2022–23 Trustees’ Award for Faculty Excellence

T. K. Prasad

Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Ph.D., professor of computer science and engineering at Wright State University, received the 2022–23 Trustees’ Award for Faculty Excellence.

Thirunarayan — who is also known as T. K. Prasad — is recognized as an ideal academic who has struck the perfect balance between teaching, research and scholarship. Colleagues also praise for his exemplary collegial interactions with his peers and students.

“Dr. Prasad represents a well-rounded academic who has impacted state-of-the-art research, high-quality instruction, broad internal and external service, and, above all, our students and colleagues over the last 30 years,” his colleagues said.

While his primary research focuses on computer science and engineering, Prasad’s research collaborations cut across multiple disciplines, including medical informatics, health care, social sciences and electrical engineering.

He mentors graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, international visiting researchers and junior faculty, promoting both excellence and diversity while engaging in internal and external service.

Prasad is among the most dedicated and approachable teachers at Wright State. Students appreciate his open-door policy and praise his promptness and willingness to help them understand course concepts. He has contributed significantly to the curriculum offered by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering by designing, improving, and teaching core graduate and undergraduate classes in algorithms design and programming languages and offering niche lectures in data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

He has played a key role in the success of Kno.e.sis, an Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing, and BioHealth Innovation, enhancing Wright State’s visibility in Web 3.0 and Computing for Social Good while also training numerous student researchers.

As a principal investigator or co-principal investigator, he has secured research awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and local small businesses.

He has also published more than 130 peer-reviewed papers, co-wrote the research monograph “Semantics Empowered Web 3.0: Managing Enterprise, Social, Sensor and Cloud-based Data and Services for Advanced Applications,” and edited conference proceedings for three International Semantic Web Conferences.

He previously won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the College of Engineering and Computer Science twice, the Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence’s Achievement and Service Award twice, and the Fritz J. Russ Award from the Dayton Section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Prasad received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, a Master of Engineer in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore and a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras.