Arun Kumar

Dr. Arun Kumar is a senior technical leader focusing at shape IBM's product and services strategy in the complex Hybrid Cloud environment consisting of public multi-cloud, on-prem and traditional deployments. His recent work has been at the intersection of Cloud, AI and IT Security. 

Prior to the current role he led a research group leveraging AI for Business' technology solutions at IBM Research AI, India. The group created technology solutions and products enabling regulatory and contractual compliance, GDPR handling, understanding PDF documents and automating architectural processes. He has led creation and deployment of leading cognitive technology solutions with banking customers in India and ASEAN, aimed at wealth management and compliance. 

He is also credited with originating the vision, concept and basic architecture of Spoken Web aka World Wide Telecom Web (WWTW). Spoken Web enabled the illiterate and the underprivileged with the power of information by using ordinary mobile phones. Users were able to access and create online services (called voice-sites) in their own language and navigable through voice. 

In 2011, he was Associate General Co-Chair for International World Wide Web Conference 2011, Hyderabad, India. Over the years, he has led and contributed to several research projects. Prior to Spoken Web, he led the later half of Synthy -- a project for enabling semi-automated, end to end composition of web services. In 2006, he led the Transaction Process Monitoring project for monitoring transactions in IT systems in the absence of domain knowledge. Prior to that, he contributed to and technically led projects in web services, grid computing, eUtilities, and access control.

In a previous life, he worked briefly as a Software Engineer with Hughes Software Systems (now Aricent), Gurgaon, India in the domain of Advanced Intelligent Networks. Earlier, he was a member of Distributed Object Systems Group at Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) where he worked on access control based security models.

He writes about Cloud and Security 

Research Interests
Hybrid Cloud, Multi-cloud, Security and Compliance, AI for Business, HCI, Semantic Web Services, ICT4D, and Distributed Systems.

Countries Visited
South Africa, France, Ireland, USA, Japan, China, Canada, Qatar, Singapore

Current or past university collaborators from 
-Carnegie Mellon University
-Indian Institute of Technology Madras
-University of Zurich
-Max Planck Institute for Software Systems -Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Awards and Honors

1. Council for Innovation Leadership Cash Award - 2022 2. Cash award for contributions to the evolution of IBM’s patent strategy - 2022 3. IBM Tenth Plateau Award - 2021 4. Awesome Team Award - 2021 5. IBM Ninth Plateau Award - 2020 6. Multiple Cash and other awards from Client teams, BU partners and Peers - 2018-2021 7. Academy of Technology top contributor award for demonstrating a real commitment to Innovation that Matters - 2019 8. IBM Eighth Invention Plateau - 2018 9. Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (OTAA) - 2017 10. Client Value Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (OTAA) - 2017   11. Research Division Award - 2016 12. Corporate level Invention Disclosure Team Award (IDT) for sustained leadership in Invention Disclosure Evaluations - 2015
13. Client Value Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (OTAA) - 2015 
14. Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (OTAA) - 2014
15. IBM Seventh Plateau Award - 2014
16. Research Division Accomplishment - 2013
17. “I’m an IBMer Hall of Fame” award voted by IBMers from South Asia - 2012
18. Client Value Innovation Award - 2011
19. IBM Sixth Plateau Award - 2011
20. Outstanding Innovation Award (OIA) - 2010
21. Research Division Accomplishment - 2008
22. National Award in the category of “Best Applied Research/Technical Innovation Aimed at Improving the Life of Persons with Disabilities' Given by President of India (Team Award for Spoken Web
23. mBillionth Award South Asia (mInclusion Category) (Team Award)
24. Manthan Award South Asia 2008 in the special 'Juror's Distinction Category' (Team Award)

Invited Talks / Panels

1. Invited Talk, 'Spoken Web', International World Wide Web Conference 2011, Hyderabad, India
2. Panel Connecting the Next Billion Web Users at International World Wide Web Conference 2011.
Participants:
-Rajeev Rastogi, Yahoo! Labs Bangalore (Moderator)
-Ed Cutrell, Microsoft Research India
-Arun Kumar, IBM Research India
-Ashok Jhunjhunwala, IIT Madras
-Rajeev Sangal, IIIT Hyderabad
-Paritosh Malaviya, Yahoo! Bangalore
3. “From Synthy to Spoken Web - Experiences with End User and Enterprise Compositions on the Web” at 3rd Workshop on Mashups, Enterprise Mashups and Lightweight Composition on the Web (MEM 2010) in International World Wide Conference 2010 (WWW), Raleigh, NC, USA.
4. Invited Talk : 'Spoken Web' to Bill Gates at Doha Qatar, 2009
5. Invited Talk : “The World Wide Telecom Web” at International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, February 2008.
6. Department Talk cum Industrial Lecture on “The World Wide Telecom Web” at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai, India, Jan 2008.
7. Invited Talk: “Semantics in Service Oriented Computing” at Institute for System Studies and Analysis (ISSA), Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), Metcalfe House, New Delhi, India, August 2007.

Professional Activities

• Senior Program Committee, CODS-COMAD 2022, 2023

• Reviewer CHI 2016

• Track Chair, ICARE 2014

• CHI 2014 SIG Community: Community Centered Collaborative HCI Design/Research in Developing Countries

• PC Member, CGAHI 2014, W4A 2014, DEXA 2014

• Reviewer CHI 2014, ACM CABS 2014

• PC Member, W4A 2013, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. DEXA 2013, Prague, Czech Republic.

• PC Member, Industry Track, WWW 2012, Lyon, France, ASSETS 2012, Boulder, Colorado.

• PC Member, DEXA 2012, Vienna, Austria, W4A 2012, Lyon, France.

• Conference Chair : Associate General Co-Chair for 20th International World Wide Web Conference, 2011, Hyderabad, India.

• PC Member ASSETS 2011, Dundee, Scotland, DEXA 2011, Toulouse, France.

• PC Member, W4A 2011, Hyderabad, India.

• Industry Chair: India HCI, March 2010

• PC Member, ACM SAC 2010

• Workshop Co-Chair: Workshop on Culture and Technologies for Social Interaction at Interact 2009

• PC Member: ACM SAC 2009, mDevelopment 2009, MOST-ONISW 2009 at ER 2009, SEMAPRO 2009, DEXA 2009, CENTRIC 2009

• W3C Mobile Web For Social Development Interest Group (MW4D)

• Tutorial: Sheetal K Aggarwal, Arun Kumar, Amit Nanavati and Nitendra Rajput The World Wide Telecom Web, IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technologies (SLT), Goa, INDIA, December, 2008.

• Tutorial: D. Janakiram and Arun Kumar, “Service Oriented Software Development - Moving Beyond Objects”, First India Software Engineering Conference (ISEC), IIIT Hyderabad, AP, INDIA, 19-22 February, 2008.

• Panel Organizer: Co-organized a Panel on “Information Uptrieval for Developing Regions” at World Wide Web Conference, Beijing, China, 2008.

• PC Member, ACM SAC 2008, ONISW 2008 at CIKM 2008, CENTRIC 2008, 

• PC Member, ACM SAC 2007

Education

• Ph.D. in CSE, IIT Madras, India
• Master of Technology in CSE, IIT Madras, India
• Master of Computer Sc., ICSE, DAVV, Indore, M.P., India
• Bachelor of Computer Sc., University of Delhi, India