AI and Society Workshop

Venu Govindaraju, Senior Vice President for Research, Innovation and Economic Development and SUNY Distinguished Professor, is also the founding director of the Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors of Computer Science and Engineering at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. He received his Bachelor’s degree with honors from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1986, and his Ph.D. from SUNY Buffalo in 1992.

A recognized authority in the field of Pattern Recognition, Govindaraju has received peer honors such as the IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements (2015), Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Kharagpur (2014), the IEEE Technical Achievement Award (2010), MIT Global Indus Technovator Award (2004), and fellowships from the major professional societies such as AAAS, ACM, IAPR, IEEE, and the SPIE. He is a member of the National Academy of Inventors (2015).

Govindaraju is credited with major conceptual and practical advances in this area with six books and over 425 refereed publications. He has served on the editorial boards of several premier journals including the most prestigious IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and has been the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Biometrics Council Compendium. Recently he served as the president of the IEEE Biometrics Council positioning it for consideration of a full fledged IEEE Technical Society.

Govindaraju has graduated 37 doctoral students as their major advisor and was recently awarded the University at Buffalo’s “Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award (2017)”. He has given over a hundred invited talks, keynotes, plenaries and seminars, at prestigious venues including influential think tanks such as the Science and Technology Investment committee of the National Academy of Sciences.

Govindaraju has had active and continuous sponsorship from the National Science Foundation for the past 15 years (2002-17) and a career total of nearly $70M of sponsored funding as a Principal or Co-Principal Investigator from several federal and state agencies and industry. His annual research expenditures are consistently over $1.5M, making him a top performer at UB.

Govindaraju is the Chief Research Officer at UB with an annual operating budget of $35M and over 100 staff members reporting to the Office of the Vice President of Research and Economic Development. He sits on the President’s cabinet as well as the Provost’s cabinet and is responsible for managing UB’s research enterprise, including supporting scholarly excellence, creating collaborations, ensuring compliance in a regulatory environment, and oversees programs that contribute to regional job growth and a diversified economy in the Western New York region.

Jeff Grabill stepped into the role of dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest academic unit at UB, on Aug. 1. Prior to coming to UB, Grabill served as deputy vice chancellor for student education at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Before his time at Leeds, Grabill was at Michigan State University for nearly 20 years, serving as a professor and former chair of the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures, and as associate provost for teaching, learning and technology.

A recognized leader in higher education, Grabill brings a strong track record of academic innovation, institutional leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Kemper E. Lewis, PhD, MBA, and dean of UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is a global leader in engineering design, system optimization and advanced manufacturing. Prior to being named dean, Lewis served as chair of UB's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, where he was also the Moog Professor of Innovation.

Lewis is also the director of UB’s Community of Excellence in Sustainable Manufacturing and Advanced Robotic Technologies (SMART), an initiative that harnesses the strengths of faculty across the university to develop advanced manufacturing and design processes including autonomy, intelligence and materials technologies.

He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and has served on the National Academies Panel on Benchmarking the Research Competitiveness of the United States in Mechanical Engineering. He has published over 200 refereed journal articles and conference proceedings and has been principal or co-principal investigator on grants totaling more than $33 million.

Active in the profession, Lewis chaired ASME’s Mechanical Engineering Department Head Executive Committee. He has received numerous awards in recognition of his teaching and research excellence from several professional societies, including ASME, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the American Society for Engineering Education, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Lewis joined UB in 1996. He earned a BS in mechanical engineering and a BA in mathematics from Duke University, his MS and PhD in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech, and an MBA from UB.

Shahedipour-Sandvik joined SUNY System Administration in December of 2020 as provost-in-charge and in May of 2022 was appointed by the Board of Trustees as Senior Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation, and Economic Development. Prior to System Administration, Shahedipour-Sandvik worked at SUNY Polytechnic Institute where she was a professor and interim vice president of research and graduate studies. She will continue her faculty appointment within the nanoscale engineering college.

In the past 17 years, Shahedipour-Sandvik has secured over $12 million in research funding on federal, state, and industry levels, such as the National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, Army Research Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, and the NY State research and technology agencies (NYSTAR), among others.

She has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal papers, serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Electronic Materials, and is actively advising five PhD students, having graduated 10 PhD students previously, and supervised multiple master students and postdoctoral fellows. Her research is centered on physics and technology of photonic and electronic devices for lighting, power conversion, and sensing. Sandvik was appointed the first "Presidential Fellow" with the Research Foundation for SUNY in 2013, SUNY "Provost Fellow" in 2012, and was awarded "NY Governor's 2005 Woman of Excellence" for her professional accomplishment and contribution to the community. She received her Bachelor of Science in physics from Tehran University, and a PhD in solid state physics from the University of Missouri. Prior to joining SUNY Poly, Shahedipour-Sandvik held a postdoctoral fellowship in materials science and engineering and was a research associate in electrical and computer engineering, both at Northwestern University.