Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan leads the knowledge enterprise development at Arizona State University, which advances research, innovation, strategic partnerships, entrepreneurship, global and economic development at ASU.  His leadership has led to many accomplishments at ASU including quintupling research performance over the last decade (to over $635M in 2018) placing it as the fastest-growing research university in the United States. ASU has also been ranked as the most innovative university in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for the last five years, ahead of Stanford and MIT.

In 2014, Dr. Panchanathan was appointed by the U.S. President to the U.S. National Science Board (NSB) for a six-year term. He is the first American of Indian origin to be appointed to the NSB. He served as Chair of the Committee on Strategy and currently serves on the External Engagement and National S&E Policy committees of NSB. Additionally, he was appointed by the former U.S. Secretary of Commerce to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE).  Dr. Panchanathan is Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Membership of the National Academy of Inventors.  He was Chair of the Council on Research (CoR) of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and Co-Chair of the Extreme Innovation Taskforce of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils. (GFCC). Dr. Panchanathan was appointed Arizona Governor Doug Ducey’s Senior Advisor for Science & Technology in 2018, and in October 2019, he was asked to testify before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Science, Oceans, Fisheries and Weather during a hearing titled, “Research and Innovation: Ensuring America’s Economic and Strategic Leadership.”

Dr. Panchanathan is a Fellow of the NAI, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Society of Optical Engineering (SPIE).  He was the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Multimedia Magazine, and is also an editor/associate editor of several international journals and transactions.

Dr. Panchanathan’s research interests are in the areas of human-centered multimedia computing, haptic user interfaces, person-centered tools and ubiquitous computing technologies for enhancing the quality of life for individuals with disabilities, machine learning for multimedia applications, medical image processing, and media processor designs. Dr. Panchanathan has published more than 485 papers in refereed journals and conferences and has mentored more than 150 graduate students, post-docs, research engineers and research scientists who occupy leading positions in academia and industry. He has been a chair of many conferences, a program committee member of numerous conferences, an organizer of special sessions in several conferences and an invited speaker and panel member in conferences, universities and industry symposiums.