Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in LausanneSwitzerland
Pascal Frossard is a Full Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering (STI) at EPFL, with a courtesy appointment in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences. He founded and directs the LTS4 laboratory since 2003, co-leads the EPFL AI Center and Swiss Data Science Center, and serves as Associate Dean for Research at STI. Research Focus: Machine Learning, Graph Signal Processing, AI Applications in Healthcare, Computer Vision Academic Leadership: IEEE Fellow, ELLIS Fellow, Conference Chair roles Key Projects: Digital Pathology for Oncology, Cardiac Digital Twins, Robust Machine Learning Research Interests: His work bridges signal processing, machine learning, and applied mathematics, emphasizing biomedical applications. Recent research includes adversarial robustness in classifiers, network representation learning, and 360-degree video analysis. Scientific Awards: IEEE Fellow ELLIS Fellow Leadership in IEEE technical committees Advising & Grants: Supervised 20+ PhD students and postdocs. Secured major grants from PHRT, Hasler Foundation, FNS-Sinergia, Armasuisse, Google, and Cisco.
Arti Singh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on plant breeding, soybean diseases, genomics, and phenomics, with a strong emphasis on integrating artificial intelligence and high-throughput technologies into agricultural systems. She leads projects involving AI-driven disease identification, precision agriculture, and crop improvement strategies. Her expertise includes developing machine learning models for real-time weed and insect classification (e.g., WeedNet and InsectNet), deploying drones and ground robots for crop phenotyping, and leveraging genomic data to map traits like flowering time and disease resistance in legumes. Singh collaborates on initiatives like the AIIRA Institute for Resilient Agriculture and the BioTrove biodiversity dataset. Singh’s work spans plant stress phenotyping, digital twin technologies for plant sciences, and multi-sensor phenotyping for early disease detection. Her research bridges computational methods with traditional agronomy, aiming to enhance crop resilience and sustainability in the face of environmental challenges. Her recent projects include optimizing robotic navigation for precision agriculture, improving soybean yield estimation via video analysis, and dissecting genetic architectures of traits in mungbean and soybean using GWAS and genomic tools. She actively contributes to conferences and publishes in high-impact journals, advancing both foundational and applied aspects of agricultural science.
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUnited States
Tommi Jaakkola is the Thomas Siebel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his MSc in theoretical physics from Helsinki University of Technology in 1992 and his PhD from MIT in computational neuroscience in 1997. After completing a postdoctoral position in computational molecular biology as a DOE/Sloan fellow at UCSC, he joined the MIT EECS faculty in 1998. His research advances how machines can learn, predict or control, and do so at scale in an efficient, principled, and interpretable manner. His work in machine learning extends from foundational theory to modern applications, focusing especially on statistical inference and estimation tasks that lie at the heart of complex learning problems. He designs new methods, theory and algorithms to automate the use and generation of semi-structured data such as natural language text, images, molecules, or strategies. Jaakkola applies and develops algorithms to solve multi-faceted recommender, retrieval, or inferential tasks (particularly in biomedical contexts), design and optimize molecules or reactions for drug design, and model strategic, game theoretic interactions. His recent work heavily focuses on diffusion models, protein structure prediction, molecular design, and generative AI, with significant publications in top conferences including ICML, NeurIPS, and ICLR. His scientific contributions span multiple disciplines with significant impact in both theoretical machine learning and practical applications in computational biology and chemistry, including notable work on antibiotic discovery published in Cell. Current advisees: Julia Balla, Bowen Jing, Hannes Stärk, Peter Holderrieth, Chenyu Wang Recent graduates: Gabriele Corso (Boltz PBC), Ezra Erives (DE Shaw), Jason Yim (Xaira) Jaakkola maintains an active research program through MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), with his office located in the Stata Center (32-G470). His work bridges theoretical machine learning with practical applications, making significant contributions to both the academic field and potential real-world impact in healthcare and drug discovery.
