Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Big Data and Cloud Computing Challenges: ICBCC 2019, UMKC, Kansas City, USA (Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies)

Vijayakumar Varadarajan is currently a Professor for School of Computing Science and Engineering at VIT University, Chennai, India. He has more than 16 years of experience including industrial and institutional. He also served as a Team Lead in industries like Satyam, Mahindra Satyam, and Tech Mahindra for several years. He has completed Diploma with First-Class Honors. He has completed B.E. CSE and M.B.A. HRD with First Class. He has also completed M.E. CSE with First Rank Award. He has completed his Ph.D. from Anna University in 2012. He has published many articles in national- and international-level journals/conferences/books. He is a reviewer in IEEE Transactions, Inderscience, and Springer Journals. He has initiated a number of international research collaborations with universities in Europe, Australia, Africa, and North America including University of Missouri. He had also initiated joint research collaboration between VIT University and industries including FSS. He received his university-level Best Faculty Award for 2015–2016. He is also a Member of several national and international professional bodies including ISTE, IAENG, and CSTA.

Neelanarayanan Venkataraman received his Master of Science in Computer Science from Madurai Kamaraj University, India, in 1995 and Ph.D. from IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2012. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at VIT University, Chennai, India. Before joining VIT University, he has worked as a Scientist at Centre for Advanced Computing (CDAC), India, and as a Lecturer in Madurai Kamaraj University, India, and its affiliated institutions. His areas of research include distributed computing such as grid and cloud computing, context-aware computing, network management and security, XML-based security technologies, and e-communities. He has initiated a number of international research collaborations with universities in Europe, Australia, and South Korea as a Research Group Coordinatorand Chief Investigator at VIT University. He was instrumental for initiating joint research collaboration between VIT University and industries such as CDAC and DLink. He received the research award in VIT University for the year 2015 for his achievements, exemplary commitment, dedication, and motivation towards research publication during 2015–16.

Dr. Praveen Rao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering at University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). He joined UMKC in 2007 as an Assistant Professor. His research interests are in the areas of data and knowledge management, data science, and health informatics. His research, teaching, and outreach activities have been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), University of Missouri Research Board, Intel Labs, IBM, Amazon Web Services Education Research Grant, Microsoft Azure Research Award, Headquarters CounselingCenter (Kansas), and Kansas City Power and Light (KCP&L). In 2010, he received the IBM Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Award. In 2013, he was one of the 14 professors worldwide to receive the IBM Big Data and Analytics Faculty Award. In 2015 and 2016, he was selected as a fellow in the U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program. In 2015, he spent part of his summer as a visiting researcher at the Xerox Research Center India (XRCI). In the same year, he became a Senior Member of the IEEE. In 2016, he received the prestigious National Research Council (NRC) Research Associateship Award to conduct research at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, NY, for one year.

Janet Light is a Professor and Chair, in the Department of Computer Science & Applied Statistics at UNB (Saint John). Dr. Light joined UNB in 2002 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to a Full Professor in 2012. Her research is focused on wireless networks & mobile computing, ubiquitous computing, sensor networks, network traffic study, and security. In her applied research work, she is studying the effective use of wireless sensor networks for health monitoring and emergency response. She has successfully developed a wireless communication system for the 911 pre-hospital paramedics in New Brunswick, to collect vital patient data from an incident site and send them to a hospital in real time as HL7 clinical messages. She is a Senior IEEE Member, the Vice Chair of the IEEE-NB Section, and currently the IEEE-R7 WIE Chair.