U of M College

Vipin Kumar

William Norris Professor, Department laptop or computer Science and Engineering

A pc researcher world-famous for his operate in high end computing and scientific data mining, Vipin Kumar has performed a pioneering role in getting “Big Data” and earth science together to deal with among the grand challenges in our occasions: comprehending the impact of human-caused changes on earth and it is atmosphere. In June he grew to become 1 of 3 faculty people elevated to Regents Professors, the greatest faculty rank.

Kumar is applying his knowledge of “Big Data” to document changes towards the global atmosphere from fires, logging, droughts, surges, farming, along with other factors. For instance, data mining abilities he developed are answer to enabling scientists to watch global forest cover, a core necessity if contracts in order to save the world’s forest should be completed.

Information acquired through these studies is anticipated to alter worldwide policy on global warming.

“Preserving forest is among the least expensive methods for addressing the carbon emission problem, ” Kumar states. “And yet, the forests haven't been an element of the carbon buying and selling protocol since the quantifiable understanding about alterations in the forest is crucial before you incorporate them into carbon buying and selling.

“If we are able to monitor forests, we are able to start having to pay nations for protecting forests or planting forests, and providing them credit of these actions which are advantageous for that atmosphere.”

Kumar is leading a 5-year, $ten million project, “Understanding Global Warming, a multi-institution effort funded through the National Science Foundation’s Expeditions in Computing program targeted to pushing the limitations laptop or computer science research.

Calculations produced by Kumar's research group allow quite a number laptop or computer simulation software, including software for vehicle crash testing, to operate effectively on highly parallel supercomputers. The calculations are utilized in several programs, including computer nick design, customer segmentation, social networking analysis, and storing large geographic data sets for efficient access.

Kumar has mentored and advised greater than 80 graduated pupils and coedited and cowritten 11 books, such as the broadly used books Summary of Parallel Computing and Summary of Data Mining. 3 years ago he received the ACM SIGKSS 2012 Innovation Award, the greatest award for technical excellence within the area of understanding discovery and knowledge mining.