of Norway, Department of Science & Tech. (Govt. of India), National Board of Higher Mathematics (Govt. of India).

BOOKS (More complete list of publications)

  1. Big Data in Emergency Management: Exploitation Techniques for Social and Mobile Data. Akerkar, Rajendra (Ed.) Springer International Publishing, DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-48099-8, 2020.

  2. Models of Computation for Big Data, SpringerBriefs in Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing, Springer International, 2018.

  3. Artificial Intelligence for Business, Springerbrief in Business, Springer International, 2018.

  4. Intelligent Techniques for Data Science, Springer International Publishing, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29206-9, 2016. (with Priti Sajja)

  5. Big Data Computing, (Edited) Taylor & Francis Group/CRC Press, ISBN 978‐1‐46‐657837‐1, 2013.

  6. Intelligent Technologies for Web Application, Taylor & Francis, USA, ISBN 9781439871621, 2012. (with Priti Sajja)

  7. Knowledge Based Systems, Jones & Bartlett Publisher (USA), ISBN 9780763776473, 2010. (with Priti Sajja)

  8. Foundations of the Semantic Web, Narosa Publishing House, New Delhi & Alfa Science International, London, ISBN 978‐81‐7319‐985‐1, 2009.

  9. Building an Intelligent Web: Theory & Practice, Jones & Bartlett Publishers (USA), ISBN 9780763741372, 2007. (with Pawan Lingras)

  10. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, (2nd Edition) Prentice Hall of India, ISBN 9788120349971, 2014.

  11. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Prentice Hall of India, ISBN 978‐81‐203‐2864‐8, 2005.

  12. Discrete Mathematics, Pearson Education, Singapore, ISBN 8129701189, 2003. (with Rupali Akerkar)

  13. Non-linear Functional Analysis, Narosa Publishing House, New Delhi, and American Mathematical Society, USA, ISBN 81‐7319‐230‐8, 1999.

TEACHING & TALKS

Since 1995, Prof. Akerkar taught computer science courses at Master and Doctoral level in India, Canada, Armenia, Vietnam and Japan. He regularly participates as a guest lecturer and discussion partner in international events and in public discourse, in particular on a spectrum of topics in the context of intelligent information systems, artificial intelligence, digitalization, data-driven services as well as digital innovation, research and teaching.

RESEARCH SUPERVISION

185 students have successfully completed Masters Projects and 62 students completed Post-graduate Diploma Projects in the field of Software Engineering / Semantic Technologies / Intelligent Information Systems in India and Armenia. 5 PhDs and 8 post-docs have successfully completed under his supervision in the field of big data mining, knowledge representation and reasoning, and natural language understanding.

For invited talks and keynotes, please visit slideshare.

You can connect with Rajendra Akerkar on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter.