Computer Scientist Recognized for
AI Contributions

Dr. Sriraam Natarajan planned to earn a master’s degree and find a job in computer networking when he came to the U.S. from India in 2001. That changed when he became fascinated with an emerging field that drew few students at the time: artificial intelligence (AI).

Natarajan, a professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Dallas, is now an expert in AI and recently was named a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The AAAI Fellows program recognizes individuals across the globe who have made significant, sustained contributions to the field of AI.

Natarajan was recognized in spring of 2025 at the 39th annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Philadelphia.

“I’m just completely overwhelmed and very thankful to all my mentors, my collaborators and my students,” Natarajan said. “Most importantly, I am thankful for my family’s support.”

In 2001, before Siri, Alexa and ChatGPT existed, AI was a small field of study. As Natarajan pursued his PhD at Oregon State University, he studied AI technologies that provide personal assistance. After graduating in 2007, he worked on applying AI to health care problems while at University of Wisconsin, Madison as a postdoc, and in 2010, he joined Wake Forest University as a faculty member. Later, he moved to Indiana University to help create a health informatics program there.

At UTD, Natarajan focuses on building machine learning models that use data to make predictions. In 2023, he and his team of researchers developed an AI tool to predict the risk of cardiac arrest in children hospitalized in cardiac intensive care units.

In 2024, Natarajan presented research at the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME) on using AI to determine relationships in clinical data between risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes including preterm birth, hypertension and preeclampsia.

“The problem I want to figure out is whether we can mitigate these adverse outcomes by performing early interventions that are guided by AI-driven techniques,” he said.

“Dr. Natarajan has been an exceptional colleague and a collaborator to many of our faculty, and we are thrilled that he has been recognized for his contributions to the field of AI.”

— Dr. Ovidiu Daescu, professor and department head of computer science

Natarajan, who directs the UTD Center for Machine Learning, said AI can assist doctors, for example, by quickly sharing critical information from a patient’s medical chart. For instance, for a diabetic patient who goes to an urgent care clinic with a broken bone, AI could warn the doctor that the patient’s last blood glucose test was high, which could inform a doctor’s decision on what medications to prescribe.

At a time when the use of AI raises concern among many, Natarajan emphasizes that humans are always ultimately in control of the technology. He presented new research on the topic at the AAAI conference where he was honored as a fellow for his significant contributions to statistical relational learning and his service to the AAAI community.

“It is important to understand who is in control of the process — such as AI that gives movie recommendations or humans in high-risk domains including health care,” Natarajan said. “In medicine, AI is in the loop but AI doesn’t make the decision. The final determinations are made by doctors, while the AI is simply there to assist them in making informed decisions.”