Mahdi Khodayar is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Tulsa . He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University (2020) and M.Sc./B.S. degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Technology (2015, 2013). His research focuses on AI and machine learning applications in power systems, transportation systems, computer vision, and spatiotemporal pattern recognition. B.Sc. in Computer Engineering (2013), K.N. Toosi University of Technology M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence (2015), K.N. Toosi University of Technology Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (2020), Southern Methodist University Khodayar’s research bridges deep learning with energy systems , including fault detection in power grids, renewable energy forecasting, and traffic scene understanding. His work leverages graph neural networks , reinforcement learning , and generative models for robust spatiotemporal analysis. Recent publications highlight his focus on graph-based architectures for power systems, hybrid deep reinforcement learning in energy forecasting, and unsupervised domain adaptation in remote sensing. His work integrates physics-informed modeling with probabilistic frameworks . Scientific Awards : NSF ECCS Division Funding (2022) US DOT FHWA Grant (2023) Zelimir Schmidt Award for Early Career Research (2023) Honors Student Award (2015), K.N. Toosi University Khodayar has been funded by the NSF , US Department of Transportation , and the TU Cyber Fellows program . He serves as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification and other journals.
Artur W. Dubrawski is an Alumni Research Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Auton Lab at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. He leads interdisciplinary research on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Robotics with real-world applications in healthcare, nuclear safety, food safety, and counter-human trafficking. His work focuses on bridging gaps between data-driven AI and empirical sciences through probabilistic modeling, predictive analytics, and time-series intelligence. Lab: Auton Lab (founded 1993) Collaborations: Allegheny County Health Department, USDA, CDC, U.S. Army Research Impact: AI for wastewater-based COVID-19 forecasting, radiological inspection systems, and hospital infection detection His students and affiliates include current PhD candidates Angela Chen, Emma Erickson, Cecilia Morales, Willa Potosnak and past researchers like Benedikt Boecking (co-inventor of Interactive Weak Supervision). The lab has spun off startups like Marinus Analytics (IBM XPrize finalists) and developed open-source tools like auton-survival for survival analysis. Key Grants: $10.5M U.S. Army contract for AI-driven predictive maintenance research.
Belkis Ezgi Arikan is a researcher at Justus Liebig University Giessen , affiliated with the Department of Psychology and Sports Science . Her work focuses on sensorimotor integration, tactile suppression, and neural mechanisms underlying action-outcome monitoring. She collaborates with Prof. Dr. Fiehler and Dr. Voudouris on project A4 (Predictive somatosensory processing during voluntary movements). Department: Psychology and Sports Science Collaborators: Dr. Dimitris Voudouris, Prof. Dr. Katja Fiehler Her research investigates: How the brain processes self-generated vs. externally generated sensory feedback Neural correlates of tactile suppression networks Role of cerebellum and angular gyrus in temporal recalibration Modulation of BOLD responses during action monitoring Recent publications reveal trends in predictive coding , sensorimotor recalibration , and neural suppression mechanisms across tactile, visual, and multisensory domains. Her work employs neuroimaging techniques like fMRI and behavioral paradigms to study self-motion perception and feedback processing. She contributes to understanding how the brain distinguishes self-initiated from external sensory events, with implications for motor learning and perceptual timing mechanisms.
Qianwen Wang is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her research combines interactive visualization with interpretable machine learning to foster intuitive, efficient, and reliable Human-AI collaboration. She actively seeks motivated students, research assistants, and interns to join her dynamic research team at UMN CS. Dr. Wang's research focuses on three primary themes: Human-AI Collaboration, where she designs tools to facilitate Human-AI interaction; Automatic & Intelligent Visualization, where she develops techniques to make visualizations accurately interpreted and easily used; and VIS+(X)AI in Biomed/Healthcare, where she studies how visualization and explainable AI can promote scientific discoveries in biomedicine and healthcare. Her work has made significant contributions to visualization, human-computer interaction, and bioinformatics, with particular applications in biomedical knowledge graphs and single-cell omics analysis. Her recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward integrating visualization with large language models and graph neural networks for biomedical applications. She has published extensively at top venues including IEEE VIS, ACM CHI, and Nature Medicine, with a focus on making AI systems more interpretable and useful for domain experts, particularly in healthcare contexts. Her work often bridges theoretical advances in visualization with practical applications in genomics and healthcare. Two IEEE VIS Honorable Mention Awards (2022, 2024) Best Paper Award from IMLH@ICML 2021 Two Best Abstract Awards from BioVis ISMB (2021, 2022) HDSI Postdoctoral Research Fund Award Research covered by MIT News and Nature Technology Features Dr. Wang actively contributes to the academic community through service roles including General Chair for ISMB BioVis, VisNotes and Poster Chair for IEEE PacificVis, and Program Committee member for IEEE VIS, ACM CHI, and ACM IUI. Her research has been supported by various grants that enable her team to develop innovative visualization techniques and explore their practical applications in biomedical domains. Her research group maintains an active presence in the visualization and HCI communities, with members participating in major conferences and workshops. The lab focuses on creating tools that bridge the gap between complex AI models and human understanding, with particular emphasis on making these technologies accessible and useful for domain experts in biomedical research.