Ole Winther is Professor in High dimensional biological data analysis/Machine learning at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen and Professor in Data science and complexity at DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark. He serves as CRO and co-founder of raffle.ai, CTO and co-founder of FindZebra, Head of ELLIS Unit Copenhagen, and co-PI of the Machine Learning for Life Science Center. His research spans Bioinformatics , Machine Learning , and AI for Science , focusing on applying deep learning to biological sequence analysis, latent variable models, and medical NLP. Winther's work develops predictive and generative models for bioinformatics, with significant contributions to protein localization tools (SignalP, DeepLoc, DeepTMHMM), single-cell genomics, and novel deep learning architectures like variational autoencoders and diffusion models. Analysis of Winther's recent publications (2023-2025) reveals a strong trend toward integrating protein language models with traditional bioinformatics approaches and applying diffusion models to scientific problems. His work bridges theoretical machine learning advancements with practical applications in biology and medicine, particularly in protein sequence analysis, medical search engines, and scientific simulation acceleration. Winther currently supervises a diverse research group including Panagiotis Antoniadis, Rachael M. DeVries, Jun Wang, Beatrix M. G. Nielsen, Felix G. Teufel, Irene R. Rodriguez, Anders Christensen, and Christopher Heje Grønbech. His former students have established successful careers at institutions including Google, Apple, and various startups, with notable alumni like Casper Sønderby (Google Brain) and Søren Sønderby (Apple). He leads significant research initiatives including the ELLIS Unit Copenhagen and the Machine Learning for Life Science Center, while maintaining active industry partnerships through his co-founded companies raffle.ai (enterprise search using NLP) and FindZebra (search engine for rare diseases). His teaching includes Deep Learning courses at both DTU (02456) and University of Copenhagen (NDAK24002U).
Harris H. Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Systems Biology and Department of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he also serves as Interim Chair of Systems Biology. He is affiliated with the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (C2B2) and the Integrated Program in Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Studies (CMBS). B.S., Physics and Mathematics, MIT Ph.D., Biophysics, Harvard University Dr. Wang's research lies at the intersection of systems and synthetic biology, focusing on developing foundational technologies for genome engineering, microbiome manipulation, and synthetic genomics. His lab pioneers methods such as MAGE, MAGIC, CAST, and CAMII to enable high-throughput genetic manipulation, in situ microbiome engineering, and AI-driven microbial culturomics. Key research themes include understanding microbial community dynamics, engineering cellular memory systems, designing biocontained genetic circuits, and applying synthetic biology to human health challenges in personalized medicine and infectious disease. His recent publications reveal a strong trend in spatial and functional metagenomics, CRISPR-based microbiome editing, and synthetic biology tools for data storage and genetic stability. The articles span high-impact journals like Nature , Science , and Nature Biotechnology , reflecting his leadership in developing scalable, programmable biological systems. Scientific Awards: NIH Director’s Early Independence Award Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science Sloan Research Fellowship NSF CAREER Award ONR Young Investigator Award Burroughs Wellcome Fund PATH Award Schaefer Scholar Blavatnik National Award Vilcek Prize PECASE Dr. Wang has advised numerous PhD and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom have gone on to independent scientific careers. His lab is supported by major grants from NIH, NSF, DARPA, DOE, and foundations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and CZ Biohub NY. He is actively involved in educational initiatives, including organizing Columbia’s iGEM team and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Synthetic Biology course. The Wang Lab is based at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and is part of national consortia such as the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) and the Genome Project-Write (GP-Write) initiative. The lab develops and applies cutting-edge technologies in automation, machine learning, and synthetic biology to engineer microbiomes for applications in medicine, global health, and climate change.
Romain Lopez is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Biology at New York University, with a joint appointment in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Biology. He will be joining NYU in September 2025, bringing expertise at the intersection of machine learning and computational biology. Prior to joining NYU, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Genentech and Stanford Medicine from 2021 to 2025, working with Jonathan Pritchard and Aviv Regev. Dr. Lopez received his educational training at prestigious institutions: PhD in Computer Science (2021) from the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Mike Jordan and Nir Yosef M.S. in Applied Mathematics (2016) from École polytechnique, Palaiseau, France Dr. Lopez's research focuses on developing machine learning methods to understand biological systems at the cellular level. His work bridges computational techniques with biological applications, particularly in single-cell and spatial omics analysis. He pioneered probabilistic approaches for single-cell analysis with scVI and co-developed scvi-tools, now widely adopted tools in the field. His research spans deep generative models, causal inference, perturbation modeling, and representation learning for biological data. His publication record demonstrates a consistent trajectory of innovation in computational biology, with recent work focusing on spatial biology, disentangled representations of cellular perturbations, and causal modeling of cellular responses. He has made significant contributions to the field of single-cell analysis, developing methods that help scientists interpret complex cellular data and predict how cells respond to various perturbations. Dr. Lopez has received numerous honors and awards for his research: Best Paper Award from the ICML Workshop on AI for Science (2024) Best Paper Award Honorable Mention from the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2021) Best Student Poster Award from the ICML Workshop on Computational Biology (2019) UC Berkeley EECS Departmental Graduate Fellowship (2016) Carnot Foundation Fellowship (2016) Monahan Foundation Fellowship (2016) French National Defence Medal, Bronze Echelon (2014) At NYU, Dr. Lopez will lead the Biological Machine Learning group, which develops probabilistic machine learning methods to uncover biological mechanisms governing cellular behavior and disease. His lab focuses on creating tools that transform complex cellular data into biological insights, with applications in understanding cancer, immune responses, and fundamental cellular processes. His work has significant implications for precision medicine and drug discovery.
