Meet the People of the Irsay

Biography

Dr. Sagar Samtani is an Associate Professor and Arthur M. Weimer Fellow in the Department of Operations and Decision Technologies at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (IU). He is the Founding and Executive Director of IU’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (DSAIL). Samtani graduated with his Ph.D. in 2018 from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab in the University of Arizona’s Management Information Systems (MIS) department in the Eller College of Management. From 2014 – 2017, Samtani served as a National Science Foundation (NSF) CyberCorps Scholarship-for-Service (SFS) Fellow in the AZSecure Program at the University of Arizona. Dr. Samtani’s research focuses on developing AI-enabled analytics approaches for cybersecurity (open-source software security, Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), advanced cyberinfrastructure security, AI risk management, Dark Web analytics), mental health, and business intelligence. Samtani has published over 80 journal and conference papers on these topics in leading Information Systems (IS) venues such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of MIS, cybersecurity venues such as IEEE TDSC, ACM TOPS, IEEE Security and Privacy (S&P), and Computers and Security, machine learning venues such as ACM TKDD, ACM KDD, IEEE TKDE, IEEE ICDM, IEEE Intelligent Systems, and health outlets such as IEEE ICDH and CHITA. His research has received over $5M in funding from NSF’s cybersecurity programs, including Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) for CTI research and AI for cybersecurity education, Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI) for operational cybersecurity research, and CyberCorps SFS for cybersecurity Cyber-AI workforce development, and CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII).

Dr. Samtani has co-founded workshops on AI for Cybersecurity topics at ACM KDD and IEEE ICDM. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for ACM TMIS, ACM DTRAP, and Information and Management. He is deeply engaged with industry, serving on the CompTIA Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) Executive Advisory Council and Board of Directors for the DEFCON AI Village (2021-2023). Similarly, he regularly presents at industry venues and conferences, including RSA, BlackHat, DEFCON, JPMorgan Chase, IT Nation, and others. Dr. Samtani has also won several awards for his research, including the ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Award (2019), Runner-Up for the INFORMS Nunamaker-Chen Dissertation Award (2018), and the INFORMS Design Science Award (2023). He has also won multiple teaching awards for his courses on AI for cybersecurity, CTI, and business analytics, including the IU Trustees Teaching Award (2023) and a Top 50 Best Undergraduates Business Professor by Poets and Quants (2022). Dr. Samtani was inducted into the NSF/CISA CyberCorps Hall of Fame in 2022 for his outstanding contributions to the cybersecurity community. He also won the AIS Early Career Award (2022) and Gordon B. Davis Young Scholar Award (2023) for his early career contributions to the field of Information Systems. He has also won the IEEE Big Data Security Junior Researcher Award (2023) and won the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at IU (2023). He has received over 100 media citations from the Associated Press, Forbes, Miami Herald, Fox, Science Magazine, AAAS, and The Penny Hoarder. He is a member of INFORMS, AIS, ACM, IEEE, and INNS.

Research Interests

Artificial intelligence for cybersecurity, cyber threat intelligence, deep learning, smart vulnerability assessment, Internet of Things, dark web analytics, cybersecurity, mobile health analytics, mental health analytics.