Prof. Shashi Shekhar is a world leader in the area of spatial
databases, an interdisciplinary area at the intersection of
Computer Science and Geographic Information Science (GIS).
A major goal of his research is to understand the computational
structure of very large spatial databases needed by physical sciences
and engineering disciplines.
Prof. Shekhar has a distinguished academic record that includes 200+
refereed papers and multiple books. He is widely sought by policy makers
in United States and abroad for his expertise in spatial databases
and spatial data mining. His research results are now playing a
critical role in evacuation planning in context of homeland security.
Earlier his research developed core technologies behind
in-vehicle navigation devices as well as web-based routing services,
which revolutionized outdoor navigation in urban environment in
the last decade.
Prof. Shekhar was elected an IEEE Fellow and received the
IEEE Technical Achievement Award for contributions to
spatial database storage methods, data mining, and GIS.
He served on the Board of Directors of the University Consortium
on GIS, and the NAS/NRC Mapping Science Committee.