Anamaria Crisan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo, affiliated with the Insight Lab. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary work at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Data Visualization, and Applied AI/ML. She explores human-centered approaches to AI/ML systems, visualization design for decision-making, and healthcare data science applications. Dr. Crisan holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia (2019), an MSc in Bioinformatics (2010), and a BComp in Biomedical Computing from Queen’s University (2008). Her educational background bridges computer science, biology, and healthcare informatics. Her research interests include responsible AI/ML systems, interactive visualization for data-driven decisions, and leveraging visualization in healthcare to improve outcomes. She emphasizes transparency, trustworthiness, and human alignment in AI technologies. Her work spans diverse applications such as genomic epidemiology, dashboard design, and ethical AI evaluation. Notable contributions include studies on human-AI collaboration, visualization linters, and scalable dashboard census methodologies. She has published widely in top-tier venues like IEEE VIS and ACM CHI. Dr. Crisan’s lab (UW Insight Lab) focuses on human-centered approaches to automating data science and improving visualization practices in critical domains like healthcare and public health.
University of California, Los AngelesUnited States
Suhas Diggavi is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, within the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. His primary research area is Signals and Systems, with a strong focus on information theory and its interdisciplinary applications. His research interests span Information Theory , Machine Learning , Differential Privacy , Federated Learning , Cyber-Physical Systems , and Bio-informatics . He investigates fundamental limits and practical algorithms for secure, efficient, and robust data processing in distributed and networked environments. The recent publications highlight a strong trend in privacy-preserving machine learning, particularly in the shuffled model of differential privacy , communication-efficient distributed SGD , and robust optimization . His work bridges theoretical information-theoretic foundations with real-world applications in federated learning, wireless networks, and genomic data analysis. Notable scientific awards include: Guggenheim Foundation Fellow (2021) ACM CCS Best Paper Award (2021) IEEE Fellow (2013) IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award (2006) Multiple Google, Amazon, and Facebook Research Awards Suhas Diggavi actively advises graduate students and leads a research group focused on learning, information, and optimization. His work is supported by major industry grants and collaborations, particularly in privacy and distributed learning. He has made significant contributions to information-theoretic models in bio-sequencing and wireless security. He leads the LIOS (Learning, Information, Optimization, and Stochastic Systems) research group at UCLA, where his team develops theoretical frameworks and practical algorithms for next-generation data-driven systems.
