AIMI is a research center in Penn State’s Institute of Computational and Data Science, one of seven interdisciplinary research institutes within Penn State’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Research that brings researchers together to develop and apply innovative, high performance computation methods, including AI and ML.
Soundar Kumara
Director of AIMI
AIMI is led by Soundar Kumara, a pioneer in applied AI and ML research. Dr. Kumara is the Allen, E., and Allen, M., Pearce Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State. He obtained his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering Degree from SVUCE Tirupati, M.Tech., from IIT Madras, and Ph.D., in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, USA. He held visiting appointments with Univ. of Tokyo, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, City Univ. of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University, and MIT. His research interests are in sensor-based manufacturing process monitoring, data science, graph analytics and large-scale complex networks, and AI and ML with applications in manufacturing and healthcare.
Dr. Kumara has investigated the use of AI and ML in diverse fields and industries from e-commerce to manufacturing, and from medicine to advanced technologies, such as the Internet-of-things (IOT). He is among the first people to work in AI in manufacturing from the IE discipline.
Over his distinguished career, he has worked on projects funded by NSF, DARPA, ARO, and several industries totaling over $45 Million. He conducted applied modeling and implementations through research projects including for companies such as GM, GE, Ford-New Holland, CNH, and DaiNippon Screen (Kyoto). He has pioneered nonlinear real-time sensor data analysis techniques for manufacturing process monitoring and diagnosis and large-scale sensor networks. In recent times his work with Geisinger Health Systems has resulted in implementations that help intervention on high-risk patients after surgical discharge.
Professor Kumara has nearly 300 publications to his credit and his work has been cited more than 14,000 times. One of his papers which was co-authored with Drs. Reka Albert and Nandini Raghavan in Physical Reviews-E was designated as a milestone paper for 2007 (25 papers were selected, one for each year published in PRE from 1993 till 2018 from among 50,000 publications). This work resulted in the LPA-based Clustering in Large Networks which is a part of many software packages (R, python, i-Graph, and Java).
Dr. Kumara is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE), the International Academy of Production Engineering (CIRP), the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the American Association of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Dr. Kumara is the recipient of several awards including the David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award from the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE), the Research Excellence Award from the ASME Computers & Information Engineering (CIE) division, the Premier Research Award from Penn State Engineering Society, Graduate Faculty Teaching Award, and the Faculty Scholar Medal (the highest research honor) from Penn State. He was designated as one of the twenty most influential academics in Smart Manufacturing by the Society of Manufacturing Engineering (SME) in June 2021; one of the nominators states that ‘due to his early work Dr. Kumara can be called the father of smart manufacturing”. In 2022 Purdue School of Industrial Engineering named him “Outstanding Industrial Engineer,” the departments’ distinguished alum award. In 2024 The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras conferred on him, the Distinguished Alumni Award. His students work with universities and industries such as IBM, GM, Google, Yahoo, CISCO, and Amazon. He worked with the Government of India team in defining the data structures for the Aadhar card for 1.3 billion Indians.
A highly respected teacher and educator, Kumara has advised students who now work in some of the world’s biggest companies and most prestigious academic institutions. Sixty-four Ph.D. and seventy-six M.S. students graduated under his guidance. Kumara’s research expertise can be viewed on Google Scholar. Also, check Dr. Kumara’s recent publications.
Gretta Kellogg
Assistant Director of AIMI
Gretta Kellogg provides strategic vision, operational support, and administrative oversight at the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences for various initiatives including the Center for Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Industry (AIMI). She is program manager with over 15 years of experience in life sciences and IT program management. Her core competencies include developing and maintaining large-scale IT infrastructures and research collaborations, building and leading cross-functional teams, and facilitating industry-sponsored programs and projects at the intersection of various disciplines.
She returned to the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State from Cornell University where she led as the founding Director of Cornell’s Epigenomics Core (EGC) facility, successfully moving a large research lab and re-architecting requisite computational infrastructure to support the DNA High-Throughput Sequencing (HTS), for Cornell labs, New York City hospitals, and national cancer centers. Previously at Penn State, she supported faculty’s research computing initiatives as the ICDS Research Computing Facilitator (ACI-REF). She earned IT project management experience and credentials while supporting enterprise IT in ever-increasing technically skilled roles. As a first-generation American, under-represented minority woman in computing, and parent of a child with a disability, she strongly promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) opportunities for students and colleagues, having successfully mentored several dozen mentees.
Todd Price
Corporate Relations Director for Research, ICDS
Todd Price, the Corporate Relations Director for Research for the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), is best known for his executive leadership skills and information technology expertise. With over 15 years of experience in business development, data analytics, and information technology, he’s bringing innovation and reorganization to the workforce through high-performance computing research while working in artificial intelligence development. His knowledge and diverse experience have helped him provide promising results to the organizations he’s worked for over the years.