Ram Uthursamy speaks on "A Prolegomenon to Search Technologies" Feb 9th Thursday, 10-11

[Subbarao Kambhampati <rao@asu.edu>]

Computer Science & Engineering
Distinguished Lecture Series

Ramaswamy Uthurusamy
General Director of Emerging Technologies
Information Systems and Services Division of General Motors Corporation
 

?A Prolegomenon to Search Technologies?
Date: Feb 9, Thursday, 2006
Time: 10:00 - 11:00am
Place: BY 210
 
Abstract

While "Email" has been widely regarded as the killer
application of the Internet, it is "Search" that has become the
killer app of the Web.  This prolegomenon explores the Search
landscape and provides some specifics on the state of the art. Since
there does not exist a single search engine that satisfies the needs of
all users, features of a representative set of search engines will be
presented. The discussion will address the following set of issues and
questions: guidelines for what search engines are appropriate for
different types of searches; the speed, relevancy, and the importance of
various styles of presentation of the search results; appropriateness of
various resources; enterprise search versus desktop search versus
personal search; role-based,location-based, and topic-based searches;
querying and finding what one is searching for versus discovering things
that matter; implications of emerging technologies like AJAX, Mashups,
and Folksonomies to make search better; etc.  Finally, the evolution
of the search technologies and the trend in the commercial sector as well
as current research activities in academia, industrial and government
laboratories will be outlined.

Bio

Ramasamy Uthurusamy is currently General Director of Emerging
Technologies, Information Systems and Services Division of General Motors
Corporation. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University. Prior to
joining General Motors he 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 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 Co-Edited two
special issues for the Communications of ACM on data mining. He is
 
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 member of AAAI, IEEE, ACM, and Sigma Xi. He was one of the 2002
Winter Olympics Torchbearers.