Naren Ramakrishnan

Naren Ramakrishnan is the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering at Virginia Tech. His research interests include data science, applied machine learning, forecasting, and urban analytics.

Ramakrishnan founded and directs the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, a university-wide effort at Virginia Tech that brings together researchers from computer science, statistics, mathematics, and electrical and computer engineering to tackle knowledge discovery problems in important areas of national interest, including intelligence analysis, sustainability, and electronic medical records. He also created and directs the Amazon-Virginia Tech Initiative in Efficient and Robust Machine Learning that includes machine learning-focused research projects, doctoral student fellowships, community outreach, and an establishment of a shared advisory board.

Ramakrishnan also created and directs the NSF-sponsored UrbComp (Urban Computing) Ph.D. certificate program that spans eight departments: computer science, electrical and computer engineering, mathematics, statistics, population health sciences, civil and environmental engineering, sociology, and urban affairs and planning. Students in this program study urban computing, i.e., the use of computational and data science techniques to address urban problems. In addition to a novel curriculum, UrbComp partners with regional industries, local city governments, and corporations to offer internships, practicums, data challenges, and hackathons to students across Virginia Tech.

Ramakrishnan’s research has been supported by NSF, DHS, NIH, NEH, IARPA, DARPA, DTRA, ONR, US Army Research Office, US Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Ford, General Motors, General Dynamics, HP Labs, L3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, Mayfair Group, Northrop Grumman, and NEC Labs.

Ramakrishnan has received more than $100M in research funding with over $42M as principal investigator. He has advised 33 PhD students to graduation who now hold positions in academia and industry.