Gautam Das (computer scientist)

Gautam Das
Born	India
Alma mater	IIT Kanpur, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Occupation(s)	Computer scientist, professor
Years active	Before 2004–present
Employer	University of Texas at Arlington
Known for	Database systems research, greedy graph spanners

Gautam Das is a renowned expert in computer science with a focus on database systems research. He has been honored as a Fellow by both the ACM in 2021 and the IEEE in 2020.

Currently, he serves as the Distinguished University Chair Professor in Computer Science and Engineering and holds the role of Associate Dean of Research at the College of Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Additionally, he leads the Database Exploration Laboratory (DBXLAB) at UTA. His professional interests include databases, data mining, computational geometry, and algorithm design.

Biography

Das completed his undergraduate studies in computer science at IIT Kanpur and obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prior to joining UTA in 2004, he gained experience working at Microsoft Research, Compaq, and the University of Memphis.

Research

Initially, Das concentrated on computational geometry and graph algorithms, where he is credited with the discovery of greedy graph spanners. These structures are notable for their efficiency in terms of both lightness and sparsity and continue to have a significant impact on graph spanner research.

His research interests later broadened to encompass Big Data Exploration, involving areas such as data management, analytics, machine learning, and data mining. He played a key role in developing innovative database systems that incorporate keyword search capabilities (for example, DBXplorer) and ranked retrieval methods. His main research themes also include time series mining, approximate query processing, and analytics for deep web data. Presently, his projects focus on applying machine learning to approximate query processing as well as addressing fairness and explainability challenges within data management frameworks.

Das’s contributions have been recognized with numerous accolades including the Communications of ACM Research Highlight (2021), SIGMOD Research Highlight Award (2019), an honorable mention for the SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation Award (2014), and the IEEE ICDE 10-Year Influential Paper Award (2012), among others.

He has contributed as an editorial board member for journals such as ACM TODS and IEEE TKDE, and has taken on leadership positions at major conferences, notably serving as General Chair for ACM SIGMOD/PODS in 2018.

See also

• Geometric spanner
• Greedy geometric spanner