Sanmay Das joins Sanghani Center at Innovation Campus to lead AI for social impact focus
Das will engage local nonprofits, government, and industry to expand existing initiatives and foster new partnerships that promote responsible artificial intelligence.
Head shot of Sanmay Das taken outside of building
Sanmay Das has joined Virginia Tech as professor of computer science in the College of Engineering and associate director of artificial intelligence (AI) for social impact at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics.
Located at the university’s Innovation Campus, Das will be responsible for engaging local nonprofits, government, and industry to expand existing initiatives and foster new partnerships that share the essential goal of using AI for the good of society.
“We are excited for Sanmay to contribute to the research at the Innovation Campus and Sanghani Center,” said Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of the Innovation Campus. “His areas of focus, like the Sanghani Center, help advance AI for positive change, and I know he will make a great impact on our students and the community at large.”
In addition to building new strengths at Virginia Tech in areas like social service provision, the focus on AI for social impact will boost some of the efforts already underway at the Sanghani Center – for example, the Urb Comp program that trains students in the latest methods in analyzing massive data sets to study key issues concerning urban populations and supports projects such as Redistrict, an effort to help rezoning attendance zones with Loudoun County Public Schools.
Das’ research has two main threads. The first focuses on the use of AI in public services and resources - such as homeless services, K-12 education, or organ transplantation - with the goal of maximizing societal benefit in a just and fair manner. A second thread focuses on understanding AI-mediated human systems which increasingly influence many aspects of people’s lives, ranging from what they see and read to inclusion in the financial system. Das’ work studies how such systems function and their effects on society.
One of his current collaborative projects aims at understanding the ways algorithmic techniques for prioritization and resource allocation can best be used for societal benefit by local government and nongovernmental organizations to support vulnerable populations, such as people experiencing homelessness or at high risk of eviction.
Another strives to better connect research to practice in educational policymaking and support school divisions in improving student and teacher performance and enhancing the effectiveness and fairness of resource allocation through data-driven decision making.
Last year, the Association for Computing Machinery named Das a distinguished scientist, citing his contributions to AI and economics, AI for social good, and service to the profession.
Das joins Virginia Tech from his position as professor of computer science and faculty co-director of the Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnership at George Mason University. From 2013-20, he was faculty at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University, St. Louis, where he founded and served as the first chair of the steering committee of the interdisciplinary Division of Computational and Data Sciences.
From 2012-13, he was a member of the Discovery Analytics Center at Virginia Tech - renamed the Sanghani Center in 2021 - where he taught classes in AI and worked on research at the intersection of machine learning and finance as well as social media and collective intelligence.
“We are very happy to welcome Sanmay back to VT and the Sanghani Center in his new role,” said Naren Ramakrishnan, the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering and director of the Sanghani Center. “Responsible AI is an important issue and his work in electronic markets, multi-agent systems, and social and ethical impacts complements our current expertise and will help us expand into new areas that will provide greater research opportunities for our graduate students.”
Das has received awards for research, teaching, and service, including the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award; several best paper awards from major conferences and journals; the Outstanding Service Award from the Computer Science Department at George Mason; and the Department Chair Award for Outstanding Teaching at Washington University.
He is active in the broader AI and computer science communities, serving as chair of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence, and a member of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Information Science and Technology Study Group. He is also an emeritus member of the board of directors of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
He is currently serving as general co-chair of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems 2025, having previously served as program co-chair of the conference in 2017. He has also recently served as program co-chair and general-co-chair of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, as well as associate program chair for the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
His editorial roles include serving as an associate editor for the Association for Computing Machinery Transactions on Economics and Computation; the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research; and Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
Das received a Ph.D. in computer science and a Master of Science, electrical engineering, and computer science from from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree in computer science from Harvard University.
