Prof. Sankar K. Pal is currently a National Science Chair, SERB-DST, Govt. of India. He is a Distinguished Scientist and former Director of Indian Statistical Institute, a former Distinguished Professor of Indian National Science Academy, and a former Chair Professor of Indian National Academy of Engineering. He worked at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Maryland, College Park in 1986-87; the NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas in 1990-92 & 1994; and in US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC in 2004. Since 1997 he is a Distinguished Visitor of IEEE Computer Society (USA) for the Asia-Pacific Region, and holds several visiting positions in Italy, Poland, Hong Kong and Australian universities.
He founded the Machine Intelligence Unit and the Center for Soft Computing Research: A National Facility in the Institute in Calcutta. He also introduced and promoted the soft computing research & teaching in India.
Prof. Pal was awarded the 1990 S.S. Bhatnagar Prize (which is the most coveted award for a scientist in India), 2013 Padma Shri (one of the highest civilian awards) by the President of India. He has also been bestowed with many other national and international awards such as the Khwarizmi International Award from the President of Iran, 2000-2001; 1993 NASA Tech Brief Award (USA); 2005-06 Indian Science Congress-P.C. Mahalanobis Birth Centenary Gold Medal from the Prime Minister of India for Lifetime Achievement; 2007 Sir J.C. Bose National Fellowship; 2015 DAE Raja Ramanna Fellowship.
His areas of expertise includes Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, Image Processing, Data Mining and Web Intelligence, Soft Computing, Neural Nets, Genetic Algorithms, Fuzzy Sets, Rough Sets, Cognitive Machine and Bioinformatics.