Affiliation
Executive Director, Indo-US Science and Technology Forum

Education
PhD, Statistics, The Pennsylvania State University
MA, Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh
BSc, MSc, Statistics, University of Madras, India

Nandini Kannan was born in Bhopal, India, and completed her schooling in Mumbai and New Delhi. She enjoyed solving math puzzles as a child, inheriting her love of mathematics from her father—a mathematician who joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the 1950s to pursue a PhD in probability. While he left the program to join government service, he never lost his passion for mathematics, statistics, and philosophy and encouraged Kannan to pursue a research career in statistics.

After completing a master’s degree at the University of Madras, Kannan joined the University of Pittsburgh to work with C. R. Rao, one of the living legends in the statistics field. An extraordinary teacher who could make complex concepts come to life in a classroom, Rao trained his students to be independent thinkers and exposed them to emerging areas at the interface of statistics and computing.

Kannan earned her PhD in statistics from Penn State University, where her dissertation focused on the application of statistical methods to signal processing. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Kannan spent more than 20 years in academia, first as a faculty member and then as chair of the department of management science and statistics at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). During her time there, she helped develop new undergraduate and graduate programs and led a university-wide initiative on quantitative literacy. She was also instrumental in developing the PhD program in applied statistics at UTSA.

Kannan joined the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2014 as a program officer. Her responsibilities included managing core disciplinary research and workforce development programs in the Division of Mathematical Sciences, as well as a number of cross-directorate and cross-agency activities. She served as a co-chair for several data science–related activities in support of Harnessing the Data Revolution, one of NSF’s 10 Big Ideas. Kannan also helped create partnerships with the National Institutes of Health to support collaborative efforts in biomedical data science.

In 2019, Kannan was selected to be the executive director of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, a binational organization set up by the US and Indian governments to catalyze and promote long-term scientific collaborations between India and the US. In her role, she works with key stakeholders—including science agencies, foundations, and industry—to identify strategic areas for collaboration.

Kannan is proud of her work at NSF developing interdisciplinary research and training programs in data science. She is passionate about the critical role science and technology play in this global interconnected society and is committed to developing and supporting initiatives that address diversity and equity in the STEM workforce.