Administrative Experience and Major Service Roles

Professional

Lead Program Director, National Science Foundation (Feb 2015 - June 2019): I am leading the Oﬃce of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC - formerly ACI) Learning and Workforce Development cross-cutting programs in coalescing its emerging research and education programs such as CAREER, CRII, REU sites, NRT and STEM+C around user-inspired, multidisciplinary research agenda, and helping develop new programs based on multidisciplinary community needs and national priorities such as National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) Presidential Executive Order, July 2015, Brain initiative, and Smart Cities initiative. OAC’s research program is in formative stage with recent transition from independent OCI to ACI division to semi-independent OAC oﬃce within the CISE directorate. The overall research focus is in use-inspired or applied multi-disciplinary research relevant to Advanced Cyberinfrastructures, including software, data, network, security, education and policies. With renewed focus and dissemination eﬀorts, we have had twice as many proposals for CAREER, CRII and REU site programs in 2016, and thrice as many CAREER proposals in 2017. I have formulated a new solicitation - Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining). The overarching goal of this new program is to prepare, nurture and grow the national scientiﬁc workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) that enables cutting-edge science and engineering and contributes to the Nation’s overall economic competitiveness and security. Giving a new direction to OAC, In 2017-18, I have led the formulation of a new solicitation for the OAC core research to enable advancements in translational research and education activities in all aspects of advanced cyberinfrastructure that lead to deployable, scalable, and sustainable systems capable of transforming science and engineering research. Areas of translational research supported by OAC include systems architecture and middleware for extreme-scale systems, scalable algorithms and applications, and the advanced CI ecosystem.

Elected Chair IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP) (07-11): Revitalized this Technical Committee; which is one of its largest one with over 10,000 members, sponsoring about a dozen conferences. Initiated a number of new activities to promote active graduate student participation in TCPP and its dozen-strong sponsored conferences, including its ﬂagship IPDPS conference. These include PhD Forum, students travel award assistance (through NSF and TCPP grants), Outstanding service awards, and a new workshop on reconﬁgurable computing. 2009 initiatives include Curriculum Standards activities, NSF/TCPP EduPar workshop series at IPDPS. The sponsored conferences include IPDPS, HiPC, PerComm, DS-RT, ICPADS, etc. Details are at http://tcpp.computer.org.
The net result has been a revitalized TC, with its second leg (education) ﬁrmly established within the community, well recognized and funded by NSF and the stake-holder industry partners. For example, EduPar workshop series focusing on undergraduate education is the ﬁrst such workshop at the ﬂagship TCPP research conference, IPDPS, now in its seventh edition, and the EduHPC workshop series is the ﬁrst such workshop at the ACM/IEEE’s Supercomputing conference (held four times at SC-2013-16).

PI, NSF-supported IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative on Parallel and Dist. Computing (2010 -): Founded this initiative, mobilized the large Parallel Processing community, organized and coordinated a working group composed of researchers from academia, government, and industry to formulate a core curricular guidelines on parallel and distributed computing (PDC). The goal of this eﬀort is to ensure that all students graduating with a bachelors degree in computer science/computer engineering receive an education that prepares them in the area of parallel and distributed computing, preparation which is increasingly important in the light of emerging technology. About 130 early-adopter institutions worldwide are currently trying out this curriculum. The early adopters have been awarded stipends through ﬁve rounds of competitions with support from NSF, Intel, and NVIDIA. A Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources (CDER) is being established to carry the work forward; much of the work in the Center is possible due to a new $1.4M NSF grant. Details are at curriculum site http://www.cs.gsu.edu//∼tcpp/curriculum/index.php.

Our initiative has contributed substantially to the ACM/IEEE CS2013 Computer Science Curriculum Task force efforts in its Parallel and Distributed Computing thrust, with a direct link to our curriculum website for comprehensive coverage of PDC topics from their ﬁnal document released in Spring 2014.

Early Adopter Institutions: 130 early adopters (nationally and internationally, 3:2 ratio) are using the curricular guidelines; selected via competitions held Spring-11,12 and Fall-2011-15
Associated Workshops: Prasad initiated and chaired three workshop series (2011-19) focusing on undergraduate education: EduPar at IPDPS, and EduHPC at ACM/IEEE Supercomputing. These were the ﬁrst regular education-oriented workshops at these venues. Initiated Euro-EduPar at EuroPar-2015, now into its 4th year, and most recently, EduHiPC at HiPC-18 in India.
Panel/BoF Coordinator: SIGCSE-11,14,18; EduHPC-2013-15, SC-12,11; HiPC-12,10; EduPar-2011-17.
Related Keynote/Invited Talks: Euro-EduPar-17; NSF CyberBridges-16; NSF CyberBridges-14; South Carolina Regional Cyberinfrastructure Symposium-13; SC-12; CASC-12,-15.

