Sankar Kumar Pal is a Distinguished Scientist and former Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. 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 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 intelliegence. He was born in 1950 in Kolkata, India. 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 University of Calcutta in 1979, and another PhD in Electrical Engineering along with Diploma of the Imperial College from Imperial College, University of London, in 1982.

His areas of research interests include fuzzy sets and uncertainty analysis, artificial neural networks for machine intelligence, pattern recognition, image processing, data mining, genetic algorithms, rough sets, and soft computing. He has pioneered hybrid intelligent systems like neuro fuzzy and rough fuzzy hybridization. Prof. Pal is widely recognized across the world for his pioneering and extraordinary contributions in Machine Intelligence, Fuzzy Logic, Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition. This has made India a leader in these disciplines in international scenario. He is a co-author of seventeen books and more than four hundred research publications. He has served/serving as editor in most of the well-known scientific journal in computer science and engineering. He visited about forty countries as a Keynote/ Invited speaker or academic visitor.