Anna Beer is a researcher in the Faculty of Computer Science, specializing in data mining and machine learning with a focus on density-based clustering, spectral clustering, and interactive clustering frameworks. She holds a BSc and MSc in computer science and maintains an ORCID profile (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6890-997X) for her research contributions. Research Themes: Development of clustering algorithms (e.g., DISCO, Scar, LUCKe), fairness in density-based clustering (FairDen), and applications to molecular dynamics and climate research (DROPP). Collaborations: Works with colleagues like Ira Assent, Christian Plant, and Lars Krieger, with recent contributions to conferences like ICLR 2025. Activities: Presented research on density-connectivity distance at a 2023 oral contribution. Publications: 9 publications since 2019, including 3 in 2025 and 6 in 2024, covering topics from cluster evaluation to deep active learning strategies.
Affiliations & Roles Lionel P. Robert Jr. is a Professor of Information and Robotics at the University of Michigan, holding joint appointments in the School of Information and the College of Engineering's Robotics Department. He directs the Michigan Autonomous Vehicle Research Intergroup Collaboration (MAVRIC) and is an affiliate faculty member at the National Center for Institutional Diversity and Indiana University's Center for Computer-Mediated Communication. His roles include editorial board positions at journals like the Journal of Computer Information Systems and leadership in professional organizations such as ACM and IEEE. Education Ph.D. in Information Systems, Indiana University (BAT Fellow, KPMG Scholar) M.B. from Indiana University, Bloomington M.S. degrees from Clemson University and University of Louisiana, Lafayette B.S. from University of Louisiana, Lafayette Research Focus Robert's research bridges collaboration through technology, with a focus on human-robot interaction, autonomous vehicles, and virtual teams. His work addresses trust in automated systems, human-AV communication, and the sociotechnical implications of robotics in workplaces and public spaces. Recent projects explore explanations for automated vehicles, security robots' societal acceptance, and AI ethics in healthcare and labor. Key Contributions He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals like MIS Quarterly and conferences such as CHI and HRI. His research has been funded by NSF, Toyota Research Institute, and the Army Research Laboratory. Notable outcomes include frameworks for AV trust repair, models of human-robot team performance, and critiques of AI-driven labor practices. Awards & Recognition ACM Distinguished Member IEEE Senior Member Carnegie Junior Faculty Development Fellowship 3× Teaching Commendation (2006–2008) Grants & Labs Current grants include studies on explainable AI, human-AV trust dynamics, and security robot design. The MAVRIC lab focuses on AV-pedestrian interactions while the CCMC explores digital communication's societal impact.
Dr. Chao Hu is the Collins Aerospace Professor in Engineering Innovation and Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut's Department of Mechanical Engineering within the College of Engineering. His research focuses on engineering design under uncertainty, battery health diagnostics, and structural health monitoring. He holds a B.E. from Tsinghua University (2007) and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland (2011), with prior roles at Medtronic and Iowa State University. Research interests emphasize physics-informed machine learning for prognostics, battery degradation modeling, and reliability-based design optimization. Key publications include work on digital twin models for lithium-ion batteries, federated learning for fleet-wide fault diagnosis, and probabilistic machine learning pipelines for real-time state estimation. He has received awards like the ASME Design Automation Young Investigator Award and highly cited paper recognitions. Dr. Hu serves as Senior Editor for Engineering Optimization and Review Editor for Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization . His work spans academic leadership in journals and industrial collaborations. Current projects include battery aging datasets (UConn-ILCC and UConn-ISU-ILCC), design for remanufacturing frameworks, and high-rate structural health monitoring techniques.
