Nirmalya Thakur, a distinguished Computer Science researcher, affiliated with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, United States, has been awarded the Research Excellence Award by the Institute of Scholars (InSc).
This young scholar and academician who has authored 28 peer-reviewed publications in the form of conference papers, journal publications, and invited book chapters received this award after publishing his latest research paper titled, An Ambient Intelligence-Based Human Behavior Monitoring Framework for Ubiquitous Environments in MDPI's Journal of Information, that he co-authored with Chia Y. Han, who is also affiliated with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati.
The breakthrough research of this paper aims to address multiple challenges that the world is currently facing in this modern century because of the rapidly increasing elderly population and the associated global economic burden of healthcare and caregiver costs, which in the United States alone are estimated to be around US$ 355 billion in 2021 and projected to rise to about US$ 1.1 trillion by 2050. This research work at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Machine Learning, Internet of Things, and Ubiquitous Computing, focuses on taking a comprehensive approach to address the behavioral, physical, mental, psychological, and other forms of impairments or limitations that elderly people face with increasing age to contribute towards their Intelligent Assisted Living in the future of interconnected Smart Homes. It also has the potential for early detection of Dementia, Alzheimer's, and other forms of Cognitive Impairments in the world's diverse aging population.
This intelligent framework can study, track, monitor, and analyze multimodal components of human behavior and user interactions during different tasks, actions, and activities that one performs on a daily routine basis in a Smart Home environment. Based on this understanding and analysis of human behavior and user interactions, the framework uses an intelligent decision-making algorithm to detect health-threatening situations, such as a fall or unconsciousness with a high level of performance accuracy, so that caregivers' or medical practitioners' can be immediately alerted to facilitate timely and proper care for the elderly.
The Institute of Scholars (InSc) issues this award every year to recognize, honor, and celebrate the groundbreaking work of researchers from different disciplines, worldwide, who have published their work in reputed international journals and conferences. Apart from the Research Excellence Awards, InSc issues other awards, namely Young Researcher Award, Young Achiever Award, Best Teacher Award, Academic Excellence Award, HOD of the Year, Best Principal of the Year, and Student Project Program (SPP) Award. From hundreds of nominees, InSc selected 172 distinguished researchers from several countries, including Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United States, and India, to receive the 2021 Research Excellence Awards.
In addition to having such an impressive publication record, Nirmalya Thakur has delivered 21 presentations in the form of keynote addresses and invited presentations at conferences in the United States, Canada, China, France, Denmark, and Indonesia. He has reviewed around 250 papers by serving on the reviewer board of 25 conferences and almost as many journals. His work as a reviewer has also been appreciated by the European Alliance for Innovation. He has served on the organizing committee of 26 international conferences. He is a globally celebrated scholar and has received multiple nationally and internationally recognized awards for his contributions to advancing research, innovation, and discovery in multiple disciplines of Computer Science, including Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Machine Learning, Internet of Things, Data Science, Ubiquitous Computing, and Natural Language Processing. His recent awards include the Young Innovator Award at the 2nd Universal Innovators Leadership Awards, the Young Scientist of the Year Award at the 2nd International Business and Academic Excellence Awards, and the Excellent Researcher Award at the 2nd International Academic and Research Excellence Awards. In 2020, for the second year in a row, his biography was featured by Marquis Who's Who, who since 1899 have chronicled the lives and achievements of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from around the world in their annual publications.
To learn more about Nirmalya Thakur's work, please visit his website at https://homepages.uc.edu/~thakurna/
