A faculty member in the Naveen Jindal School of Management has been selected for inclusion in Marquis Who’s Who, a comprehensive directory that documents the achievements of influential people and their contributions to society.
Bose said AI is rapidly becoming an essential ingredient of virtually any technology field.
“There are new skills that will be needed to harness, manage, and govern this rapidly evolving tech,” he said. “I aim to contribute to preparing our students to harness this tech by incorporating AI into existing classes I am teaching. I also have some ideas on new classes around these topics as well. Given my industry connections, there also is significant potential to collaborate with industry and provide JSOM students with hands-on experience, which I will be exploring.”
He also plans to conduct research on Responsible AI, particularly as it relates to Supply Chains and Commercial Real Estate.
“These are two areas where I have spent a fair amount of time,” he said. “To keep a pulse on the industry, I will also continue advising corporate investors and boards on strategy and industry trends.”
What initially caught Bose’s interest in technology and artificial intelligence was the ability of technology to automate manual tasks and provide decision support for the betterment of society, emphasizing that AI offers unique opportunities to do so.
“My early experiences taught me the importance of focusing on the user experience and business impact of technology projects before you get started,” he said. “Also, I learned about the importance of having good design and quality execution at the onset. You cannot introduce high quality into a bad design, so make sure your design is well thought out to handle corner cases. Also, a good design without high quality in the execution is a missed opportunity.
Bose strongly believes that companies should incorporate new technology with a view toward the people and processes that will be involved in its implementation.
“The tech may be cool, but if people do not have the skills to use it, or if the business processes have not been redesigned to incorporate the tech, the project will fail,” he said.
As for what makes AI work properly, everything begins with and is dependent on the data, Bose said.
“You can’t do good AI if you have bad data,” he said. “And not every use case needs AI. There is a cost involved, so only use it when necessary. Also, the field of AI includes many different types ranging from knowledge systems to Statistical algorithms, deep learning to natural language processing, to Generative AI,” he said. “Use the right and simplest AI to solve a given problem to keep cost and complexity down.”
In his first job after earning his doctorate, Bose recalls working on planning and scheduling systems for the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s as a senior software engineer.
“The stakes were high given the high visibility of the telescope and the fact that I was working with some of the world’s leading astronomers and physicists,” he said. “One of the projects I was directly responsible for was to build an interactive point-and-click system to automate with applied intelligence the creation of astronomical observations from literally hundreds of pages of instructions in thick manuals. This project taught me the importance of good user-centered design to reduce the number of user points-and-clicks and rework, in addition to engaging with users to make sure their point-of-view was well understood in designing the software — not to mention the importance of quality, as a mistake could result in downstream problems costing millions of dollars in delays and risks.”
More recently, as a leader for Data, Analytics and AI at RealPage — a tech provider for apartment owners and operators — Bose led the creation of a data and AI platform that leveraged the disparate data within the enterprise ecosystem and harnessed AI to power multiple use cases for customers.
“These included more effective marketing, personalized interactions with prospects and tenants, optimized pricing of leases and amenities, automation of back-office workflows, predictive maintenance, supply chain intelligence and market forecasts” he said. “This required collaboration with multiple stakeholders, departments, vendors and customers, and the selection and implementation of the appropriate tech to build the platform. The sheer breadth of use cases that this platform is enabling will have a significant impact on the industry.”
When asked about what effect AI will have on employment and the environment, Bose was both optimistic and cautious.
“From my perspective, AI will make many jobs easier and more productive, while creating a need for new jobs to better harness the tech,” he said. “Environmental impacts will need to be addressed by making the tech more efficient.”
When Bose earned his PhD in computer science more than 30 years ago — his thesis was on AI in design — AI was more of a research area than a viable technology. His interest in applying these concepts to solve complex real problems took him down the industry path.
“But back then, I made a promise to myself that I’d come back to academia at some point since I loved it so much,” he said. “Recently, I have been wondering if the time was now. With that in mind, and with the sage advice of an esteemed colleague, I tested this potential move back to academia by taking on an adjunct faculty role at The University of Texas Dallas for the Spring 2024 semester. I loved the experience, and it convinced me that the time was now, and so I have decided to jump in with both feet.”
As for what it felt like to learn that he was included in Marquis Who’s Who, he was ecstatic and humbled.
“I have stood on the shoulders of many educators, leaders and technologists to have accomplished whatever I have,” he said. “I consider myself very fortunate in that regard. My passion with AI and tech was borne out of seeing its potential many decades ago. Whatever I have achieved is an outcome of the desire to make it real in multiple domains.”
