Shashi Shekhar (scientist)

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Shashi Shekhar is a leading scholar of spatial computing,[1] spatial data science,[2] and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Contributions include scalable roadmap storage methods and algorithms for eco-routing,[3] evacuation route planning,[4] and spatial pattern (e.g., colocation) mining,[5] along with an Encyclopedia of GIS,[6] a Spatial Databases textbook,[7] and a spatial computing book for professionals.[7] Currently, he is serving as a McKnight Distinguished University Professor,[8] a Distinguished University Teaching Professor,[9] ADC Chair and an Associate Director of the College of Science and Engineering Data Science Initiative at the University of Minnesota.

Education[edit]

Shekhar received a B.Tech. in Computer Science from the IIT Kanpur in 1985. He then earned a M.S. in Computer Science (1987), a M.S. in Business Administration (1989) and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (1989) from the University of California, Berkeley. Earlier, he attended the Netarhat Residential School.[10]

Research[edit]

Shekhar is a scholar of spatial computing, spatial data science (e.g., spatial data mining, spatial database) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). A major goal of his research is to understand the structure of big spatial computations underlying societal grand challenges. For example, his early research developed roadmap storage and scalable routing methods, which have revolutionized outdoor navigation paving way for navigation devices and apps, and received the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award[15] which is presented for outstanding and innovative contributions to the fields of computer and information science and engineering or computer technology, usually within the past 10, and not more than 15 years.[11]

In the mid-2000s, his group developed capacity constrained route planners to significantly speed up evacuation route planning to move vulnerable population to safety in the event of natural or man-made disasters.[4] It was invited for presentation in a Congressional breakfast on homeland security[12] and used for homeland security preparations in Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area, where it showed that walking able-bodied the first mile often speeded up evacuation significantly. Besides evacuation routes and schedules, it also identified difficult-to-evacuate areas needing enrichment of transportation networks. The research received the Research Partnership Award (2006)[13] for significant findings that have influenced transportation practice and/or policy. Recently, it was used for shelter allocation in Hajj (Mecca).[14]

In the big data era, Shekhar investigated eco-routing to investigate the potential of spatial big data to recommend eco-routes[3] to reduce emissions and energy use. Recently, it also received the Research Partnership Award (2021)[13] for significant findings influencing Transportation practice and/or policy.

Moreover, he pioneered the research area of spatial data mining via pattern families (e.g., colocation,[5] linear hotspots,[15] significant DBSCAN,[16] Spatial Variability Aware Neural Networks[17]), keynotes, surveys,[2] and community building.

His current research includes exploring spatial data mining methods for climate-smart agriculture and forestry, polar sciences, trajectory mining, etc.

Service[edit]

Shekhar is currently serving as a co-editor in chief of Geo-Informatica journal[18] and general co-chair of the 2023 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining. Earlier, he served on many National Academies' committees, including Geo-targeted Disaster Alerts and Warning, From Maps to Models,[19] Future Workforce for GEOINT, Mapping Sciences, and Priorities for GEOINT Research.[20]

Furthermore, he served as the President of the University Consortium for GIS (UCGIS) leading a call for action to include spatial perspective in data science courses and curricula.[21] Moreover, he served on the Computing Research Association (CRA) board,[22] presented at the 2015 Congressional Reception on Deconstructing Precision Agriculture,[23] and co-chaired the CRA Conference at Snowbird (2022).

Further, he co-organized a NSF Workshop to Identify Interdisciplinary Data Science Approaches and Challenges to Enhance Understanding of Interactions of Food Systems with Energy and Water Systems,[24] and the CCC Workshop on From GPS and Virtual Globes to Spatial Computing.[25] Also, he served on the CRA Computing Community Consortium Council coordinating the initiative to organize Blue Sky Ideas track at conferences to encourage out of box thinking.

In addition, he has served as either a program or a general co-chair for the ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in GIS (2021, 2022), International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases (2011), International Conference on Geographic Information Science (2012), etc.

Awards and honours[edit]

For contributions to geographic information systems (GIS), spatial databases and spatial data mining, Shekhar was elected an IEEE Fellow as well as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow[26][ and received the IEEE Computer Society Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award (2006)[11] as well as the UCGIS Education Award. He was also named a key difference-maker for the field of GIS by a popular GIS textbook.[27]