Dr. Hamidreza Mohades Kasaei is an Associate Professor in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. He holds positions in both the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the Faculty of Medical Sciences/UMCG, focusing on Robotics and image-guided minimally-invasive surgery. His work bridges theoretical advances in machine learning with practical robotic applications. Dr. Kasaei's research focuses on developing algorithms for adaptive perception systems through interactive environment exploration and open-ended learning. His specific interests include 3D object perception, grasp affordance detection, object manipulation, and active perception. He has evaluated his research on various robotic platforms including PR2, UR5e, Kinova, Franka robotic arms, and humanoid robots. His work enables robots to learn from past experiences and intelligently interact with non-expert human users using data-efficient techniques. Analysis of his recent publications reveals strong trends toward increasingly sophisticated manipulation capabilities, particularly in dual-arm coordination and handling dense clutter. There's a clear progression toward integrating language models with robotic control systems, as seen in works like 'Lifelong Robot Library Learning' and 'Towards Open-World Grasping with Large Vision-Language Models.' His research consistently addresses real-world challenges in agricultural robotics, assistive technologies, and service robotics applications. Gratama Science Award (2022) Google Research Scholar Award in Machine Learning (2023) Outstanding Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2023) Dr. Kasaei has successfully supervised multiple PhD students including Zhenxing Zhang (thesis on 'Generative Adversarial Networks for Diverse and Explainable Text-to-Image Generation') and Hamed Ayoobi (thesis on 'Explain What You See: Argumentation-Based Learning and Robotic Vision'). His research is supported by significant grants including the Google Research Scholar Award for 'Continual Robot Learning in Human-centered Environments' and various conference organization roles including workshops at RSS 2023 and NeurIPS 2022. He leads the Lifelong Interactive Robot Learning Lab (IRL-Lab), which focuses on six key research directions: Perception and Perceptual Learning, Object Grasping and Manipulation, Lifelong Interactive Robot Learning, Dual-Arm Manipulation, Dynamic Robot Motion Planning, and Exploiting Multimodality. The lab develops cutting-edge approaches for robots to learn in open-ended fashion through interaction with non-expert human users, with applications in assistive robotics for people with disabilities.
Theresa Scharl-Hirsch is a Senior Scientist and Deputy Scientific Director at the Core Facility Bioinformatics, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). She holds concurrent appointments at the Institute of Statistics, BOKU, and has extensive experience in bioprocess modeling, machine learning, and statistical computing. Her work bridges biochemical engineering with advanced data science methodologies. Her research focuses on real-time monitoring of biopharmaceutical processes, clustering of high-dimensional data (particularly RNA sequencing), and application of explainable machine learning techniques. She has developed statistical models for process optimization and quality prediction in antibody capture and protein purification, with a strong emphasis on industrial implementations using R programming. Key trends in her publications include three-way data analysis, matrix-variate Gaussian mixture models, and permutation-based variable importance methods for deep learning architectures. Her work spans bioprocess engineering, bioinformatics, and industrial data science applications.
Professor Markku Kulmala (University of Helsinki) is a leading expert in atmospheric and environmental physics. As Academician of Finland and double ERC Advanced Grant holder, he leads the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) and ACCC Flagship. With ~1200 publications and a WoS H-index of 124, his work focuses on atmospheric aerosols, climate interactions, and air quality. Academy of Finland grants (2004-2009, 2011-2015) ERC Advanced Grant (2×) ISI Highly Cited Researcher His research team has published 4 groundbreaking studies in Nature and Science , including: Aerosol formation mechanisms Aerosol-cloud-climate interactions Atmosphere-land surface relationships Climate-air quality feedbacks With over 20 PhD/Master's students supervised, recent work includes Arctic aerosol studies ( Elementa 2025), Beijing air quality analysis ( Nature Communications 2025), and climate modeling applications. He has received multiple international awards including the Fuchs Memorial Award and honors from Stockholm and Tartu universities.
Jilles Vreeken is a Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University and tenured faculty at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, where he leads the Exploratory Data Analysis research group. He is also an ELLIS Fellow and Faculty of the Saarbrücken Unit on AI and ML. His work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications in causal inference, unsupervised learning, and exploratory data analysis. Dr. Vreeken's research focuses on developing theory and algorithms for answering fundamentally exploratory questions about data: "what is going on in my data?", "what causes what and how?", and "what can we learn from this model?" without making unnecessary or unjustified assumptions. He takes a principled approach based on information theory to identify what is worth knowing, then develops efficient algorithms for extracting useful interpretable results. His work spans causal inference under realistic conditions (including hidden confounding, selection bias, and non-i.i.d. data), summarizing complex data and models in understandable terms, and combining these threads to create more robust and useful models across diverse data types. His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward causal discovery in increasingly realistic settings, including non-stationary time series, event sequences, and scenarios with hidden confounders. He has made significant contributions to federated learning, interpretable machine learning, and pattern mining. His work consistently applies information-theoretic principles to develop methods that are both theoretically sound and practically useful for extracting insights from complex data. Dr. Vreeken has received numerous prestigious awards including: IEEE ICDM'18 Tao Li Award for Excellence in Research IEEE ICDM'18 Best Paper Award UdS-CS'15 Busy Beaver Teaching Award ACM SIGKDD'11 Best Student Paper Award ACM SIGKDD'10 Doctoral Dissertation Runner-Up Award ECML PKDD'09 Best Student Paper Award As an advisor, Dr. Vreeken has mentored numerous doctoral researchers to completion, including Dr. Osman Ali Mian, Dr. David Kaltenpoth, Dr. Boris Wiegand, Dr. Sebastian Dalleiger, Dr. Janis Kalofolias, Dr. Jonas Fischer, Dr. Alexander Marx, Dr. Panagiotis Mandros, Dr. Kailash Budhathoki, Dr. Roel Bertens, Dr. Koen Smets, and Dr. Michael Mampaey. He has secured significant research funding as PI for multiple projects including "AI for Prediction and Therapy Guidance in Acute Stroke" (HAICU, 2025-2028), "Neuro-Explicit Models of Language, Vision and Action" (RTG, DFG, 2023-2028), and "Crushing Antimicrobial Resistance using Explainable AI" (HAICU, 2021-2024). Dr. Vreeken leads the Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) research group at CISPA, which focuses on developing theory and algorithms for discovering novel insights from data, learning inherently interpretable models, and drawing reliable causal conclusions. The group has produced numerous influential algorithms and frameworks in causal inference, pattern mining, and exploratory data analysis, with applications spanning healthcare, materials science, and cybersecurity.
