Sumit Sarkar

Ashbel Smith Professor of Information Systems

Academic Director, ICDRiA

PhD, University of Rochester

Research Interests

My research focuses on the management of data and knowledge in business environments. This includes, among others, personalization and recommendation technologies, data and information quality, data privacy, the discovery of knowledge from data repositories, schemes for representation of uncertain data in databases as well as uncertainty in knowledge bases, the integration and reconciliation of data from diverse sources in data warehousing environments, software release, and incentive-compatibility issues for participants of knowledge management projects.

Selected Publications

Personalization and Recommendation Technologies

B. P. S. Murthi and S. Sarkar, "The Role of the Management Sciences in Research on Personalization," Management Science, pp. 1344-1362, vol. 49, no. 10, October 2003.

R. Gupta, A. Bagchi, and S. Sarkar “Optimal Linkage of Web Pages” INFORMS Journal on Computing, Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 127-136.

Data Privacy

S. Menon, S. Sarkar, and S. Mukherjee “Maximizing Accuracy of Shared Databases when Concealing Sensitive Patterns,” Information Systems Research, pp. 256-270, vol. 16, no. 3, September 2005.

X. Li and S. Sarkar “A Data Perturbation Approach to Privacy Protection in Data Mining,” Information Systems Research, pp. 254-270, vol. 17, no. 3, September 2006.

X. Li and S. Sarkar “Privacy Protection in Data Mining: A Tree-Based Data Perturbation Approach,” IEEE Transactions on Data and Knowledge Engineering, pp. 1278-1283, vol. 18, no. 9, September 2006.

S. Menon and S. Sarkar “Minimizing Information Loss and Preserving Privacy,” Management Science, pp. 102-116, vol. 53, no. 1, January 2007.

Information Quality and Decision Making

A. Parssian, S. Sarkar, and V.S. Jacob “Assessing Data Quality for Information Products: Impact of Selection, Projection, and Cartesian Product,” Management Science, pp. 967-982, vol. 50, no. 7, July 2004.

Z. Jiang, V. S. Mookerjee, and S. Sarkar “Lying on the Web: Implications for Cost Effective Information Gathering,” Information Systems Research, pp. 131-148, vol. 16, no. 2, June 2005.

Representing Uncertainty in Databases

D. Dey and S. Sarkar, "A Probabilistic Relational Model and Algebra," ACM Transactions on Database Systems, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 339-369, September 1996.

D. Dey and S. Sarkar, "PSQL: A Query Language for Probabilistic Relational Data," Data and Knowledge Engineering, vol. 28, no. 1, pp.107–120, 1998.

D. Dey and S. Sarkar, "Modifications of Uncertain Data: A Bayesian Framework for Belief Revision," Information Systems Research, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 1-16, March 2000.

D. Dey and S. Sarkar, "Generalized Normal Forms for Probabilistic Relational Data, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 485-498, May/June 2002.

Reasoning Under Uncertainty: Bayesian Networks

S. Sarkar, "Modeling Uncertainty Using Enhanced Tree Structures in Expert Systems," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 592-605, April 1995.

 

S. Sarkar and I. Murthy, "Criteria to Evaluate Approximate Belief Network Representations in Expert Systems," Decision Support Systems, vol. 15, pp. 323-350, 1995.

S. Sarkar and D. Ghosh, "A Probabilistic Reasoning Model: Formulation and Control Strategy," Decision Support Systems, vol. 17, pp. 365-386, 1996.

S. Sarkar, H. Mendelson, and V. Storey, "Approximate Representation of Probabilistic Data in Expert Systems," European Journal of Operational Research, pp. 488-504, 1996.

S. Sarkar and I. Murthy, "Constructing Efficient Belief Network Structures with Expert Provided Information," IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol 8, no. 1, pp. 134-143, 1996.

S. Sarkar and D. Ghosh, "Contractor Accreditation: A Probabilistic Model," Decision Sciences, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 237-258, Spring 1997.

S. Sarkar and D. Ghosh, "Partitioning the Attribute Set in a Probabilistic Reasoning System," INFORMS Journal on Computing, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 399-416, Fall 1998.

S. Sarkar and R. Sriram, "Bayesian Models for Early Warnings of Bank Failures," Management Science, pp. 1457-1475, vol. 47, no. 10, November 2001.

Heterogeneous Databases

D. Dey, S. Sarkar, and P. De, "A Probabilistic Decision Model for Entity Matching in Heterogeneous Databases," Management Science, pp. 1379-1395, vol. 44, no. 10, October 1998.

D. Dey, S. Sarkar, and P. De, “A Distance-Based Approach to Entity Reconciliation in Heterogeneous Databases,” IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 567-582, May/June 2002.

Z. Jiang, S. Sarkar, P. De and D. Dey “A Framework for Reconciling Attribute Values from Multiple Data Sources” forthcoming in Management Science.

Verification/Validation of Expert Systems

M. Ramaswamy, S. Sarkar, and Y. Chen, "A Directed Hypergraph Approach for Verifying Rule-Bases," IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering , vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 221-237, 1997.

S. Sarkar, M. Ramaswamy, and Y. Chen, "A Hypergraph-Based Tool to Support the Verification and Validation of Rule-Based Expert Systems," Heuristics: The Journal of Intelligent Technologies, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 61-81, 1995.

S. Sarkar and M. Ramaswamy, "Knowledge Base Decomposition to Facilitate Verification," Information Systems Research, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 261-283, September 2000.

Stochastic Shortest Path

I. Murthy and S. Sarkar, "A Relaxation Based Pruning Technique for the Stochastic Shortest Path Problem," Transportation Science, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 220-236, August 1996.

I. Murthy and S. Sarkar, "Exact Methods for the Stochastic Shortest Path Problem with a Decreasing Deadline Utility Function," European Journal of Operational Research, pp. 209-229, 1997.

I. Murthy and S. Sarkar, "Stochastic Shortest Path Problems with Piece-Wise Linear Utility Functions," Management Science, pp. S125-S136, vol. 44, no. 11, part 2 of 2, November 1998.

Business Process Reengineering

D. Ghosh, S. Sarkar, and P. Dardeau, "Knowledge-Based Simulation for Business Process Redesign," International journal of Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance, and Management, vol. 6, pp. 163-176, 1997.

Professional Activities

- Program Co-Chair, International Conference on Information Systems, 2001

- Program Co-Chair, Workshop on Information Technology and Systems, 1999

- Vice President and Secretary, Workshop on Information Technology and Systems, Inc., 2000-2003

- Secretary, the INFORMS Society on Information Systems, 2000-2005

- Senior Editor, Information Systems Research, 2005-present

- Associate Editor, Management Science, 2005-present

- Associate Editor, Information Technology and Management, 1998-present

- Associate Editor, Research, 1999-2003

- Guest Associate Editor, Management Information Systems Quarterly

- Guest Associate Editor, Production and Operations Management

- Served/serving on the INFORMS Sub-Divisions Council, WITS Advisory Board, ICIS Steering Committee