Within the University of Minnesota, he received the Distinguished McKnight University Professorship (2005),[8] a University Distinguished Teaching Professorship (2014)[9] and a DSI/ADC Chair. He also received the Research Partnership Award (2006, 2021)[13] from University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies and was elected a Fellow of the Institute on Environment (2011).[28]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Shekhar, Shashi; Feiner, Steven K.; Aref, Walid G. (2015-12-21). "Spatial computing". Communications of the ACM. 59 (1): 72–81. doi:10.1145/2756547. ISSN 0001-0782. S2CID 207225788.
  2. ^ a b Xie, Yiqun; Eftelioglu, Emre; Ali, Reem Y.; Tang, Xun; Li, Yan; Doshi, Ruhi; Shekhar, Shashi (December 2017). "Transdisciplinary Foundations of Geospatial Data Science". ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. 6 (12): 395. Bibcode:2017IJGI....6..395X. doi:10.3390/ijgi6120395. hdl:11299/216016. ISSN 2220-9964.
  3. ^ a b Ali, Reem Y.; Gunturi, Venkata M. V.; Shekhar, Shashi (2015-03-10). "Spatial big data for eco-routing services: computational challenges and accomplishments". SIGSPATIAL Special. 6 (2): 19–25. doi:10.1145/2744700.2744703. S2CID 14503732.
  4. ^ a b Shekhar, Shashi; Yang, KwangSoo; Gunturi, Venkata M.V.; Manikonda, Lydia; Oliver, Dev; Zhou, Xun; George, Betsy; Kim, Sangho; Wolff, Jeffrey M.R.; Lu, Qingsong (2012-12-01). "Experiences with evacuation route planning algorithms". International Journal of Geographical Information Science. 26 (12): 2253–2265. Bibcode:2012IJGIS..26.2253S. doi:10.1080/13658816.2012.719624. ISSN 1365-8816. S2CID 1906277.
  5. ^ a b Huang, Y.; Shekhar, S.; Xiong, H. (December 2004). "Discovering colocation patterns from spatial data sets: a general approach". IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. 16 (12): 1472–1485. doi:10.1109/TKDE.2004.90. hdl:11299/215536. ISSN 1558-2191. S2CID 1295137.
  6. ^ Shekhar, Shashi; Xiong, Hui, eds. (2008). Encyclopedia of GIS. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-35973-1. ISBN 978-0-387-30858-6.
  7. ^ a b Shekhar, Shashi; Chawla, Sanjay (2003). Spatial Databases: A Tour. Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-017480-2.
  8. ^ a b "Distinguished McKnight University Professors | Scholars Walk". scholarswalk.umn.edu. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  9. ^ a b "Academy of Distinguished Teachers | Faculty & Academic Affairs". faculty.umn.edu. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  10. ^ "Shashi Shekhar". www-users.cse.umn.edu. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  11. ^ a b "Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award | IEEE Computer Society". 9 April 2018. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  12. ^ stories, A. summary of top; You, The Latest Geospatial Trends Emailed Direct to. "UCGIS Held Congressional Breakfast in Washington D.C." www.directionsmag.com. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  13. ^ a b c "CTS Research Partnership Award Past Recipients | Center for Transportation Studies". www.cts.umn.edu. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  14. ^ Yang, KwangSoo; Shekhar, Apurv Hirsh; Rehman, Faizan Ur; Lahza, Hatim; Basalamah, Saleh; Shekhar, Shashi; Ahmed, Imtiaz; Ghafoor, Arif (September 2015). "Intelligent Shelter Allotment for Emergency Evacuation Planning: A Case Study of Makkah". IEEE Intelligent Systems. 30 (5): 66–76. doi:10.1109/MIS.2015.39. ISSN 1941-1294. S2CID 5967176.
  15. ^ Tang, Xun; Eftelioglu, Emre; Oliver, Dev; Shekhar, Shashi (June 2017). "Significant Linear Hotspot Discovery". IEEE Transactions on Big Data. 3 (2): 140–153. doi:10.1109/TBDATA.2016.2631518. hdl:11299/216001. ISSN 2332-7790. S2CID 22363765.
  16. ^ Xie, Yiqun; Shekhar, Shashi (2019-08-19). "Significant DBSCAN towards Statistically Robust Clustering". Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases. SSTD '19. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 31–40. doi:10.1145/3340964.3340968. ISBN 978-1-4503-6280-1. S2CID 201040956.
  17. ^ Gupta, Jayant; Molnar, Carl; Xie, Yiqun; Knight, Joe; Shekhar, Shashi (2021-11-30). "Spatial Variability Aware Deep Neural Networks (SVANN): A General Approach". ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology. 12 (6): 76:1–76:21. doi:10.1145/3466688. ISSN 2157-6904. S2CID 244786699.
  18. ^ "GeoInformatica". Springer. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  19. ^ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering (2016-10-31). From Maps to Models: Augmenting the Nation's Geospatial Intelligence Capabilities. National Academies Press. ISBN 978-0-309-44994-6.
  20. ^ Council, National Research (2006-03-03). Priorities for GEOINT Research at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. National Academies Press. ISBN 978-0-309-10149-3.
  21. ^ "UCGIS Publishes Statement on Data Science". www.ucgis.org. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  22. ^ "Board Members". CRA. 2015-01-16. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  23. ^ "Capitol Hill Presentation on Deconstructing Precision Agriculture". CRN. 2015-04-01. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  24. ^ "NSF Workshop to Identify Interdisciplinary Data Science Approaches and Challenges to Enhance Understanding of Interactions of Food Systems with Energy and Water Systems » CCC Blog". 2015-10-13. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  25. ^ Shekhar, Shashi; Feiner, Steven; Aref, Walid G. (2015-10-01). "From GPS and virtual globes to spatial computing - 2020". GeoInformatica. 19 (4): 799–832. doi:10.1007/s10707-015-0235-9. ISSN 1573-7624. S2CID 45671019.
  26. ^ "AAAS Honorary Fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)". www.aaas.org. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  27. ^ Longley, Paul A.; Goodchild, Michael F.; Maguire, David J.; Rhind, David W. (2005-04-15). Geographic Information Systems and Science. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-87000-6.
  28. ^ "IonE Fellows". Institute on the Environment. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
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