Dr Zhe Wang is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Information and Communication Technology, Griffith University, focusing on artificial intelligence, knowledge graphs, and semantic technologies. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from Griffith University (2011) and previously worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (2011-2013) on ontology-based systems. Research: Specializes in knowledge graph construction, rule mining for explainable AI, and integrating machine learning with logical reasoning. Led development of the scalable RLvLR rule-mining system and contributed to the HermiT ontology reasoner. Teaching: Instructs undergraduate and postgraduate courses including Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Secure Development Operations, and Software Engineering Fundamentals. Grants: Funded by Australia's Economic Accelerator Ignite Grant (2025) for AI-driven marine life survey systems and Office of National Intelligence projects (2021-2022). Publications: Active in top venues like AAAI, ICASSP, and ISWC, with recent work on temporal knowledge graph reasoning, auction design algorithms, and neurosymbolic AI systems.
Anna Wilbik is a Professor in Data Fusion and Intelligent Interaction at the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Maastricht University (The Netherlands). Her research bridges data understanding and human-machine synergy in complex systems, focusing on multi-criteria decision making, explainable AI, and data fusion techniques. PhD in Computer Science (with honors), Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Science (2010) Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Missouri (2011) Stanford University TOP500 Innovators Program Alumnus Research Pillars: Intelligent human-machine interaction for joint decision making Data fusion methods for heterogeneous data integration Contextualized multi-criteria decision frameworks Fuzzy logic and linguistic summaries for explainability Federated learning systems Article Trends: Recent work focuses on intuitionistic fuzzy sets for knowledge-intensive processes, federated learning with uncertainty handling, and linguistic summarization techniques for interpretable AI. She actively explores explainability , collaborative business models , and driver behavior analysis through attention-based models. Professional Leadership: Vice-chair of IEEE Fuzzy Systems Technical Committee Organizer of IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (2024)
Kuljeet Kaur is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) in Montreal, Canada. Her research is conducted through the LACIME (Communications and Microelectronic Integration Laboratory), a renowned research unit focusing on communications and microelectronic integration. She maintains an active research program with numerous publications and student supervision activities. Professor Kaur's research spans multiple interconnected domains focused on next-generation computing and communication systems. Her primary research axes include Sensors, Networks and Connectivity; Intelligent and Autonomous Systems; and Software Systems, Multimedia and Cybersecurity. Within these broad areas, she specializes in Cloud Computing, Edge/Fog Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Cybersecurity, Privacy, Federated Learning, and Energy Management. Her work bridges theoretical foundations with practical implementations in intelligent transportation systems, healthcare applications, and smart grid technologies. Analysis of Professor Kaur's recent publications reveals a strong focus on security and privacy challenges in emerging computing paradigms. A significant portion of her work addresses federated learning approaches that maintain data privacy while enabling collaborative AI model training. Her research also demonstrates expertise in edge computing architectures, particularly for IoT applications, with emphasis on energy efficiency and security. The publications show consistent interdisciplinary collaboration across computer science, electrical engineering, and transportation domains. Professor Kaur actively supervises multiple graduate students at various levels. Her supervision portfolio includes doctoral candidates working on topics like decentralized AI networks and secure federated learning, as well as master's students focusing on edge AI for IoT applications, sensor drift compensation, and zero trust architecture for IoT. She also guides project students working on practical implementations of AI for smart grid optimization and secure IoT protocols. Her research is conducted within the LACIME laboratory, which brings together researchers working on everything from micro- and nanofabrication processes to communication protocols and signal processing. The lab provides a transdisciplinary environment where Professor Kaur's work on cyber-physical systems and secure communications benefits from complementary expertise in integrated circuit design and microsystems.
