Dr. Sumit Sarkar
- Professor of Information Systems
- Charles and Nancy Davidson Distinguished Chair in Operations Management
Charles and Nancy Davidson created the position in August 2006 to support the research and scholarly activities of the holder in the Naveen Jindal School of Management. Sarkar filled the position in September 2011.
“Anytime there is recognition of this nature from the University, that means a lot to me as an academic. On the one hand, of course, we are rewarded in other ways, too. But I think given our profession, at the end of the day, recognition like this is probably the highest form of reward that goes over and above the other more traditional reward mechanisms.”
Dr. Sumit Sarkar’s research encompasses topics in knowledge management, personalization and recommendation systems, data privacy, software release, and information and knowledge quality.
His early research examined uncertainty as it relates to data and knowledge in the contexts of databases and expert systems, respectively. More recently, this interest has led to examining the role of uncertainty in several diverse areas that include personalization and recommendation systems, reconciliation of data from diverse sources, data quality, and data privacy, among others.
Sarkar is proud of his doctoral students, several of whom continue to conduct high-quality research.
“Working with PhD students has been not only tremendously gratifying for me, but also I think quite instrumental in my being able to do the research that has earned the recognition in the first place,” he said. “They have inspired me as much as I hope I have been able to inspire them.”
His research has been published in such premier business and technology journals as Management Science, Information Systems Research and Operations Research.
He currently serves as an associate editor for Management Science, IEEE Transactions on Management Information Systems, Information Technology and Management, and Risk and Decision Analysis, among other publications.
He served as the program co-chair for the International Conference on Information Systems, and the Conference Chair for the Workshop on Information Technology and Systems.
He joined UT Dallas in 1997 and received the Outstanding Graduate Teacher award in 2000. He is the PhD program director in the Jindal School of Management and is also the academic director of the UT Dallas International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis.
He received his Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and his MBA from the India Institute of Management, Calcutta. Sarkar earned his PhD in computers and information systems from the University of Rochester.