Ram Sriram selected as Solid Modeling Association (SMA) Fellow

Ram D. Sriram’s technical leadership in design automation spans nearly three decades in academia and government. In the mid 1980s, during the emerging days of the Internet, Sriram envisioned a computer-networked globally distributed design environment – called DICE — and developed computational tools for supporting such an environment. The DICE project made several novel contributions to engineering design automation and computer science, such as an active object-oriented blackboard system, synchronous and asynchronous communication tools, integration of qualitative and quantitative geometric reasoning, knowledge-based design, use of asynchronous teams for solving both symbolic and numeric constraints, design rationale capture, and collaborative negotiation. His team pioneered the integration of qualitative reasoning with solid modeling. He joined NIST in 1994, where he led NIST’s successful effort to develop standards for interoperability of various computer-aided engineering systems. Sriram’s position at NIST has enabled him to take a leading role in the development and application of standards for more than two decades. His efforts include design repositories, extensions to STEP, a semantic product model (CPM), process modeling language, sustainable manufacturing, and integration of life cycle analysis and product lifecycle management systems. Sriram’s efforts have greatly contributed to manufacturing systems integration. For his contributions to computer aided design, Sriram received the ASME Computers in Engineering Division’s 2016 lifetime achievement award. Sriram has been elected a fellow of the following societies: the ASME, AAAS, IEEE (Computer Society), and the Washington Academy of Sciences. Additionally, he is a Senior Member of AAAI and a Distinguished member of ACM.