About Me

Biography

Ramki Kannan is the Distinguished Research and Development Staff and Group Leader for the Discrete Algorithms group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His research expertise encompasses distributed machine learning and graph algorithms on HPC platforms and their application to scientific data, with a focus on accelerating scientific discovery by reducing computation times from weeks to seconds. He led Distributed Accelerated Semiring All-Pairs Shortest Path(SNAPSHOT)—a COVID-19 project that was a finalist for the Association for Computing Machinery's Gordon Bell Award in both 2020 and 2022. Under his leadership, Summit achieved third place on the Graph500 benchmark using minimal resources—the first time an Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility system ranked on Graph500. He also led the team that demonstrated 1 ExaFLOPS on a Knowledge Graph AI application for the first time on Frontier, a project recognized with the UT-Battelle Research Accomplishment Award in 2023. Dr. Kannan has secured over $16 million as lead principal investigator and over $19 million are co-principal investigator in research funding from various agencies to address algorithmic challenges on HPC platforms and has served as project lead for over $1 million in Department of Defense projects. He is currently the co-director for the DOE Mathematical Multifaceted Integrated Capability Center (MMICC) Sparsitute. Additionally, along with Professor Anuj Karpatne of Virginia Tech and Professor Vipin Kumar of the University of Minnesota, he authored the book "Knowledge-guided Machine Learning," published in 2022. With over 26 patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, he was recognized as an International Business Machines Corporation Master Inventor. He earned his Ph.D. under the guidance of Professor Haesun Park at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Master of Science in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science under Professor Y. Narahari.

In short, A person with an innovation-first mindset, capable of identifying real-world problems and challenges, approaching solutions with a scientific perspective, collaborating effectively with stakeholders, and delivering impactful products that positively influence the world. This capability stems from a well-rounded background, encompassing 10 years of industry product engineering, 10 years of research experience in a government lab, and 6 years in academia, providing both breadth and depth in interdisciplinary fields.

Professional Experience

Research Interests

Leadership & Recognition

• Deputy Director for the DOE Mathematical Multifaceted Integrated Capability Center (MMICC) Sparsitute
• Awarded over $35M in research funding from various agencies
• Project lead for over $1M in Department of Defense projects
• IBM Master Inventor, 24+ patents issued in USPTO
• Co-author of book "Knowledge-guided Machine Learning" (2022)

Media & News

Education