1977/MT/IM Allen E., and Allen, M., Pearce Professor, The Pennsylvania State University
Prof. Soundar Kumara is a highly distinguished academician who has made significant contributions to the field of smart manufacturing, network science and industrial engineering research. Prof. Kumara is currently the Allen E. Pearce and Allen M. Pearce Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State, and the Director of the Centre for the Applications of AI & ML to Industry (AIMI), Penn State. His areas of specialisation include AI and machine learning in manufacturing and healthcare, sensor based monitoring, and complex systems. During 2022 SME named him as an outstanding faculty member in Smart Manufacturing with the nominators calling him as the “Father of Smart Manufacturing,” due to his early pioneering work.
Along with co-founding Artificial Neural Networks in Engineering in 1991, Prof. Kumara has also been a part of the editorial board of several journals such as International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, CIRP Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Systems, ASTM Journal of Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing, and many more. In 2009, he worked with the Government of India’s Aadhaar Card Team to develop the data structures for implementation. He has contributed to advanced manufacturing, and military logistics through several DARPA projects. He has advised 69 Ph.D., and 80 MS students during his career so far.
Prof. Kumara’s academic credentials include Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Production Engineering from S.V.U College of Engineering, Tirupati, M.Tech. in Industrial Engineering from IIT Madras, followed by a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
He has pioneered path-breaking research in the fields of AI, ML and non-linear dynamics as well as cyber physical systems and cloud-based manufacturing research. He has also developed the widely used Label Propagation Algorithm for Graph Clustering. His stellar contribution to the field of scientific innovation as well as teaching has been acknowledged through various awards incuding the PSU Faculty Scholar Medal, the PSES Premier Research Award, Penn State Engineering Society Best Advisor Award, and IISE Baker Distinguished Research Award. He was recognized by the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University as its Distinguished Alumnus in 2022.
For his achievements and contributions towards scientific innovation, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and its alumni are proud to confer Prof. Soundar Kumara with the Distinguished Alumni Award for the year 2024.