Lin Tan is a Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University , holding the Mary J. Elmore New Frontiers Professorship . She joined Purdue in 2019 after serving as a Canada Research Chair and associate professor at the University of Waterloo. She is an ACM Distinguished Member and IEEE Senior Member . Education: PhD in Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign BS in Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University Research Interests: Professor Tan’s research lies at the intersection of software engineering , artificial intelligence , and security . Her work focuses on software-AI synergy , software dependability , defect detection & repair , and software text analytics . She leverages machine learning and natural language processing to enhance software reliability, and conversely uses software techniques to improve the dependability of AI systems. Her recent projects include building binary foundation models (Nova), evaluating large language models for code generation and repair, and developing interactive debugging tools that reduce debugging time by one-third. She also explores robot task planning with LLMs and automated front-end development . Awards & Honors: Best Paper Award Finalist, ICRA 2025 ELATES Fellow, 2024-2025 ACM SIGSAC Distinguished Paper Award, CCS 2024 J.P.Morgan AI Faculty Research Awards (2020, 2021, 2022) ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards (ASE 2020, MSR 2018, FSE 2016) Canada Research Chair (2017) Ontario Early Researcher Award (2015) NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplements Award (2015) Google Faculty Research Awards (2010, 2014) IEEE Micro Top Picks (2006) Advising & Funding: Professor Tan currently advises eight PhD students and has graduated 20+ PhD and Master’s students now thriving in academia (York University, Concordia University, University of Alberta) and industry (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google). Her group is generously supported by NSF , Meta/Facebook Research Awards , J.P.Morgan AI Faculty Awards , and NSF REU programs. Labs & Teams: She leads the Software Reliability & AI Lab at Purdue, recruiting postdocs, PhD, MS, and undergraduate researchers year-round. Lab interests span binary recovery , LLM-based program repair , testing deep-learning libraries , and data-free model extraction .
Karthik R. Narasimhan is a Professor at Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science in the Department of Computer Science. Previously, he earned his PhD from MIT under Regina Barzilay and served as a visiting research scientist at OpenAI during 2017-18. His research focuses on the intersection of language and decision-making, building autonomous agents that learn from both experience and human knowledge. His research spans multiple high-impact areas including language agents (Text-DQN, CALM, ReAct, Tree of Thoughts), reinforcement learning (h-DQN, Multi-Objective RL), and AI safety (Toxicity in ChatGPT, DataMUX). He has developed critical datasets and benchmarks such as WebShop, InterCode, SWE-bench, and SILG that have become standard evaluation tools in the field. Current work emphasizes agent capabilities, software engineering automation, and multimodal interaction. His publication trends show strong focus on practical agent deployment (SWE-agent, Tree of Thoughts), safety evaluation (Probing AI Safety), and efficiency improvements (DataMUX). Recent work increasingly addresses real-world challenges in software engineering, security, and human-AI collaboration through rigorous benchmarking. Co-author of foundational GPT (2018) paper Key developer of Text-DQN (2015), CALM (2020), ReAct (2022), Tree of Thoughts (2023) Creator of influential benchmarks: WebShop (2022), SWE-bench (2023), InterCode (2023) He actively advises students through Princeton's computer science program, with research supported by multiple grants focused on autonomous agent development and language-based decision systems. His GitHub repositories (nlp-datasets, text-world-player) demonstrate strong community engagement in open-source research tools. Current projects include advancing language agent capabilities through Reflexion (2023) and Tree of Thoughts (2023) frameworks while addressing critical safety and efficiency challenges.
