Sunil Prabhakar appointment as inaugural director of Purdue’s Integrative Data Science Initiative (IDSI)

To:           Executive Vice Presidents, Chancellors, Vice Presidents, Vice Provosts, Vice Chancellors, Deans, Directors, and Heads of Schools, Divisions, Departments and Offices

From:      Office of the Provost and the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships

Date:        March 23, 2018

Subject:   Sunil Prabhakar appointment as inaugural director of Purdue’s Integrative Data Science Initiative (IDSI)

 

We are pleased to announce that Sunil Prabhakar, professor and head of the department of computer science, has been appointed as the inaugural director of Purdue’s Integrative Data Science Initiative (IDSI) beginning on Monday, March 26.

As many of you know, this initiative has taken shape very quickly after a series of town hall meetings last semester, two working group reports, recommendations, and the appointment of a campus-wide steering committee. The initiative encompasses the entire campus and we determined that a dedicated director was crucial to its success.

Sunil has the leadership skills and respect across the campus to successfully launch this exciting new initiative. He will work closely with the Integrated Data Science Steering Committee (IDSSC) chaired by Patrick Wolfe, Dean of Science, as well as, Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, chief scientist and executive director of Discovery Park, who is coordinating the data science interdisciplinary research, and Jenna Rickus, associate vice provost for teaching and learning and professor of agricultural and biological engineering and biomedical engineering, who is spearheading the educational activities.  

In this position, Sunil will focus on raising our national and international profile in this area, maximizing the impact of our teaching and research initiatives, identifying synergies across the campus and coordination of efforts for maximum impact, securing and allocating resources from public and private sources, and providing a central focus and hub for the University’s many data science activities.

To help manage the transition in Computer Science, Sunil will continue as Department Head until May 8 (the end of this semester), subject to the identification and appointment of an interim head. In the meantime a search committee will be convened and the process of appointing a new head via an open search will begin as soon as possible.

Jay and Suresh