Florentina Bunea is a Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Cornell University’s Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, and an active member of the Graduate Fields of Statistics, Applied Mathematics, and Computer Science. She also serves on the Diversity and Inclusion Council of her college, championing workforce diversity in data-science disciplines. Education & Institutional Roles Professor, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Cornell University Member, Graduate Fields of Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science Member, Diversity and Inclusion Council, Bowers College of Computing and Information Science Research Interests Professor Bunea’s research lies at the intersection of statistical machine-learning theory and high-dimensional inference. She develops rigorous methodology supported by sharp theoretical guarantees to tackle core problems in modern data science. Recent themes include: Soft-max mixtures for understanding large-language-model/AI algorithms Optimal transport for high-dimensional mixture distributions Wasserstein-distance inference for sparse mixing measures in topic models Latent-space clustering and cluster-based inference in high dimensions Network modeling and hidden-structure inference Applications spanning genetics, systems immunology, neuroscience, sociology, and economics Research Funding & Awards Her work is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF-DMS). She is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and a recipient of the IMS Medallion Award. Editorial & Service Contributions Associate Editor: Annals of Statistics, Bernoulli, JASA, JRSS-B, EJS, Annals of Applied Statistics Co-Editor: Chapman & Hall/CRC Statistics and Applied Probability Monograph Series Advising & Collaboration Professor Bunea has mentored numerous doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, including Xin Bing, Shuyu Liu, Seth Strimas-Mackey, and Yang Ning, among others. Collaborative projects extend across Cornell and external institutions, producing widely-used software packages and high-impact publications. Contact Office: 1184 Comstock Hall, Cornell University Email: fb238@cornell.edu Phone: (607) 255-8449
University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignUnited States
Daniel Cooney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He holds additional affiliations as an Affiliate at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. His research focuses on applying partial differential equations (PDEs), dynamical systems, and stochastic processes to study evolutionary dynamics, particularly in biological and social systems. Key themes include multilevel selection, evolutionary game theory, and the emergence of cooperative behavior. Cooney earned his PhD in Applied and Computational Mathematics from Princeton University, advised by Simon Levin, and completed a postdoc as a Simons Fellow in Mathematical Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. His work bridges theoretical mathematics with applications in ecology, epidemiology, and social sciences. Recent publications explore topics like altruistic punishment in cultural systems, classroom-turnover dynamics, and protocell evolution. He actively participates in academic outreach, co-organizing conferences such as the AMS Special Session on Mathematics of Infectious Disease and the SIAM Minisymposium on Social-Ecological Systems. His research has been published in high-impact journals including *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences* and *Bulletin of Mathematical Biology*.
Vivek Shenoy is the Eduardo D. Glandt President's Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with primary appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and secondary appointments in Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. He leads the Multiscale Mechanobiology and Biomaterials Laboratory, which focuses on developing theoretical frameworks and numerical methods to understand complex biological and engineering systems across multiple length scales. Shenoy's research spans mechanobiology, chromatin organization, cell mechanics, and biomaterials. His work addresses the fundamental challenge of modeling how small-scale cellular phenomena couple with long-range tissue-level interactions across micrometers to centimeters. By integrating insights from soft matter physics, solid mechanics, chemistry, and applied mathematics, his group develops multiphysics continuum and mesoscale theories to elucidate mechanisms controlling both biological and engineering systems. His recent publications demonstrate an increasing focus on nuclear mechanics, chromatin organization, and the interplay between mechanical forces and gene regulation. Analysis of Shenoy's publication record reveals a strong interdisciplinary approach, with high-impact papers spanning biophysics, materials science, and cell biology. His work shows consistent evolution from fundamental mechanics of materials to complex biological systems, with recent emphasis on the mechanical regulation of chromatin architecture, cell migration dynamics in 3D environments, and mechanotransduction in development and disease. His publications appear regularly in top journals including Nature, Science, and their affiliated publications, demonstrating significant influence across multiple fields. Eduardo D. Glandt President's Distinguished Professor Multiple publications in Nature, Science, and PNAS Active research program with publications through 2025 Shenoy actively mentors students and postdocs through his laboratory, with numerous co-authored publications indicating strong mentorship. His research program appears to be well-funded through multiple grants supporting his work in mechanobiology and biomaterials. The Multiscale Mechanobiology and Biomaterials Laboratory maintains active collaborations across disciplines and institutions, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of his research. The Multiscale Mechanobiology and Biomaterials Laboratory, housed within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, serves as the primary research hub for Shenoy's work. The lab maintains an active presence on social media (Twitter: @ShenoyLab) for updates on activities and publications. Their research approach combines theoretical modeling with experimental validation to address fundamental questions at the interface of mechanics, materials science, and biology.
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in LausanneSwitzerland
Pierre Vandergheynst is a Full Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in the Department of Electrical Engineering, with a courtesy appointment in Computer and Communication Sciences. He serves as EPFL’s Vice-Provost for Education since 2015 and leads the Signal Processing Laboratory 2 (LTS2). His research spans harmonic analysis, sparse approximations, mathematical data processing, and applications in signal/image processing, computer vision, machine learning, and graph-based data analysis. PhD in Mathematical Physics (1998), Université catholique de Louvain Postdoctoral Researcher at EPFL (1998-2001) Assistant Professor at EPFL (2002-2007) His research explores geometry/symmetry in high-dimensional data, redundant dictionaries for dimensionality reduction, and computational harmonic analysis on manifolds. Recent work focuses on protein structure modeling, geometric deep learning, and graph-based signal processing. Key article trends include graph neural networks for protein analysis, geometric deep learning in neuroscience, and structured knowledge priors in neural models. His 2023-2025 publications emphasize interpretable AI, long-range dependencies in graphs, and molecular representation learning. Scientific Awards: IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award (2023) Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award (2022) Apple ARTS Award (2007) De Boelpaepe Prize, Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium (2009-2010) He has supervised over 30 PhD theses and contributed to foundational work in graph signal processing, compressive sensing, and geometric deep learning. His lab develops tools for data science on non-Euclidean structures, with applications in medicine, astronomy, and wireless systems.
Martin T. Wells is the Charles A. Alexander Professor of Statistical Sciences at Cornell University, with joint appointments in the Department of Statistical Science, Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Department of Social Statistics, and as Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research at Weill Medical School. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the ASA-SIAM Book Series and Co-Editor of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Weill Cornell Medical College Research Interests span applied and theoretical statistics, Bayesian methods, biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, and computational biology. His work bridges disciplines like finance, legal studies, and health services research. Article Trends highlight advancements in Bayesian modeling, quantum cognition machine learning, tensor analysis, and misclassification correction, with applications in genomics, finance, and public health. Fellow of the American Statistical Association Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society Contributions include developing statistical software (e.g., rTensor), methodological innovations in clinical trials, and empirical legal studies on civil rights and the death penalty.
Liping Liu is a Professor in the Department of Management at The University of Akron's College of Business. He holds a Ph.D. in Business from the University of Kansas (1995), Master of Engineering in Systems Engineering (1991), and dual bachelor's degrees in Applied Mathematics (1986) and River Dynamics (1987). Ph.D., University of Kansas MS, Huazhong University of Science and Technology B.E., Wuhan University BS, Huazhong University of Science and Technology His research spans Artificial Intelligence , Electronic Business , Systems Analysis , Data Quality , and Belief Function Theory . He pioneered coarse utility theory and linear belief functions , now taught in top Ph.D. programs across multiple disciplines. Key trends in his publications include Belief Function Applications (2012-2024), Medical Data Systems (2003-2015), and Decision Theory (2004-2014). Recent works focus on Gamma Belief Functions (2024) and computational improvements in linear belief function operations (2019-2016). Scientific contributions recognized via: Microsoft Azure Educator Grant (2014-2016) Inclusion in Who's Who in America (2010-2013) and Who's Who in the World (2011-2013) As an editor and committee member for major conferences (INFORMS, AMCIS, Belief Functions conferences), he bridges academic research with practical systems implementation in e-business and healthcare domains.
Alexandre Bouchard-Côté is a Professor of Statistics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), affiliated with the Department of Statistics within the Faculty of Science. His research focuses on computational statistics, Bayesian methods, and Monte Carlo techniques, with applications in evolutionary biology, cancer genomics, and computational linguistics. Education : PhD in Computer Science (with Designated Emphasis in Statistics) from UC Berkeley (2010), BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from McGill University (2005). Affiliations : Director of the Blang probabilistic programming project and leader of the Bouncy Particle Sampler research group. Research Interests : Bouchard-Côté develops scalable Bayesian computational methods, including non-reversible Monte Carlo algorithms like the Bouncy Particle Sampler, and applies these to problems in cancer phylogenetics, evolutionary dynamics, and historical linguistics. His work emphasizes bridging theoretical foundations with practical tools for data science. Publications Trends : Recent work spans distributed sampling frameworks (e.g., Pigeons.jl), variational phylogenetic inference, and cancer clonal evolution modeling. His articles often address algorithmic scalability and interdisciplinary applications in biology and astronomy. Awards : CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics (2024) PIMS-UBC Mathematical Sciences Young Faculty Award (2018) Tweedie New Researcher Award (2016) Advising & Grants : Supervises graduate students (e.g., Son Luu, Nikola Surjanovic) and leads funded projects on distributed MCMC and cancer genomics. Collaborates with institutions like the Simons Foundation and the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI). Labs/Teams : Core member of the UBC Statistical Machine Learning group, contributing to open-source tools like Blang and the Bouncy Particle Sampler implementation.
