Rajendra
Akerkar
tilsett
Position:
Research Professor
Academic title:
Professor
Telephone:
Employed:
2009

Rajendra Akerkar is a professor and coordinator of Big Data and Emerging Technologies research subgroup at Western Norway Research Institute (Vestlandsforsking). He holds Masters in applied mathematics and doctorate in computer science. His research focuses on application of big data, artificial intelligence, data science and semantic technologies to real-world challenges in transport, emergency management, energy and social cybersecurity. He aims to combine strong theoretical results with high impact practical results. He has made contributions to semantic technologies and intelligent information systems fields. He spent the decade 1996-2006 in artificial intelligence and machine learning related research and teaching in India. His research and teaching experience includes over 30 years in academia spanning different universities in Asia, Europe and North America.
He received the DAAD fellowship (Germany) in 1990 and also received the prestigious BOYSCASTS Young Scientist award from the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, in 1997. From 1998 – 2001, he served as the UNESCO-TWAS associate member at Hanoi Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam. He was also DAAD visiting professor at Universität des Saarlandes and University of Bonn, Germany in 2000 and 2007 respectively.
Currently he is serving as an Associate Editor of International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies (IJMSO), Associate Editor of IEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society (OJ-CS) and Knowledge Management Track Editor of Web Intelligence, an international journal. He serves or has served on the scientific advisory boards for companies and academic institutions, including the Intelligence Research Institute, San Diego, USA (Think Tank that focuses on Technology, Healthcare, and Security). He is a co-organizer/scientific committee member of several workshops and international conferences. He coordinated ISO15926 and Semantic Web Technologies Network, supporting data integration and reasoning, that includes Norwegian universities, the major research institutions and representatives from the public sector, the Oil and Gas industry and the Defense industry. He serves on several grant review boards for public agencies, including the European Commission.
His publications include 16 books, 148 research papers, co-edited 2 e-Books and edited 19 volumes of international conferences and workshops. He has led / directed several large collaborative research and innovation projects. He is also actively involved in several transnational ICT initiatives for more than 25 years. In 2010, he initiated a worldwide network on Web Intelligence, Mining and Semantics.

More information can be found on the subgroup webpages.

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