Prof. KC Santosh, a highly accomplished AI expert, served as Chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of South Dakota (USD) until 2026. He also served as the inaugural founding director of the USD AI Research. He served the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a research fellow. Before that, he worked as a postdoctoral research scientist at the LORIA research centre, Universite de Lorraine in direct collaboration with industrial partner, ITESOFT, France. He earned his PhD in Computer Science – Artificial Intelligence from the INRIA Nancy Grand Est research centre (formerly Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, France). With funding exceeding $8.7 million from sources like DOD, NSF, ED, and SDBOR, he has authored 13 books and more than 280 peer-reviewed research articles, including IEEE TPAMI, IEEE TMI, and IEEE TAI. He serves as an associate editor for esteemed journals such as IEEE Transactions on AI, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, Int. J of Machine Learning & Cybernetics, and Int. J of Pattern Recognition & Artificial Intelligence.

To name a few, Prof. Santosh is the proud recipient of the Visionary Leadership Award (University of Derby – UK, 2023), the Cutler Award for Teaching and Research Excellence (USD, 2021), the President's Research Excellence Award (USD, 2019), and the Ignite Award from the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS, 2014).
Effective from Spring 2024, he joined the NIST's AI Standards and Innovation (formerly known as AI Safety Institute Consortium) and, since December 2024, has been serving in the U.S. Speaker Program (U.S. Department of State), delivering talks on AI and AI education-being the only representative from South Dakota in both roles.