Prasenjit Mitra joins the CMU-Africa faculty

Prasenjit Mitra joins Carnegie Mellon University Africa as a research professor, starting April 1. With an impressive background in artificial intelligence and big data analytics, including applied machine learning, natural language processing and text mining, information retrieval, and visual analytics, Mitra’s hire aligns with the strong tradition of research in the College of Engineering.

He has an extensive track record in research, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award, and esteemed institutions such as the Department of Energy (DoE) and Microsoft Research.

Mitra has published over 200 peer reviewed papers, some of which have been awarded best paper awards, including the Test of Time Award by the IEEE International Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology, the premier publication venue in visual analytics in 2021; in addition, his work has been highly cited (h-index 65, ~15,900 citations).

He was one of the co-founders and the inaugural director of the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence at the Pennsylvania State University, where he was a tenure-line professor from 2003-2024. From 2018-2021, he served as the Associate Dean for Research for the College of Information Sciences and Technology. He has also supervised numerous Ph.D. dissertations. His previous Ph.D. and post-doctoral students have held leading positions in companies such as Google, Alibaba, IBM Research, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Trulia, Yahoo Research, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Baidu. Others have successfully launched big data/AI startups and were in faculty positions at KAIST, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Kansas State University, and the University of North Texas.

Mitra received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University, his M.S. in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin, and his B.Tech.(hons.) in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India.