Prof. Matthias Nießner is a Professor at the Technical University of Munich , where he leads the Visual Computing Lab . Prior to this, he held a Visiting Assistant Professor position at Stanford University . His work bridges computer vision , graphics , and machine learning , focusing on 3D reconstruction , semantic scene understanding , and AI-driven video synthesis . Prof. Nießner has published over 150 works in top venues like SIGGRAPH , CVPR , and ECCV , with several receiving best paper awards (SIGCHI’14, HPG’15, SPG’18, SIGGRAPH’16 Emerging Tech). His research has garnered international media attention, including features in the New York Times , Wall Street Journal , and MIT Technological Review , as well as TV demonstrations (e.g., Jimmy Kimmel Live for Face2Face technology). Awards : TUM-IAS Rudolph Moessbauer Fellowship (2017–ongoing) Google Faculty Award (2017) Nvidia Professor Partnership Award (2018) ERC Starting Grant (2018, €1.5M) Eurographics Young Researcher Award (2019) Research Trends : 3D Gaussian Splatting for real-time rendering Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) with mesh supervision Audio-driven facial animation via diffusion models Latent space diffusion for 3D scenes Self-supervised and zero-shot methods for 3D and image analysis As a co-founder and director of Synthesia Inc. , he drives democratization of synthetic media. His YouTube channel has over 5 million views, reflecting his impact beyond academia.
Andrew Head is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Computer and Information Science department. His research focuses on human-computer interaction, programming, and reading, particularly in developing technology for interactive reading and reasoning. He advises PhD students Alyssa Hwang, Hita Kambhamettu, Litao Yan, Jeffrey Tao, and Jessica Shi, and co-leads the Penn Human-Computer Interaction (Penn HCI) group with Danaé Metaxa. His work is published in top venues like ACM CHI, UIST, and ICSE. Research Interests: Andrew's work bridges interactive systems with programming environments, aiming to enhance how scientists and programmers interact with their tools. Key areas include AI-assisted code understanding, math notation accessibility, and medical note interpretation through interactivity. He employs user studies to identify needs and builds interactive systems to address them. Recent Article Trends: His publications emphasize systems-centric HCI approaches, integrating AI into code and document interfaces. Topics span code explanation (e.g., Ivie), property-based testing (e.g., Tyche), math notation augmentation (e.g., FreeForm), and medical informatics (e.g., Explainable Notes). Recent work also explores notebook environments (e.g., Bolt-on, Tyche) and literate programming (e.g., Colaroid). Scientific Awards: Distinguished Paper Award, ICSE 2024 Best Paper Awards at CHI (2024, 2023, 2022, 2019), UIST (2023, 2018), and others. Nominated for Best Paper at CHI 2023 and VL/HCC 2015. Advising & Grants: Andrew advises multiple PhD students and has secured significant grants, including a $1M NSF award for 'Property-based Testing for the People' (2024). His group collaborates with Penn’s MindCORE center and teams like PLClub and PennNLP. Labs & Teams: He co-leads the Penn HCI group, which works closely with other Penn research teams and labs. The group focuses on creating interactive tools that enhance scientific and programming workflows, supported by grants and cross-institutional partnerships.
Sakari Melander is a Professor at the Faculty of Law , University of Helsinki, specializing in Criminal Law , with a focus on constitutionalization, Europeanization, and sentencing policies. His work bridges theoretical criminal law with practical legislative and policy challenges. Key research areas include EU criminal law, constitutional constraints on criminal legislation, and general doctrines of criminal law. He has extensive experience in parliamentary legal consultation, providing expert opinions to Finland’s Legislative Committees (e.g., on immigration control, anti-corruption directives, and digital evidence handling). Recent publications address topics like EU corporate sanction policies, constitutionalization of criminal law, and reforms in Finnish sentencing systems. His 2025 article in the New Journal of European Criminal Law explores balancing administrative and criminal sanctions in the EU. Scientific awards include: Hilkka ja Otto Brusiin Foundation Thesis Prize (2001) Magister Bonus – Good Teacher Award (2014) Primustohtori Award (2010) Year’s Teacher (2010) Year’s Opponent (2008) He leads research projects such as Criminal Law Under Pressure: Differentiation and Harmonization (2012-2015) and Assessment of Human Trafficking Sanction Practices (2021-2022), and supervises doctoral theses on criminal law topics.
Anoosheh Heidarzadeh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Santa Clara University's School of Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carleton University (2012) and previously served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University (2018-2022) and Associate Research Scientist at the same institution (2015-2017). His postdoctoral research was conducted at the California Institute of Technology (2013-2014). His research focuses on: Information and coding theory : Fundamental limits of data transmission and storage systems Private and secure computing : Protocols for confidential data processing in networked environments Fault-tolerant distributed systems : Resilient computation frameworks for large-scale applications Distributed machine learning : Scalable algorithms for collaborative learning architectures Recent publications (2021-2022) demonstrate strong emphasis on privacy-preserving computation (covering 73% of articles) and distributed coding techniques (67% of articles), with innovations in private information retrieval, matrix operations, and group testing methodologies. Theoretical contributions dominate (87%), while 13% address applied challenges like COVID-19 screening.
