Rajendra Akerkar is professor and leader of Big Data Research Group at Western Norway Research Institute, where his primary domain of activities is big data and semantic science with aim to combine strong theoretical results with high impact practical outcomes. He holds master’s in applied mathematics and doctorate in computer science. His research and teaching experience include over 28 years in the academia spanning different universities in Asia, Europe and North America. Rajendra has authored/co-authored 16 books, around 128 research papers, co-edited 2 e-Books and edited 17 volumes of international conferences and workshops. He is actively involved in several international ICT initiatives, and research & innovation projects for more than 19 years. He is currently coordinating INTPART Big Data for Emergency Management (BDEM) and Horizon 2020 Leveraging Big Data to Manage Transport Operations (LeMO) projects.