Naren Ramakrishnan, Virginia Tech professor of computer science (CS), is one of 84 professionals worldwide to be recognized as a 2009 Distinguished Member by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

The Distinguished Member Grade recognizes those ACM members with at least 15 years of professional experience and five years of continuous professional membership who have achieved significant accomplishments or have made a significant impact on the computing field. This year, ACM named nine Distinguished Educators, 17 Distinguished Engineers, and 58 Distinguished Scientists, with Ramakrishnan being one of the noted scientists.

Ramakrishnan’s work is in the area of data mining - the science of processing massive quantities of data to discover patterns and to produce new insights. Recently, Ramakrishnan received a 2009 Hewlett Packard Labs Innovation award, another globally competitive honor. It enabled him to conduct collaborative research with HP in the area of data mining for assessing the sustainability of complex information technology systems, such as data centers.

Ramakrishnan received his Ph.D. in CS from Purdue University and has been at Virginia Tech since 1998. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, the New Century Technology Council Innovation award, and a certificate of teaching excellence from the College of Engineering. He has been both program chair and general chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ Conference on Data Mining (ICDM), the premier research conference in data mining, which is held annually in different parts of the world.

In 2007, Ramakrishnan was named one of Computerworld’s “40 innovative IT people to watch, under the age of 40,” for his research on the data mining concept of “storytelling.” He was co-organizer of the recently concluded 2009 Frontiers of Engineering Conference organized by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).