Dr. Ramasamy Uthurusamy, General Director of Emerging Technologies, General Motors Corporation 

Prior to joining General Motors, Ramasamy (“Samy”) 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 leads the emerging technologies initiatives in the Global Technology Management Group headed by Fred Killeen, 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 assesses, evaluates, pilots, and develops GM specific proof-of-concepts of promising new information technologies as part of his responsibilities. He works with and leverages 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 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 Co-Editor of the book on KDD titled "Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining" published by MIT/AAAI Press in 1996. He is a Co-Editor of the August 2002 and the November 1996 "Communications of ACM" Special Issue on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. He has also 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 is 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 KDD-89, KDD-91, KDD-93, KDD- 96, KDD-97, KDD-98, KDD-99, KDD-02, and KDD-03; 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 of the 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, and 1989 Innovative Applications of AI (IAAI) Conference. 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. He was one of the 2002 Winter Olympics Torchbearers.