S Lakshmivarahan

Timeline

1. 1964–1978

   A Ph.D. and early faculty posts

   He earns a B.S. in physics from the University of Madras in 1964 and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1973. He serves as an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (1973–1975) and as a visiting assistant professor at Brown University (1975–1976) and Yale University (1976–1978).

2. 1978–1982

   Oklahoma and a learning algorithms book

   He joins the University of Oklahoma in 1978 as an associate professor. Springer publishes his book Learning Algorithms: Theory and Applications in 1981; its introduction describes building programs, perhaps in pattern recognition or artificial intelligence, that learn tasks such as playing games or diagnosing disease from x-ray pictures. In 1982, he receives the OU Regents Award for Superior Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity.

3. 1990–1994

   Books on parallel algorithms

   With S. K. Dhall, he coauthors Analysis and Design of Parallel Algorithms (McGraw Hill, 1990) and Parallel Computing using the Prefix Problem (Oxford University Press, 1994).

4. 1993–1995

   IEEE and ACM fellowships

   He is elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1993 and a Fellow of the ACM in 1995. In 1995, the University of Oklahoma names him a George Lynn Cross Research Professor, its highest honor.

5. 2006–2007

   The Dynamic Data Assimilation book

   In 2006, Cambridge University Press publishes Dynamic Data Assimilation: A Least Squares Approach, which he writes with John M. Lewis and Sudarshan Dhall. The book receives the 2007 Outstanding Scientific Paper award of the NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.

6. 2014

   Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame

   The Oklahoma Higher Education Heritage Society inducts him into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame in 2014. His four main areas of contribution are learning algorithms, parallel and distributed processing, dynamic data assimilation, and computational sciences and finance.

7. 2017

   Forecast error correction book

   Springer publishes Forecast Error Correction using Dynamic Data Assimilation in 2017, which he writes with John M. Lewis and Rafal Jabrzemski.

8. As of October 2026

   Emeritus and WSAI fellow

   In 2019, he retires from Oklahoma as George Lynn Cross Research Professor Emeritus. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at IIT Madras, with research interests in dynamic data assimilation, big data analytics, randomized algorithms for linear algebra, parallel processing and learning algorithms.