Engineers Charu Aggarwal, Vijaykrishnan Narayanan Honored with Prestigious IEEE Computer Society Awards

Charu Aggarwal was among the recipients of the recent Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society awards. The Indian American engineer received the 2021 Wallace McDowell Award. (charuaggarwal.net photo)

India-West Staff Reporter

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society recently announces its 2021 award recipients, with two Indian American engineers named among the recipients.

Charu Aggarwal was named the recipient of the 2021 Wallace McDowell Award, while Vijaykrishnan Narayanan was honored with the 2021 Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award.

Aggarwal is a distinguished research staff member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.

He received his undergraduate degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur in 1993 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996.

Aggarwal has published hundreds of papers and patents in data mining, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He has authored nine books, including graduate textbooks in the areas of machine learning, linear algebra, and artificial intelligence, his bio notes.

Due to the commercial value of his patents, he has thrice been designated a ‘Master Inventor’ at IBM. He is a recipient of the IBM Outstanding Innovation Award for his scientific contributions to privacy technology and a recipient of two IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards for his research on data streams and high-dimensional data.

His foundational work on high-dimensional data analysis and outlier ensembles spawned new research areas within data mining. He also made several pioneering contributions to data stream research during its nascent years, long before big data became a technological reality, the bio adds.

Aggarwal has served as the general/program co-chair and associate editor of several top-tier journals and conferences. He was the editor-in-chief of ACM SIGKDD Explorations and is currently the editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data as well as a co-editor-in-chief of ACM Books.

Narayanan is the Robert Noll chair professor of computer science and engineering and electrical engineering at Pennsylvania State University.

Narayanan received his bachelor of engineering in computer science and engineering from Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering, University of Madras, India, in 1993 and his Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of South Florida in 1998.

Narayanan’s research focuses on computer architecture, power-aware systems, embedded vision systems, design using emerging technologies, and design automation.

Narayanan has mentored 110 graduate students to completion and has worked with several undergraduate researchers. He enjoys working in inter-disciplinary teams and is currently funded by the NSF Expeditions in Computing Visual Cortex on Silicon center, DARPA/SRC Center for Brain Inspired Computing, DARPA/SRC CRISP center, the DoE 3DFEM center, and the DoE CSEMII program, the bio notes.

His research has resulted in widely used simulation tools, models, testbeds and prototypes. His prototypes have been demonstrated at the science exhibition at the US Capitol, K-12 science fairs and community events.

Narayanan was elected as a Fellow of IEEE and ACM in recognition of his contributions to power-aware design and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors for the tangible impact of his inventions. Narayanan’s other recognitions include the University of Madras First Rank in Computer Science and Engineering, SVCE Outstanding Alumni Award, NSF CAREER Award, NAGS Geoffrey Marshall Mentoring Award, and PSEAS Premier Research Award, his IEEE bio said.

Each year, the IEEE Computer Society presents its major achievement awards to the brightest professionals and scientists in the field of computer science and computer engineering. Awardees are nominated by their peers for their outstanding discoveries and contributions.