Departmental

Chair, UTSA Computer Science Department (Aug 2019-July 2022): Since joining UTSA in Fall19, a Hispanic Serving Institution at the undergraduate level which just achieved its R1 status, I have led a graduate student funding taskforce, identifying inhibiting factors such as uneven support for health insurance for PhD students, and rallied all stakeholders on agreeing to set a mission to transform UTSA into a powerhouse Hispanic PhD producing institution. The CS department I led has successfully conducted its Academic Program Review in 2020-21 with stellar external reviewers including Jim Kurose (former NSF CISE Assistant Director, UMass), Eileen Kraemer (Clemson), and Sartaj Sahni (U Florida). Among the areas of excellence, the reviewers commended the departments research enterprise and faculty productivity as a significant strength, citing annual external funding expenditures in 75th percentile per Taulbee Survey ($195K/faculty), an annual PhD production rate almost twice the national median, and 9 home-grown NSF CAREER awardees, the last 2 during my tenure. Toward achieving R1 status, the department was one of the top 5 chosen for external review in Fall’21 to win National Research University Funds which led to $6M/yr funding for UTSA in state funds. We have successfully concluded the NRUF review in Fall21, again with national leaders in CS reviewing, and are delighted with an excellent outcome. I effectively steered the CS department through COVID-induced budget and staff reduction, and seamlessly transitioned to online instruction multiple times. Over last 3 years, our undergraduate enrollment has grown 22%, with one year retention rate rising from 75% for Fall18 batch to 95% for Fall20 batch, four-year graduation rate rising from 21% for Fall15 cohort to 31% for Fall17, and six-year rising from 48% for Fall13 cohort to 51% for Fall15.

Founding Director of Graduate Studies, Computer Science Dept., GSU: Worked hard throughout my tenure at GSU to push research into the agenda of CS program in general and that of parallel/distributed high performance computing research in particular, with a keen eye on obtaining a Ph.D. program in CS. Toward this goal, I initiated thesis-only M.S. program to demonstrate a solid activity in research involving faculty and students to the college and university, worked toward Ph.D. proposal, prepared and obtained faculty approval on the new Ph.D. degree requirement as department’s ﬁrst Director of Graduate Studies, and procured high performance computing infrastructure.

In 1998, I developed a 72-hour curriculum for the Ph.D. program in computer science including its examinations, admission requirements, and over 20 new courses at 8000 and 9000 level. Also, I revamped the degree and admission requirements for M.S. in computer science and developed and installed a web site for graduate program in computer science with online request and download facility for application material.

As a result, National Research Council ranked our PhD program in the top 40-80 in 2010 – a remarkable feat for a 10-year old program.

College Ad Hoc Committee for Faculty Selection in Newly-Created Dept. of Computer Science (1998). A high-powered committee that deﬁned the criteria for deﬁning memberships to the newly-created department as it split from earlier Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science, and reviewed faculty credentials to create initial set of faculty members in the CS dept (other members included Associate Dean Boykin and Prof. Nelson, Ex-Chair of Physics and Astronomy).

Ad Hoc Committee for Developing P&T Manual for Computer Science. (1998 - 99): Took lead role in deﬁning the criteria for professional development category, and participated in deﬁning the criteria for instruction and service categories.

Chair, Ad Hoc Committee on Changing Credit Hours (1999 - 00): Proposed, revised, and obtained faculty approval on changing all senior and graduate courses to four hours, and on the new B.S. program based on concentrations, and the new M.S. program. This work resulted while serving on the department and college curriculum committees and has helped reduce course load for students and number of courses taught by faculty as we went through semester conversion.

