Rakesh Nagi

Rakesh Nagi is a Professor and Head of the Engineering Systems and Design Pillar at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), where he joined in August 2023. He concurrently holds the Donald Biggar Willett Professorship at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), on leave. His academic leadership includes serving as Department Head of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at UIUC (2013–2019) and as Interim Director of the Illinois Applied Research Institute (2016–2018). Previously, he was Chair of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) from 2006 to 2012.

Education: PhD (1991) and MS (1989) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, with work at the Institute for Systems Research and INRIA, France. BE (1987) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee), India.

Research focuses on Data Science, Machine Learning, Operations Research, GPU-accelerated computing, and military applications. Key areas include Big Graphs, High-level Information Fusion, Production Systems, and Multi-Agent Systems. His work often leverages parallel computing and optimization techniques.

• Recipient of prestigious awards: IISE David F. Baker Award (2022), INFORMS Koopman Award (2021, 2018), and multiple DARPA Graph Challenge recognitions.
• Contributions span over 100 peer-reviewed articles in top journals (e.g., Operations Research, IEEE Transactions) and conferences.

Research projects include Hybrid AI/ML-Optimization for cloud workflows, GPU-accelerated algorithms for multi-target tracking, and interventions against illicit supply chains. Active collaborations with IBM-Illinois and NSF-funded initiatives address strategic resource allocation and network analysis.

Labs/Teams: Leads the Engineering Systems and Design Pillar at SUTD and coordinates interdisciplinary projects at UIUC’s Coordinated Science Laboratory.