Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Writer: Philip Lee Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu
Contact: Amit Sheth, 706/542-2310, http://lsdis.cs.uga.edu/~amit

UGA computer science professor Amit Sheth named fellow by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Athens, Ga. – Amit Sheth, a professor of computer science at the University of Georgia, has been named a Fellow by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

With a global membership, the IEEE is a leading authority on areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. The group has more than 365,000 members in some 150 countries.

The IEEE grade of Fellow is conferred by the board of directors on a person with an “extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest.” A brief citation is issued to new Fellows describing their accomplishments. The total number selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth of the total voting institute membership.

Sheth was honored for his contributions to information integration and workflow management.

“This is indeed a very prestigious achievement,” said Krzysztof Kochut, head of the department of computer science.

Sheth joined the University of Georgia and started the Large Scale Distributed Information Systems (LSDIS) lab in 1994 with the help of John Miller and Kochut. LSDIS lab is one of the largest research labs in the areas of Semantic Web and Services science in the world, with extensive funding from the federal government and industry.  Earlier, Sheth served in research and development groups at Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies), Unisys and Honeywell.

In August 1999, Sheth founded Taalee, Inc., a venture capital-funded Web and enterprise software startup based on the Semantic Web technology developed at the LSDIS lab. He managed Taalee as its CEO until June 2001. Following Taalee's acquisition/merger, he serves as the CTO and co-founder of Semagix, Inc. (formerly Voquette, Inc).

Earlier he had founded Infocosm, Inc., which has commercialized workflow technology. His research has led to several commercial products and applications.

Sheth has received such recognition as the IBM Faculty Award and has published more than 200 papers and articles and given more than 160 invited talks and colloquia, including 23 keynote addresses. He has also co-organized and/or chaired 25 conferences/workshops and served on more than 115 program committees.

He is on several journal editorial boards and is editor-in-chief of the International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems.