Professor Rao Kotagiri is recognised as one of the world's leading researchers in the fields of Computer Science and Software Engineering.

He is internationally acclaimed for his research on Logic Programming, Deductive Databases, Database Management Systems and Information Retrieval.

He is an outstanding teacher and has trained many postgraduate research students who have entered the Information Technology industry as well as academia.

His design of a new algorithm for the rapid retrieval of records from massive databases containing millions of items led to the development of an information retrieval system and the formation of an Australian software company which successfully markets the package worldwide.