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Principal Investigator · Personal Profile

Prof. Soumik Sarkar, Iowa State University

Photo of Dr. Soumik Sarkar

Contact Information

  • 2019A Black Engineering
  • Iowa State University
  • Ames, IA 50011
  • 515-294-5212
  • soumiks (@) iastate.edu
  • Google Scholar
  • CV
Download CV (PDF)View CV online

Dr. Soumik Sarkar

  • Professor
  • Director, Translational AI Center (TrAC), Iowa State University, https://trac-ai.iastate.edu/
  • Associate Director, AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA), https://aiira.iastate.edu/
  • Plant Science Institute Faculty Scholar
  • Department of Mechanical Engineering
  • Department of Computer Science
  • Human Computer Interaction Graduate Program

Education

  • Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Penn State University, 2011
  • M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Penn State University, 2009
  • M.S. Mathematics, Penn State University, 2009
  • B.E. Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, 2006

Dr. Soumik Sarkar received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State in 2011. Currently he is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Director of the Translational AI Center at Iowa State. He also serves as the Associate Director of the USDA-NIFA sponsored AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA). Dr. Sarkar’s research interests include Machine Learning and Decision & Control with applications to Cyber-Physical Systems such as energy, transportation, design & manufacturing and agriculture systems. He co‐authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and received about $55.4M research funding during his tenure at Iowa State. He won the ASME DSCD Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award in 2021. Dr. Sarkar is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CISE Career Initiation Initiative (CRII) award in 2015, Young Investigator award from the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) in 2017 and the NSF CAREER award in 2019.

Honors & Awards

Research Funding

Recent grants

  1. Agentic Autonomous UGA Navigation and Plant Manipulation Framework (as Co-PI) sponsored by the Translational AI Center seed fund ($20,000, 2026)
  2. DAISY: Decentralized Agentic Intelligence System for Scientific Inquiry (as PI) sponsored by DOE ($250,000, Jul 2026 – Mar 2027)
  3. COURAG: Towards Safety and Trustworthiness via Conformal Outlier detection and Uncertainty- and Rulebook-Aware Generative Reinforcement Learning (as Co-PI) sponsored by the Translational AI Center seed fund ($20,000, 2025)
  4. Transforming digital marketing strategies through agentic AI and LLMs: a small business to investor approach (as Co-PI) sponsored by the Translational AI Center seed fund ($20,000, 2025)
  5. BIO-SHIELD: BIOlogical threat Surveillance through Holistic Information fusion for EarLy warning and Decision support (as PI) sponsored by DoD ($500,000, Dec 2025 – Aug 2026)
  6. Planning: AI-Ready Cyber-Agriculture Systems Testbed (AI-AgARENA) (as PI) sponsored by NSF ($200,000, Aug 2025 – Jul 2027)
  7. A feasibility study of the development of a predictive analysis tool to determine risks to global agriculture and food security Phase 2 (as PI) sponsored by DefenseWerx ($196,000, Mar 2025 – Jan 2026)
  8. AI-based real-time atomic force microscopy analysis for structural and translational DNA research (as Co-PI) sponsored by the Translational AI Center seed fund ($20,000, 2024)
  9. Simulation-based edge-case generation using reinforcement learning (as Co-PI) sponsored by the Translational AI Center seed fund ($20,000, 2024)
  10. A feasibility study of the development of a predictive analysis tool to determine risks to global agriculture and food security (as PI) ($50,000, Jun 2024 – Dec 2024)
  11. Feedback Learning for Machine Perception with System-Level Objectives (as Co-PI) sponsored by the Translational AI Center seed fund ($20,000, 2022)