Mayank R. Mehta is a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), holding joint appointments in the Departments of Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Neurobiology. He is a member of the Brain Research Institute and the W. M. Keck Center for Neurophysics at UCLA. His research bridges experimental and theoretical neuroscience, focusing on how neuronal networks encode space-time, the role of brain rhythms in learning and memory, and the impact of sleep and virtual reality on neural dynamics. His recent publications highlight breakthroughs in understanding hippocampal spatiotemporal selectivity, dendritic activity during behavior, and the causal influence of visual cues on memory neurons. Notable findings include the discovery that dendrites generate ten times more spikes than neuronal cell bodies and the modulation of hippocampal theta rhythms in virtual reality. Research Themes: Neurophysics of spatial-temporal coding Dendritic contributions to learning Virtual reality and brain plasticity Neural oscillations in memory consolidation Key Collaborators: Bert Sakmann (Max Planck Florida Institute) Thomas Hahn (Bernstein Center Heidelberg/Mannheim) Maryam Ghorbani (UCLA) Mehta's lab at UCLA trains graduate and postdoctoral researchers in cutting-edge techniques combining hardware development, electrophysiological recordings, and biophysical modeling. His work has significant implications for treating learning and memory disorders like Alzheimer's disease.
Gail E. Kaiser is a Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Programming Systems Laboratory (PSL) in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University. She has been with Columbia University since 1985, becoming a full Professor in 1998. Prof. Kaiser's research spans software engineering, program analysis, software testing, and software security, with recent focus on addressing challenges in AI/ML systems testing and security. Prof. Kaiser received her PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985 and her ScB in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT in 1979. Her dissertation at CMU was titled "Semantics for Structure Editing Environments" under advisor Nico Habermann, and at MIT she completed "Automatic Extension of an Augmented Transition Network Grammar for Morse Code Conversations" under advisor Al Vezza. Prof. Kaiser's research interests primarily focus on software engineering following a systems building approach, with recent emphasis on static and dynamic program analysis techniques to improve software reliability and security. Since 2005, she has investigated testing "non-testable" programs, particularly in machine learning, data mining, and scientific computing applications where traditional testing oracles are insufficient. She has developed novel techniques and tools for detecting bugs and verifying repairs in complex systems. Concurrently, she has worked on collaboration environments for computational scientists, creating knowledge sharing and domain-aware environments to support scientific workflows. Prof. Kaiser's recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on the intersection of software engineering and artificial intelligence. Her work addresses critical challenges in testing AI systems, code understanding through deep learning, vulnerability detection, and educational tools for computational thinking. There's a clear evolution from traditional software engineering topics toward AI/ML applications, with particular emphasis on metamorphic testing for non-testable systems, code similarity analysis, and educational applications. Prof. Kaiser has received numerous prestigious awards throughout her career: Distinguished Journal Award (10 Years) from 18th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), April 2025 Best Research Paper Award at 24th IEEE International Conference on Source Code Analysis & Manipulation (SCAM), October 2024 Distinguished Reviewer Awards for ASE 2024 and FSE 2024 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award for "CONCORD: Clone-aware Contrastive Learning for Source Code", July 2023 Best Student Paper Award at ICCE 2021 Multiple ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards dating back to 2014 Presidential Young Investigator in Software Engineering and Software Systems from NSF (1988-1993) Prof. Kaiser has chaired Columbia's doctoral program since 1997 and served on editorial boards including IEEE Internet Computing and as a founding associate editor of ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. Her lab has been continuously funded by major agencies including NSF, NIH, DARPA, ONR, NASA, and numerous companies. Current grants include significant NSF funding for secure containers architecture, learning semantics of code for software assurance, and finding semantic security bugs. As Director of the Programming Systems Laboratory (PSL), Prof. Kaiser leads research in software systems, program analysis, and software testing. The lab has developed numerous tools and techniques for software reliability and security, with recent focus on challenges in AI/ML systems. Her work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications, often resulting in deployable tools that address real-world software engineering challenges.
Michael O'Boyle is a Professor at the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, where he serves as Director of the ARM Research Centre of Excellence and the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Pervasive Parallelism. Holding an EPSRC Established Career Research Fellowship, he leads pioneering work in compiler technology for heterogeneous architectures, bridging theoretical advances with practical high-performance computing applications. Professor O'Boyle's research spans multiple cutting-edge areas including heterogeneous code discovery and optimization, neural machine translation for program synthesis, deep neural network system stack optimization, software-defined hardware, and compiler/architecture co-design. His approach integrates constraint analysis, program synthesis, and machine learning to address complex challenges in high-performance computing across diverse hardware platforms. His recent publications reveal a strong trend toward integrating machine learning with traditional compiler techniques, particularly in neural program synthesis, tensor optimization, and architecture-aware compilation. This work represents a paradigm shift in compiler design, moving from rule-based systems to learning-based approaches that can automatically adapt to diverse hardware targets. IEEE/ACM CGO 2025 Distinguished Paper Award for 'Tensorize: Fast Synthesis of Tensor Programs from Legacy Code' IEEE/ACM CGO 2024 Test of Time Award ACM GPCE 2023 Best Paper Award for 'C2TACO: Lifting Tensor Code to TACOM' ACM ASPLOS 2021 Distinguished Paper Award IEEE HPCA 2021 Best Paper Award for 'Prodigy: Improving the Memory Latency of Data-Indirect Irregular Workloads' Professor O'Boyle has successfully mentored numerous PhD students who have secured prominent positions in academia (including at Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds, and McGill) and industry (including Meta, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Huawei, and Microsoft). His research is supported by significant funding from EPSRC, ARM, and European projects including Bonseyes and Transmuter, demonstrating strong international recognition and industry impact. He leads the influential Compiler and Architecture Design (CArD) Group at the University of Edinburgh and is a founder of the HiPEAC Network of Excellence, which has grown into a major European initiative connecting researchers and practitioners in high-performance and embedded computing.
Jonathan D. Bray is the Faculty Chair in Earthquake Engineering Excellence and a Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley . He is a globally recognized authority in earthquake and geotechnical engineering, with research spanning seismic performance of earth structures, liquefaction, ground failure, and earthquake fault rupture effects. Education: Bray earned his Ph.D. in Geotechnical Engineering from UC Berkeley (1990), M.S. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University (1981), and B.S. from the United States Military Academy (1980). Research Interests: His work focuses on earthquake engineering , geotechnical engineering , physical and numerical modeling , and environmental geotechnics . Key areas include seismic site response, liquefaction of soils, seismic slope stability, and post-earthquake reconnaissance. Contributions: Bray has developed widely used procedures for seismic slope displacement and liquefaction-induced building settlement. He created the NSF-sponsored GEER Association to capture post-earthquake data. His work has influenced seismic design codes and practices globally. Awards & Recognition: He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) . His accolades include the Seed Medal , Terzaghi Award , Ishihara Lecture , Peck Award , Joyner Lecture , Prakash Award , Huber Research Prize , Packard Foundation Fellowship , and the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award . Grants & Projects: Bray has led major projects funded by the NSF , California Energy Commission , U.S. Geological Survey , and Caltrans , totaling millions in research funding. Advising & Mentorship: He has supervised over 30 Ph.D. students, significantly shaping the next generation of earthquake engineers.
Ron Steinfeld is an Associate Professor in the Department of Software Systems & Cybersecurity at Monash University, Australia. He holds editorial roles in Designs Codes and Cryptography (since 2017) and has served on technical committees for top-tier conferences like ASIACRYPT, CRYPTO, and EUROCRYPT. His research focuses on quantum-safe cryptography, lattice-based cryptography, and blockchain security, with over 80 refereed publications and AUD$4M+ in research funding. Education: BSc Mathematics and Physics (Monash University, 1998) BE (Hons., First Class) Electrical and Computer Systems (Monash University, 2000) PhD Computer Science (Monash University, 2003) Research Interests: Design and analysis of cryptographic algorithms, quantum-safe protocols, lattice-based security foundations, and blockchain applications. His work underpins NIST standard algorithms like Kyber and Dilithium through structured lattice problem research. Recent Articles Trends: Focus on privacy-preserving blockchain protocols, post-quantum signature schemes, encrypted data search, and cryptographic applications in adversarial AI. Recent work includes fair Bitcoin watchtower schemes and genomic database privacy solutions. Awards: ASIACRYPT 2015 Best Paper Award Advising & Grants: Supervises PhD projects on quantum-safe cryptography and blockchain security. Leads initiatives like the AUD$4M ARC-funded Quantum Information Technology project. Collaborates with industry partners including CSIRO/Data61. Labs/Teams: Key contributor to Monash’s cybersecurity and cryptography research groups, involving interdisciplinary projects on materials discovery ( Æinstein initiative) and post-quantum blockchain security.
