Sudha Ram: Charting Your Own Path and the Value of Persistence

Sudha Ram is the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of MIS, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation for the Eller College of Management. With joint faculty appointments as a professor of computer science and a member of the BIO5 Institute and the Institute for Environment, she is also the director of the INSITE: Center for Business Intelligence and Analytics at the University of Arizona.  

She was also recently honored to be the first guest on the inaugural episode of Wildcat Wonder: Inside Arizona Research, the University of Arizona Office of Research and Partnerships' new podcast. In the episode, Ram spoke with Lisa Romero, associate vice president of research communications and marketing, and Laine Kowalski, a student writer and content specialist. 

Ram says that the university selected just a handful of people to highlight their work for a general audience, showcasing the impact that research can make. “The purpose of the podcast was to attract a wide audience and make professors very approachable.” 

Ram was honored to be the first one approached and selected to be a guest. As the episode begins, Romero even calls Ram her “dream first guest.” During the podcast episode titled “Charting Your Own Path and the Value of Persistence with Dr. Sudha Ram,” the conversation covered topics such as Ram’s forty years of pioneer efforts at the U of A in areas such as distributed databases, data analytics and interdisciplinary research, her beloved rescue dog and her goals for the future. 

Ram shares her personal story of perseverance, starting with her early years in her career upon her arrival in the United States in 1982, “when the PC had first come out.” She also reflects on the foundation of her education in business and computer sciences, saying she had “one foot in very technical stuff and one foot in a very practical way to think about businesses.” 

She also enthusiastically recalls getting recruited to the university, where they began setting up a lab and bringing in PCs. But even at that time, she says she had a vision for a world where everything would eventually be connected. And she admits, “People thought I was crazy.” 

Ram has since firmly secured her position as a hardworking female in a largely male-dominated industry. And she has done so her way. Some of her significant research has included predicting asthma attacks using social media data, improving first-year retention rates through WiFi usage patterns and COVID contract tracing.  

When asked by Romero what her favorite discipline or project has been at the U of A or beyond, Ram says her freshman retention project. She explains that she became a professor because she was very interested in research, teaching and pushing the frontiers of knowledge. 

However, she says, “My passion has always been to not just teach out of a textbook but to teach out of my own research and experiences.” Furthermore, she emphasizes sharing the importance of critical thinking and how students can apply the concepts they learn. Ultimately, she says her students are “front and center,” adding that they teach her a lot and give her energy as well. 

She ends the podcast with gratitude for the university and the Eller College. She also shares her continued goals, which include training people “to think particularly in different directions outside the box,” enjoying the process and integrating research, teaching and service.