Director, GSU-GEDC Distributed and Mobile Systems Research (DiMoS) Laboratory (2000 - 2019): As P.I. of the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC - formerly Yamacraw) Embedded Software Research Contracts (2000-04), led a GSU team of seven faculty and over dozen and a half Ph.D./M.S. students, with active collaboration of three Georgia Tech faculty and their students. It had resulted in about 6,000 Square Feet of research space in the Technology Square Research Building on Georgia Tech campus with a 800 SF of software/hardware laboratory space (housing Distributed and Mobile Systems Laboratory (DiMoS)), and oﬃces for seven faculty members and their students, and numerous workstations, handheld devices, and other equipments. Five utility patent applications and over two dozen provisional patent ﬁlings have resulted, in addition to several publications and work on theses and dissertations. The average research spending was over $200K/yr with total funding of about $1M.

Direct the Core Facility on High Performance Computing (1996 - 2019): currently consisting of (i) an Origin -2000 with 24-CPU, 4G main memory, and 200GB hard-drive, and (ii) an Inﬁniband interconnect based 300+-core cluster with up to 64-cores CPU and GPU compute nodes (nVidia 485 and Tesla c2075, K-20s, FPGA, Intel Phi).‘ Directed the software and hardware upgrades, maintenance, and operations in conjunction with Chair, System Administrator, and the faculty at large from CS, Biology, and Chemistry departments. Activities included acquisition of 8-CPU Silicon graphics ‘SGI1’ from computing center under my direct initiative in 1996, and its subsequent replacement by a 16-CPU Origin-2000 high performance computer in 1999 and then its extension by another eight CPUs in 2000, representing a total investment of $308K on the part of the college and the university. The linux cluster has been upgraded in 2012 using my NSF funds, and is being upgraded in 2013 through GSU Tech-Fee funds.
Also participated in a successful proposal process to Georgia Research Alliance to procure funding for an 80-CPU Myrinet-based Linux cluster - conﬁgured and negotiated with several vendors and obtained bids.

Executive Committee, Dept. of Computer Science (2012 - 15) Faculty raise recommendations and advising Chair.

Chair, Committee for Ph.D. Qualiﬁer Examinations in Algorithms Area (2000 - 11) for setting up syllabus, preparing the qualiﬁer exam, and grading papers in spring and in fall. Also, served on the corresponding Committee for Automata area (2000 - 03).

Chair, Honors and Awards Committee, Dept. of Computer Science (2007 - 14) Instituted new undergraduate and graduate awards.

Chair, Industrial Advisory Committee, Dept. of Computer Science (2012 - 14) Setting this up with an eye toward ABET accreditation.

College and University Level

Chair, Graduate School subcommittee on Graduate Student Funding Model: To provide guidelines on UTSA funding allocation for graduate programs. Helped institute health insurance for PhD students across UTSA.
School of Data Science Search Committee:Successfully hired Dr. David Mongeau
Member, University Senate - Planning and Development Committee, Georgia State University (2013-15)
Member, University Senate - Commencement Committee, Georgia State University (2013-14)
Member, University Senate - Research Committee, Georgia State University (2013-14)
Member, University Ad-Hoc Committee for Administrator Review Criteria, GSU (2014-15): GSU has a new President and Provost. We are revamping the periodic review documents that Chairs, Deans and Vice Presidents are required to submit, and revisiting the periodicity and other policy aspects of the review process.
Member, Senate P&D Ad-Hoc Sub-Committee for New University Mission Statement (2015): We planned for the merger of Georgia Perimeter College into Georgia State University.
Executive Committee, College of Arts and Science (2014 - 15) Review of College P&T manuals, Institute/Center proposals, budget and advisement to College Dean.
College Bylaws Committee Chair (2004-05; 2008 - 09; 2009-10) Member (2003-05; 2007 - 08; 2010 - ): Revamped the bylaws working with the Dean’s Oﬃce, with focus on college committee structure.
College Graduate Council (2000 - 02) Was elected to the at-large position in 2000, nominated by Chair of Physics and Astronomy, Prof. Nelson. I brought my experiences as the Graduate Director of CS, and have actively participated in all deliberations and contributed to key issues.
Chair Evaluation Committee (2002, 2011): Prof. Fraser, Chair of Computer Science (triennial review); For current chair, Prof. Yi Pan (triennial review); College of Arts & Sciences.
GSU Internal Grants Programs Peer Review Committee (2000 - 01): This was the unique ﬁrst-time committee organized by VP for Research to review all the proposals submitted through a number of programs that provide ﬁnancial support for faculty research, scholarships, and artistry.
College Curriculum Committee (1998 - 2000): Evaluated over 100 course proposals in each spring.