About Prakash P. Shenoy

Biographical Sketch

Prakash P. Shenoy is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Business, University of Kansas at Lawrence. He received a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, in 1973, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University in 1975 and 1977, respectively. He joined the faculty of the School of Business at the University of Kansas at Lawrence in fall 1978. In 1994, he was appointed the Ronald G. Harper Distinguished Professor of Artificial Intelligence. He retired in August 2023.

His research interests are in artificial intelligence and decision sciences. He is the inventor of valuation-based systems, an abstract framework for knowledge representation and inference that includes Bayesian probabilities, Dempster–Shafer belief functions, Spohn’s kappa calculus, Zadeh’s possibility theory, propositional logic, optimization, systems of equations, database retrieval, and other domains. He is also the co-author, with G. Shafer, of the Shenoy–Shafer architecture for finding marginals of joint distributions using local computation. He has published articles on uncertainty management in expert systems, decision analysis, and the mathematical theory of games. His articles have appeared in Operations Research, Management Science, International Journal of Game Theory, Artificial Intelligence, and International Journal of Approximate Reasoning. He has received research grants and contracts from the Database and Expert Systems and Decision, Risk and Management Science programs of the National Science Foundation; the Research Opportunities in Auditing program of the Peat Marwick Main Foundation; the Higher Education Academic Development Donations program of Apple Computer, Inc.; the Information Sciences Department of Hughes Research Laboratories; Space Dynamics Laboratory of Utah State University; Information Extraction and Transport, Inc.; Science Applications International Corp.; Sparta, Inc.; Raytheon Missile Systems, Inc.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company; and American International Group, Inc.

His teaching interests are in uncertain reasoning, decision analysis, and game theory. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in uncertain reasoning, decision analysis, linear programming, nonlinear programming, game theory, management information systems, and decision support systems. He has served on doctoral dissertation committees for more than forty Ph.D. students in Management Science, Marketing, Accounting, Strategic Management, Economics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Geography, Civil Engineering, Nursing, and Philosophy, serving as chairperson for twelve. He has received the Outstanding Mentor Award from the Association of Business Doctoral Students three times, an Excellence in Teaching Award from the Center for Teaching Excellence, and an Outstanding Mentor Award from the Graduate and Professional Association of the University of Kansas.

He serves as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Approximate Reasoning and as an ad hoc referee for more than thirty journals and conferences in artificial intelligence and management science and operations research. He has served as an Area Editor for the International Journal of Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems, as an Associate Editor of Operations Research, as an Associate Editor of Management Science, as Program Co-Chair of the Thirteenth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence held at Brown University in Providence in 1997, and as Conference Chair of the Fourteenth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence held at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1998.

In the summer of 2012, with the help of Dean Neeli Bendapudi and colleagues in Decision Sciences, Marketing, and Finance, he formed the Center for Business Analytics Research (CBAR) in the University of Kansas School of Business. He served as an academic co-director, with Professor Steve Hillmer, until his retirement in 2023.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1977
  • M.S. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1975
  • B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, 1973

Honors & Awards

  • Mentor Award, Association of Business Doctoral Students, University of Kansas, 2009.
  • Elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha of Kansas, University of Kansas, 2007, “in recognition of high attainment of liberal scholarship.”
  • Guy O. and Rosa Lee Mabry Best Paper Award, for the best publication in 2006, School of Business, University of Kansas, 2007.
  • Mentor Award, Association of Business Doctoral Students, School of Business, University of Kansas, “for his distinguished service as a mentor for all doctoral students,” 2007.
  • Guy O. and Rosa Lee Mabry Best Paper Award, for the best publication in 2004, School of Business, University of Kansas, 2005.
  • Outstanding Mentor Award, Graduate & Professional Association, University of Kansas, 2003.
  • Guy O. and Rosa Lee Mabry Research Fellow Award, for the best publication in 2000, School of Business, University of Kansas, 2001.
  • Excellence in Teaching Award, selected by seniors in the Business School, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Kansas, 1998.
  • Guy O. and Rosa Lee Mabry Research Fellow Award, for the best publication in 1997, School of Business, University of Kansas, 1998.
  • Outstanding Mentor Award, Association of Business Doctoral Students, University of Kansas, 1995.
  • Mentor Award, Association of Business Doctoral Students, University of Kansas, 1994.
  • Guy O. and Rosa Lee Mabry Research Fellow Award, for the best publication in 1993, School of Business, University of Kansas, spring 1994.
  • Executive Education Research Fellow Award, School of Business, University of Kansas, 1993–1994.
  • Mentor Award, Association of Business Doctoral Students, University of Kansas, 1991.
  • Joyce C. Hall Faculty Scholar, School of Business, University of Kansas, 1983–1985.
  • Graduate School Fellowship, Cornell University, 1976–1977.
  • Teaching Assistantship, School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, Cornell University, 1973–1976.