Nirav Merchant

Nirav Merchant serves as the Director of the Data Science Institute. For the past three decades at the University of Arizona, his research has been focused on the development of scalable computational platforms (cyberinfrastructure) in support of open science projects. His work is primarily directed towards reducing the socio-technical barriers in adoption of emerging advances in computational and information sciences by domain sciences. 

His interests encompass large-scale data management platforms, data delivery technologies, cloud native methodologies, secure data analysis enclaves, and the use of managed sensors and wearables for health interventions. He is passionate about developing course work and training material to support workforce development and project based learning, with emphasis on informed adoption and utilization of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based analysis methods.

He serves as the principal investigator for NSF CyVerse, a national scale Cyberinfrastructure and Co-principal investigator for NSF Jetstream the first user-friendly, scalable cloud environment for NSF XSEDE/ACCESS. He leads the cyberinfrastructure team for the NSF & USDA funded National Artificial Intelligence Institute for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA)

He received his undergraduate degree in Industrial engineering from the University of Pune, India, and graduate degree in Systems and Industrial Engineering from the University of Arizona (1994).