Praveen Rao, Ph.D., SMNAI
Professor & Director of Graduate Studies
Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Dept. of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering (Courtesy Appointment)
225 Naka Hall, The University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
Senior Member of National Academy of Inventors (NAI)
Senior Member of ACM and IEEE
praveen DOT rao AT missouri DOT edu
Follow on GitHub @ github.com/MU-Data-Science
Dr. Praveen Rao is a tenured professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) at the University of Missouri (MU). His research interests are in the areas of scalable AI, big data, data science, health informatics, and cybersecurity. He directs the Scalable AI & Data Science (SDS) Lab at MU. His research, teaching, and outreach activities have been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Alzheimer's Association, Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), the University of Missouri System (Tier 1 grant, Tier 3 grant), University of Missouri Research Board, and companies. He served as a Co-PI for the NSF IUCRC Center for Big Learning. He is a co-investigator for the Center for Telehealth Research and Policy (C-TRaP) at MU funded by HRSA, a core faculty of the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics (IDSI) and the CERI Center, and a core scientist of the Washington University Center for Diabetes Translation Research funded by NIH. He is a recipient of EECS Outstanding Senior Faculty Researcher Award (2025), MU IDSI Excellence in Mentoring Award (2025), and EECS Senior Faculty Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring Award (2023). He is a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors (2026), ACM (2020) and IEEE (2015).
At MU, Dr. Rao spent two and half wonderful years as a tenured associate professor in the Department of Health Management & Informatics with joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. Prior to joining MU, he was a tenured associate professor in the Department of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering at University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), where he spent twelve and half wonderful years. In 2010, he received the IBM Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Award. In 2013, he was one of the 14 professors world-wide to receive the IBM Big Data and Analytics Faculty Award. In 2015 and 2016, he was selected as a fellow in the U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program. In 2015, he spent part of his summer as a visiting researcher at the Xerox Research Center India (XRCI). In 2016, he received the prestigious National Research Council (NRC) Research Associateship Award to conduct research at the Air Force Research Lab in Rome, NY for one year. In 2016, he received UMKC's Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers, Scholars, and Artists. In 2018, he received UMKC's N.T. Veatch Award for distinguished research and creativity. He served as the faculty advisor of the Missouri Epsilon Chapter of Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) at UMKC.
Dr. Rao received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Arizona in 2007 and 2001, respectively. He was supervised by Prof. Bongki Moon. In 2007, he received the Graduate Student Research Award for his dissertation work at the University of Arizona. Dr. Rao received his B.E. degree in Computer Engineering from University of Pune in 1999. During 2001-2002, he worked as a software engineer for Amazon in Seattle.
PC Member: AAAI 2027, ICDE 2027, MM Asia 2026, JCDL 2026, ICMR 2026, SAC 2026, ICDE 2026, JCDL 2025, ICMR 2025, MDM 2025, ICDE 2025
Editorial boards: ACM TOPML, Springer JHIR, Frontiers in Big Data, PLOS ONE
Workshop/Symposium Organization: MERIF 2026
Steering Committee: BDA 2025
Ongoing
Sponsor: NSF, I-Corps, Secure Human Genome Analyzer, Mar 2026 - Mar 2027 (Subaward No. I4514-26 for VentureWell's NSF Award No. 2320948) (Role: PI)
Sponsor: Dept. of Education, APEX: AI-Prepared Experiential Credential, Jan 2026 - Dec 2029 (Grant No. P116J250053) (Role: Key Personnel)
Sponsor: HRSA, The Center for Telehealth Research and Policy, Sep 2025 - Aug 2030 (Award # U3G55162), (Role: Co-I)
Sponsor: NSF, Harnessing FABRIC for Scalable Language Model Training and Inference, July 2025 - June 2027 (Award # OAC 2502893), (Role: PI)
Sponsor: NSF, Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Training for Next-Generation Neuroscience Learning and Research, Jan 2025 - Dec 2027 (Award # OAC 2417875), (Role: Co-PI)
Sponsor: Alzheimer's Association, Remote Sensing for ADRD-Specific Activities Identification in Older Adults, Aug 2024 - July 2027 (Award #24AARGD-NTF-1242722) (Role: Co-I)
Sponsor: NSF, Harnessing FABRIC for Scalable Human Genome Sequence Analysis, May 2022 - Sep 2026 (Award # OAC-2201583) (Role: PI)
