Awards and Service

Dr. Nattamai Kannan has actively contributed to national policymaking by collaborating with various federal agencies. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) invited him to present his research on mobile internet service and digital inequality. It was formally filed at their request for use in their rulemaking process for proceeding #23-199 on data caps in consumer broadband plans. He served as a grant reviewer for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), evaluating proposals for the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program, leveraging his expertise in how internet connectivity impacts social and economic inequality. He served as a Donna Wilhelm Research Fellow at SMU DataArts, where he studied the impact of digitization and AI/ML in the U.S. cultural sector that directly related to policy priorities of the National Endowment for the Arts. Lastly, he contributed to the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Information Network (O*NET) as an occupational expert, providing insights into technology-driven occupational dynamics. These efforts underscore his commitment to using research to inform and shape impactful national-level public policies. In academic, he has served as a reviewer at top journals (MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Information Systems Research etc.) and conferences (CIST, ICIS etc.).

Awards and Honors

• Nominated by students for the “Honoring Our Professors’ Excellence” award in April 2023.
• C. Jackson Grayson Endowed Faculty Innovation Award (2021). This was given by Cox School of Business to recognize excellence in teaching.
• Invited to present at the inaugural SMU Research Computing Day organized by the Center for Scientific Computation.
• Donna Wilhelm Research Fellow - SMU DataArts from 2019-2023. This fellowship was awarded to study the impact of digitization and AI/ML in the U.S. cultural sector.
• 2021 ICIS Junior Faculty Consortium, Austin, TX.
• Received a grant of $5,000 from Marketing Science Institute (MSI) in December 2021.
• Served as occupation expert for Occupational Information Network (O*NET), U.S. Department of Labor (2021).
• Served as grant reviewer for President Joe Biden’s broadband infrastructure development plan. Utilized expertise in how internet connectivity impacts social and economic inequality to evaluate grant proposals for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) different broadband connectivity programs: Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and Connecting Minority Communities (CMC) Pilot Program. These programs aim to provide cost-effective, high-speed internet services to rural areas and underserved communities.
• Inducted into the Kappa chapter of Alpha Iota Delta, an International Honor Society in the Decision Sciences and Information Systems. This honorary society is dedicated to building and improving skills in problem isolation, data analysis, modeling competence, information technology, and interpersonal skills.
• Scholarship to attend Esri’s Leadership Workshop on Location Analytics in Business (2018).
• President/Dean’s Fellowship at Georgia Tech (2012).
• Served as a judge for the American Society for Quality’s International Team Excellence Award, Charlotte, NC (2009).
• American Society for Quality (ASQ) certified Six Sigma Black Belt (2005).
• Certified Reliability Professional (CRP) awarded by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India (2006).
• Sun Certified Java Programmer (2005).

Service

• Session Chair:
  • 2017 INFORMS Annual Conference for a session on social media analytics.
  • 2016 Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST).
• Committee:
  • Program committee member for the 2024 Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST).
  • Search committee for the DataArts Research Director (May 2024 – Aug 2024).
  • Search committee for the DataArts Research Director (November 2022 – Jan 2023).
  • Committee member representing the Meadows School of Arts for the Data Science Cluster Hire working group (Summer of 2022).
  • Maneframe III planning committee, Center for Scientific Computation (CRC) – 2021-2022: This committee was instrumental in selecting the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, a state-of-the-art GPU system to run the latest Artificial Intelligence models.
  • Program committee member for Pre-ICIS SIGBPS 2019 Workshop on Blockchain and Smart Contract.
• Served as an anonymous referee for the following journals and conferences:
  • Journals: MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Production and Operations Management, Information Systems Research, Journal of Database Management, Electronic Commerce Research.
  • Conferences: Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST), International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS).