Shamkant B. Navathe Distinguished Lecture Series
Shamkant B. Navathe was the first faculty member hired in the College of Computing, which was created in 1990. He taught in the College for 35 years, retiring in 2025.
Navathe built the first database research group in the College. He also co-wrote Fundamentals of Database Systems, published in 1989. The book has has since been published in seven editions and 12 languages, and is still considered the world's leading database textbook.
This lecture series is named in honor of Navathe's 50 years in academia. For these talks, the College of Computing will bring to campus scientists, industrialists, and others working on leading-edge computing research and technology.
Navathe Lecture Details
The Inaugural Shamkant B. Navathe Lecture will take place:
When: Wednesday, January 21, 3 - 4:30 p.m.
Where: 1116 E/W Klaus Advanced Computing
Latest Speaker
Umeshwar Dayal
Chief Scientist and Senior Fellow at Hitachi America, Ltd., R&D Division
Title: Data-Driven Decision Making to Enable
Closed-Loop Industrial Value Chains
Abstract: The prevalent linear industrial model of “take-make-use-dispose” is wasteful and untenable. Increasing demand, strained supply chains, and environmental impact are driving closed-loop practices to keep products and resources in circulation for a long time through long-lasting design, maintenance, and recovery of resources. This talk highlights challenges stemming from a lack of visibility and access to information throughout the product lifecycle and value chain, and lack of data-driven tools. It outlines a multi-disciplinary systems approach that combines a federated, trusted data architecture, AI agents, analytics, simulation, and optimization for decision support; and illustrates the approach with a few real-world examples.
About the Speaker
Umeshwar Dayal is Chief Scientist and Senior Fellow at Hitachi America, Ltd., R&D Division, Santa Clara, California, where he guides research in AI/analytics and big data and leads a research program in Sustainability and the Circular Economy. Earlier, Umesh was HP Fellow and Director of the Information Analytics Lab at Hewlett-Packard Labs; senior researcher at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Cambridge Research Lab; Chief Scientist and Director of Research at Computer Corporation of America; and on the faculty at the University of Texas-Austin.
Umesh received a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, and M.E. and B.E. degrees from the Indian Institute of Science. He is an ACM Fellow, a recipient of the Edgar F. Codd Award from the ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) for fundamental contributions to data management, and a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Science. He has over 250 research publications, holds over 60 patents, and has given over 40 keynote and invited lectures at international conferences and workshops. He has served on the Editorial Boards of several prominent journals and has chaired and served on the Program Committees of numerous international conferences in data and information management, data mining and machine learning.