Earlier grants

  1. Collaborative Research: DMREF: ML-Enabled Multi-Material Digital-Light Processing of Functional Polymers (as Co-PI) sponsored by NSF ($800,000, 10/1/2023 - 9/30/2027)
  2. LEAP-HI: AI-Optimized 3D Printing of Super-Soft Materials for Personalized Sensing (as Co-PI) sponsored by NSF ($2,000,000, 8/1/2021 - 7/31/2026)
  3. AIIRA: AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture (as Co-PI) sponsored by USDA-NIFA ($20,000,000, 9/1/2021 - 8/31/2026)
  4. CPS: Frontier: Collaborative Research: COALESCE: COntext Aware LEarning for Sustainable CybEr-Agricultural Systems (as PI) sponsored by NSF and USDA-NIFA ($7,000,000, 4/15/2021 - 3/31/2026)
  5. SCC-IRG Track 2: Smart Integrated Farm Network for Rural Agricultural Communities (SIRAC) (as Senior Personnel) sponsored by NSF ($1,499,830, 10/1/2020 - 9/30/2023)
  6. RII Track-2 FEC: Data-Enabled Discovery and Design to Transform Liquid-Based Energy Storage (D3TaLES) (as Senior Personnel) sponsored by NSF ($1,989,220, 9/1/2020 - 8/31/2024)
  7. Multiplexed Immunomarker Screening to Enable Patient-Tailored Immunotherapies (as Co-PI) sponsored by Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) ($587,996, 9/1/2020 - 8/31/2022)
  8. Context-aware learning for inverse design in photovoltaics (as Co-PI) sponsored by ARPA-E ($2,000,000, 4/15/2020 - 4/14/2022) Announcement →
  9. CPS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Active Shooter Tracking & Evacuation Routing for Survival (ASTERS) (as ISU PI) sponsored by NSF ($649,982, 10/1/19-9/30/2022) Announcement →
  10. Deep Insight - Deep-net driven approach to estimate driver state from naturalistic data (as Co-PI) sponsored by DOT – Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) ($1,354,417, 9/1/2019 – 8/31/2023)
  11. Fast Topology Optimization and Shape Style Transfer Using Machine Learning (as PI) sponsored by ANSYS ($75,000, 07/26/2019 – 05/15/2020)
  12. FACT: A Scalable Cyber Ecosystem for Acquisition, Curation, and Analysis of multispectral UAV image data (as Co-PI) sponsored by USDA-NIFA ($500,000, 07/01/2019 - 06/31/2022)
  13. CAREER: Robustifying Machine Learning for Cyber-Physical Systems (PI) sponsored by NSF ($511,620, 03/01/2019 - 02/29/2024)
  14. PALM: Physics-Aware Learning for Microstructure Design – Phase I (as Co-PI) sponsored by DARPA ($400,000, 12/21/2018 - 09/20/2019)
  15. Modeling multidimensional risk in real-world driver with diabetes (as Co-PI) sponsored by Toyota ($198,664, 06/01/2018 - 02/28/2021)
  16. Battery-free RFID Sensor Network with Spatiotemporal Pattern Network Based Data Fusion System for Human Presence Sensing (as Co-PI) sponsored by ARPA-E ($2,000,000, 06/01/2018 - 05/31/2021)
  17. Predicting Driving Safety in Advancing Age (as Co-PI) sponsored by University of Nebraska Medical Center (original award from NIH) – ($94,639, 05/01/2017 - 08/31/2018)
  18. Neural-Symbolic approach to Real-time Decision-making in Complex Aerospace Systems (as PI) sponsored by AFOSR - Young Investigator Program ($360,000, 5/1/2017 – 4/30/2020) Announcement →
  19. A multi-scale data assimilation framework for layered sensing and hierarchical control of disease spread in field crops (as PI) sponsored by NSF/USDA-NIFA ($990,471, 3/1/2017 - 2/29/2020)
  20. Saliency-driven robotic networks for Spatiotemporal plant Phenotyping (as Co-PI) sponsored by NSF/USDA-NIFA ($820,021, 12/15/2016 - 12/14/2019)
  21. PFI: BIC- A Smart Service System for Traffic Incident Management Enabled by Large-data Innovations (TIMELI) (as Co-PI) sponsored by NSF ($1,000,000, 09/01/2016 - 08/31/2019)
  22. CM: Machine-Learning Driven Decision Support in Design for Manufacturability (as Co-PI) sponsored by NSF ($415,175, 09/01/2016 - 08/31/2019)
  23. Big Data for Sustainable Cities & Decision Making (as Co-PI) sponsored by Iowa State Presidential Initiative on Interdisciplinary Research ($375,000, 08/01/2016 - 07/31/2019) Announcement →
  24. D3AI: Data drive discoveries for agricultural innovation (as Co-PI) sponsored by Iowa State Presidential Initiative on Interdisciplinary Research ($750,000, 10/01/2015 - 09/30/2018)
  25. Using Engineering tools to identify and quantify biotic and abiotic stress in soybean for customable agriculture production (as Co-PI) sponsored by Iowa Soybean Association ($185,590, 10/01/2015 – 09/30/2018)
  26. Novel Machine Learning based methods for low-light image/video denoising (as Co-PI) sponsored by Regents Innovation Fund and Rockwell Collins Inc. ($200,000, 01/01/2015 - 05/31/2017)
  27. A Knowledge Representation and Information Fusion Framework for Decision Making in Complex Cyber-Physical Systems (as PI) sponsored by NSF ($182,906, 05/15/2015 - 05/14/2017)
  28. A Scalable Multi-agent Systems approach to Building HVAC Systems Control for Energy Efficiency (as Co-PI) sponsored by Iowa Energy Center ($100,000, 01/01/2015 - 08/31/2016)

Teaching

Courses taught as instructor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA (August 2014 to present):

  • Graduate course on Data Analytics and Machine Learning for Cyber-Physical Systems Applications, Spring 2017, Spring 2018
  • Junior Level Course on Engineering Measurements, Fall 2016
  • Senior Level Course on System Dynamics and Control, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2017
  • Freshmen Level Course on Mechanical Engineering Problem Solving with Computer Applications, Fall 2015, Spring 2016

Outreach

Talks & Videos

Invited Talks (58)