Sankar Kumar Pal (born 1950) is a computer scientist and president(&former director) of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He is a computer scientist with an international reputation on fuzzy neural network, soft computing, and machine intelligence. He founded the Machine Intelligence Unit in 1993, and the Center for Soft Computing Research: A National Facility in 2004, both at the ISI. He is the founder president of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, Kolkata Chapter. He is a recipient of S.S. Bhatnagar Prize in 1990. He was awarded Padma Shri in Science and Engineering on 5 April 2013 by the President of India Pranab Mukherjee in recognition of his work in machine intelligence. Education and career SK Pal studied at the University of Calcutta for his BSc in physics (1969), BTech (1972) and MTech (1974). He received a PhD in radio physics and electronics from the Rajabazar Science College campus of University of Calcutta in 1979 as a student of Indian Statistical Institute, and another PhD in electrical engineering along with Diploma of the Imperial College from Imperial College, University of London, in 1982. He worked at the University of California, Berkeley and University of Maryland, College Park from 1986 to 1987 as Fulbright Fellow, NASA Johnson Space Center from 1990 to 1992 and in 1994 as US NAS-NRC Senior Research Associate, distinguished visitor of IEEE Computer Society (USA) for Asia-Pacific Region in 1997, and US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C. in 2004 as a visiting scientist. Besides, he held several visiting positions in Australia, Poland, Italy, and Hong Kong universities as IEEE Distinguished Visitor. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, as the CSIR Senior Research Fellow in 1975, and eventually entered into full faculty in 1987, as professor. He then became distinguished scientist in 1998, director in 2005, and president in 2022. He was the first computer scientist as well as someone outside statistics and mathematics to become the director of ISI in its 76-year history. His areas of research interests include fuzzy sets and uncertainty analysis, artificial neural networks for machine intelligence, pattern recognition, image processing, data mining, granular computing, genetic algorithms, rough sets, and soft computing with applications such as in bioinformatics, video analytics, online social network anlysis, and cognitive mind development. He has pioneered hybrid intelligent systems like neuro fuzzy and rough fuzzy hybridization. Prof. Pal is widely recognized across the world for his pioneering