Sankar Kumar Pal (born 1950) is a computer scientist and the president (and former director) of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata.
He pioneered the development of fuzzy set theory, and neuro-fuzzy and rough-fuzzy computing for uncertainty modelling with demonstration in pattern recognition, image processing, machine learning, knowledge-based systems and data mining.
He founded the Machine Intelligence Unit in 1993, and the Center for Soft Computing Research: A National Facility (the first of its kind in the country) in 2004, both at the ISI.
He was awarded Padma Shri in Science and Engineering on 5 April 2013 by the President of India Pranab Mukherjee in recognition of his work in machine intelligence.
Besides, he had been a Distinguished Visitor of IEEE Computer Society (USA) for Asia-Pacific Region since 1997, and held several visiting positions in Australia, Poland, Italy, France, New Zealand, Japan and Hong Kong universities.
Pal joined the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, as a CSIR Senior Research Fellow in 1975, and eventually entered into full professor position in 1987.
His other highly cited original research include: i) Unsupervised dimensionality reduction algorithm (in early 2000s) producing maximally independent features, that results in fast and superior performance and is suitable for Big data, ii) Granular computing concept and decision-making models (introduced since early 2000s) particularly when samples are indiscernible, where computations are performed using information granules rather than individual samples; thereby providing gain in both performance and computation time in mining tasks including deep learning, and iii) Z*-number, developed in mid 2010s, for machine subjectivity representation in machine-mind development by encapsulating the objective and subjective time, context, and affect components in natural language of thoughts, speech, and texts.
Pal is widely recognized across the world for his pioneering and exemplary contributions in machine intelligence, fuzzy neural network, soft computing and pattern recognition.
His book "Fuzzy Mathematical Approach to Pattern Recognition", John Wiley and Sons (Halsted Press), N.Y., 1986 had been translated into Indonesian Bahasa and Chinese Languages.
For his outstanding contributions, the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, established under his leadership the Center for Soft Computing Research (CSCR), first in Asia, in 2004 at ISI, Kolkata.
Machine Intelligence Unit (MIU) founded by him in 1993 at ISI, Kolkata has now turned out to be an internationally recognized leading research school producing many science leaders.
Mahalanobis, the founder of ISI, was declared by the Prime Minister of India on 24 Dec 2006, as the “National Statistics Day” to be celebrated every year over the country.
This facilitates regular interaction among Indian researchers with international experts in AI, ML and related areas for advancing science & technology.
All these activities, including foundation of MIU & CSCR and visionary leadership as ISI-Director, have long lasting educational and societal impact.
King (PhD supervisor at Imperial College, London), Dr. Robert N. Lea (advisor at NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston), Prof. Lotfi A. Zadeh (Founder of fuzzy logic at University of California, Berkeley), Prof. Azriel Rosenfeld (advisor at University of Maryland, College Park), Prof. Jayanta K. Ghosh (Ex-Director, ISI), Prof. Suhash Chandra Dutta Roy (IIT Delhi), Prof. B.L.
Mahalanobis Birth Centenary Gold Medal of Indian Science Congress Association from Prime Minister of India for Lifetime Achievement - 2006 Distinguished Alumnus of the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta - 2007 J.C. Bose Fellowship of the Government of India - 2008 Vigyan Ratna Award from Science & Culture Organization - 2010 P.C.
Currently, he is the 14th President of Indian Statistical Institute and a Vice-President of the International Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance (AIIA), Hong Kong.