Sponsor: CDC, Towards Better Understanding of ALS using a Multi-Marker Discovery Approach from a Multi-Modal Database (ALS4M), Sep 2022 - Sep 2026 (Award # 1 R01TS000336-01-00) (Role: Co-I)
Completed
Sponsor: NIH, Washington University Center for Diabetes Translational Research, Sep 2021 - June 2026 (Award # P30DK092950) (Role: MU Co-I)
Sponsor: a2 Pilot Awards, Motor Function Assessment for Mild Cognitive Impairment, Frailty, and Fall Risk, Jun 2024 - May 2025 (Role: Co-I)
Sponsor: NSF, Phase I IUCRC University of Missouri-Kansas City: Center for Big Learning (CBL), Feb 2018 - Jan 2025 (Award # CNS-1747751) (Role: Co-PI)
Sponsor: NEH, A Knowledge Graph for Managing and Analyzing Spanish American Notary Records, Oct 2022 - May 2024 (Award # HAA-287903-22) (Role: Co-Project Director)
Sponsor: NSF, RAPID: Democratizing Genome Sequence Analysis for COVID-19 Using CloudLab, June 2020 - May 2023 (Award # CNS-2034247) (Role: PI)
Sponsor: CTSC Pilot Program, StreetSmart: A Social-Media Data Tool to Increase Organizations’ Street Smarts as They Provide Services to Residents Affected by Violence and Suicide, May 2021 - April 2022 (Role: MU PI)
Sponsor: NEH, A Knowledge Graph for Managing and Analyzing Spanish American Notary Records, Sep 2020 - Aug 2021 (Award # HAA-271747-20) (Role: Co-Project Director)
Sponsor: AFRL, Detecting Malware-Based Tampering of Big Data Programs, May 2019 - Feb 2020 (Role: PI)
Sponsor: NSF, Scalable Storage of Whole Slide Images and Fast Retrieval of Tiles for Next-Generation Image Analytics, Sep 2018 - Dec 2020 (Award # IIP-1841752/2024429) (Role: PI)
Sponsor: NSF, Scalable Knowledge Management for Risk Analysis in Finance, January 2016 - June 2017 (Award # IIP-1620023) (Role: PI)
Sponsor: NSF, Scalable RDF Query Processing Using a Cloud Infrastructure, July 2011 - December 2015 (Award # IIS-1115871) (Role: PI)
Scalable language model pretraining and inference
[IEEE ICDEW '26]
Neuroscience workflows on advanced cyberinfrastructure
[IEEE IISWC '26]
Human genome analysis using cluster computing
[ACM BCB '25 Workshop, [Frontiers in Big Data '25, ACM BCB '24, ACM CIKM '24, IEEE CLOUD '24, ACM CIKM '23, ACM CIKM '21 [Nominated for Best Short Paper Award], IEEE DataPort, IEEE INFOCOM Workshops '22, IEEE DataPort]
Federated learning
[IEEE CCNC '26, IEEE AIPR '23, IEEE AIPR '22, IEEE Big Data '21, IEEE AIPR '20]
Large-scale image/video retrieval; deep learning; natural language processing
Document retrieval for historical text using deep learning and knowledge graphs; large language models
Health informatics (whole slide imaging, dermascopy images, machine learning/deep learning, cancer)
Alzheimer's and dementia, machine learning
Scalable characteristic mode analysis (CMA)
ACES '22, IEEE AP-S/URSI '21
COVID-19 and Cerner Real-World DataTM
[JNMD '21, JNMD '21, JNMD '21, BMC Neurology]
Big data and analytics; scalable machine learning; gossip algorithms
Big data security; homomorphic hashing; blockchain applications
[SPIE '20, Springer '20, ICDEW '21]
Cyberthreat detection on social media; urban informatics
Knowledge graphs for food-related datasets using deep learning and RDF
Gossip algorithms for data aggregation, scalable RDF query processing
Health informatics (HL7 CDA, vaccination tracking, SNOMED CT)
Graph indexing and query processing
Semistructured Data & P2P networks
XML Indexing and Pattern Matching [ICDE '04, TODS '06] (Software Release)
XML Filtering [VLDB '05, DKE '08, TOIT '09]
XML Stream Processing [ICDE '06]
Neuroscience workflows on FABRIC [project website]
Harnessing FABRIC for Scalable Language Model Training and Inference [project website]
Harnessing FABRIC for Scalable Human Genome Sequence Analysis [project website]
A Knowledge Graph for Spanish American Notary Records [project website]
Democratizing Genome Sequence Analysis for COVID-19 Using CloudLab [website]
QIK/QIK+: Image and Video Retrieval for Everyday Scenes With Common Objects [website]
FoodKG: A Software Tool to Enrich Knowledge Graphs on Food Datasets [website]
Fast and approximate score computation for Bayesian networks, DiSC [website]
Detecting Cyberthreats on Twitter, SocialKB [website]
Semantically Enriching Food, Energy, and Water Datasets, RichRDF [website]
Scalable Storage of Whole Slide Images and Fast Retrieval, NiDAN [website]
Internet-scale Cardinality Estimation of XPath Queries, XGossip, [website]
A Smartphone Application for Vaccination Tracking, Jeev, [website]
Fast processing of SPARQL Queries on RDF Quadruples, RIQ, [website]
Large-scale sharing and querying of clinical documents, CDN, [website]
A Tool for Fast Indexing and Querying of Graphs [Project website]
psiX: An Internet-Scale Service for Publishing and Locating XML Documents [Project website]
PRIX: XML Indexing and Twig Query Processing using Prüfer Sequences [Project website][Award]