Sangmi Lee Pallickara

Sangmi Lee Pallickara is a Professor of Computer Science and the Clare Booth Luce Professor at Colorado State University. She is affiliated with the Department of Computer Science in the College of Natural Sciences. Her research is supported by major agencies including the National Science Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, ARPA-E, and NIFA, with ongoing projects in AI Institutes, Cyberinfrastructure, and CyberPhysical Systems.

Research Interests: Her work focuses on Big Data systems for scientific applications, including scalable storage, retrieval, metadata management, predictive analytics, and interactive visualization. She applies these to domains such as agriculture, atmospheric science, environmental monitoring, and epidemiology. Her research integrates data science, distributed systems, and deep learning to enable scalable knowledge extraction from high-velocity, voluminous datasets.

Publication Trends: Her recent publications emphasize scalable solutions for geospatial and spatiotemporal data, including efficient storage (e.g., ATLAS), visualization (e.g., Glance, Iris), and deep learning (e.g., Argus, CloudNet). There is a strong focus on real-world applications such as wildfire prediction, satellite data imputation, and precision agriculture, leveraging generative models, embeddings, and ensemble methods.

Scientific Awards:

• NSF CAREER Award
• IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing
• Best Paper Award at IEEE/ACM UCC 2019
• Best Paper Award at IEEE CLUSTER 2019
• Best Paper Award at IEEE/ACM UCC 2014
• Finalist for Best Paper Award at IEEE BDCloud 2018

Advising and Grants: She advises numerous Ph.D. and Master’s students, many of whom have gone on to careers in industry and academia. Her research is funded by the NSF (AI Institutes, CPS), DHS, ARPA-E, NIFA, and the Environmental Defense Fund. She also leads the SWiFT outreach program for K–12 STEM education.

Labs and Teams: She leads a vibrant research group focused on Big Data systems, with students working on distributed storage, deep learning for satellite imagery, spatiotemporal analytics, and interactive visualization. The team collaborates with domain scientists in agriculture, climate, and public health.