Rama Akkiraju is an Indian-born American
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
. She is vice president of AI for IT at
Nvidia
Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
and performs research in the field of
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
.
Akkiraju started her career at the
T. J. Watson Research Center in New York and later moved to
IBM Almaden Research Center
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...
. She served as the Distinguished Engineer and Director of Engineering at IBM's Watson Division from 2015 to 2019.
Akkiraju was named an
IBM Fellow
An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achie ...
in 2019. She has been an IBM Master Inventor since 2014.
Education
Akkiraju received her MBA at New York University,
Stern School of Business
The New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business (commonly referred to as NYU Stern, The Stern School of Business, or simply Stern) is the business school of New York University, a private research university based in New York City. I ...
in 2004, where she earned a gold metal for highest academic excellence.
She received her M.S. in Computer Science from
Utah State University
Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public land-grant research university in Logan, Utah. It is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. With nearly 20,000 students living on or near campus, USU is Utah's ...
in 1995 and her B.Tech. in Electronics engineering from
JNTU College of Engineering, in Andhra Pradesh, India in 1993.
Professional contributions
Akkiraju served as the President for ISSIP,
a Service Science professional society for 2018, and actively drives AI projects through ISSIP. Akkiraju is the co-chair for the AI Council at CompTIA
industry forum. Akkiraju has served as program committee chair, and program committee member for various academic conferences & journals including those organized by
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
, and
ACM.
While at IBM, Akkiraju led the "People Insights" on the IBM Watson team, developing technologies to infer personalities, emotions, tone, attitudes, and intentions from social media data.
Akkiraju has co-authored over 100 technical papers. Akkiraju has 45+ issued patents and 25+ pending. She is the recipient of 4 best paper awards in AI and Operations Research areas from AAAI and INFORMs.
Akkiraju has delivered many keynote addresses, podcasts
and blog posts on artificial intelligence, bias, AI for IT operations etc.
Awards and honors
* May 2017: Top
20 Women in AI Research, ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
''
* July 2018: A-Team in AI, ''
Fortune
Fortune may refer to:
General
* Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck
* Luck
* Wealth
* Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling
* Fortune, in a fortune cookie
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
''
* December 2019: Top
10 pioneering women in AI and Machine Learning, Enterprise Management 360
* 2020: Athena Award for Executive Leadership,
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
* 2019, 2020: Excellence in Service Innovation Award,
International Society of Service Innovation Professionals
* 2021: Nominee, women in AI Award,
VentureBeat
''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos.
History
The ''VentureBeat'' company was founded in 2006 by Matt Marshall, a ...
Selected publications
*Akkiraju, Rama, Joel Farrell, John A. Miller, Meenakshi Nagarajan, Amit P. Sheth, and Kunal Verma. "Web service semantics-wsdl-s." (2005).
*Doshi, Prashant, Richard Goodwin, Rama Akkiraju, and Kunal Verma. "Dynamic workflow composition: Using markov decision processes." International Journal of Web Services Research (IJWSR) 2, no. 1 (2005): 1–17.
*Akkiraju, Rama, Richard Goodwin, Prashant Doshi, and Sascha Roeder. "A Method for Semantically Enhancing the Service Discovery Capabilities of UDDI." In IIWeb, pp. 87–92. 2003.
*Elmeleegy, Hazem, Anca Ivan, Rama Akkiraju, and Richard Goodwin. "Mashup advisor: A recommendation tool for mashup development." In 2008 IEEE International Conference on Web Services, pp. 337–344. IEEE, 2008.
References
External links
Rama Akkiraju at NVIDIA ResearchNPR article on IBM's work by AkkirajuIBM Tone Analyzer websiteIBM: Humanizing Digital Conversations, by Akkiraju on App Developer Magazine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Akkiraju, Rama
American women computer scientists
American computer scientists
IBM Fellows
IBM Research computer scientists
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Women in computing
IBM employees
IBM people
IBM Women
21st-century American women scientists
21st-century American women educators
21st-century American educators
Utah State University alumni
New York University Stern School of Business alumni