Dr. Almut Sophia Koepke is a junior research group leader and TUM Junior Fellow at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and University of Tübingen. She leads the multi-modal learning research group focusing on video understanding through sound, vision, and text integration. University: Technical University of Munich School: TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology Department: Informatics 9 Academic Rank: Researcher Her research spans multi-modal learning, audio-visual foundation models, and cross-modal attention mechanisms. Key themes include: Advancing zero-shot learning through language-guided audio-visual models Developing explainable AI systems via attention pattern translation in VQA Exploring temporal understanding in video-adverb retrieval Building robust multi-modal representations for self-driving applications Recent publications analyze foundation model capabilities in audio-visual tasks (ICCV 2025), temporal reasoning (ACMMM 2024), and cross-modal attention frameworks (ECCV 2022). She co-organizes CVPR workshops on foundation model evaluations and serves as area chair/reviewer for major conferences.
David Brown is a Professor in Interactive Systems for Social Inclusion at Nottingham Trent University's School of Science & Technology, Department of Computer Science. He serves as Director of the Computing and Informatics Research Centre (CIRC) and Research Group Leader for the Interactive Systems Research Group (ISRG). Director, Computing and Informatics Research Centre Research Group Leader, Interactive Systems Research Group Governor, Oak Field School for students with severe learning disabilities Conference Chair, International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technology (ICDVRAT21) Associate Editor, Frontiers: Virtual Reality in Medicine Professor Brown's research focuses on developing inclusive technologies for people with disabilities. His work spans accessibility for students with learning, physical and sensory impairments; virtual reality applications for rehabilitation; multimodal affect recognition systems; social robotics for education; accessible visual programming toolkits; and serious games for developing physical and cognitive skills. His research is characterized by strong interdisciplinary collaboration and practical application in educational and healthcare settings. His recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on applying emerging technologies like virtual reality, machine learning, and social robotics to address real-world challenges in accessibility and inclusion. The research shows a clear trajectory toward increasingly sophisticated multimodal systems that can detect user states and adapt accordingly, with applications ranging from autism support to mental health interventions. Extensive EU-funded research projects including Horizon 2020, Erasmus+, and EPSRC grants Notable projects: DIVERSIA, MaTHiSiS, Pathway, AI-TOP, EDUROB, No One Left Behind, Real Life, RISE Professor Brown has supervised numerous PhD students and collaborates extensively with international partners across Europe and Asia. His work bridges computer science, psychology, education, and healthcare to create technologies that promote social inclusion and improve quality of life for people with disabilities.
Yikun Ban is a tenure-track Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Beihang University, where he is a member of the State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2023), MS in Computer Science from Peking University (2019), and BS in Software Engineering from Wuhan University (2016). PhD: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2023) MS: Peking University (2019) BS: Wuhan University (2016) His research focuses on principled algorithms for reinforcement learning with human feedback, neural contextual bandits, and exploration-exploitation problems. He develops frameworks combining deep learning with bandit theory for applications in recommendation systems, disinformation detection, and dynamic graph learning. Recent publications address: Robust neural contextual bandits (NeurIPS 2024) Graph neural bandits (KDD 2023) Meta-learning for bandit scheduling (NeurIPS 2023) Clustering in contextual bandits (WWW 2021, AAAI 2021) Honors include the NeurIPS Scholar Award and recognition as ICML Outstanding Reviewer . His open-source LOCB repository provides Python implementations for contextual multi-armed bandit algorithms with local clustering, supporting applications in recommendation systems and online learning.
Anna Jon-And is a Researcher and Director of the Center for Cultural Evolution at Stockholm University , affiliated with the Department of Psychology . Her interdisciplinary work bridges linguistics , cognitive science , and cultural evolution , focusing on how sequence representation , language contact , and computational models explain the emergence of human language and its unique properties. Research Interests include: Language evolution through sequence learning and cognitive constraints Contact-induced language change in Portuguese varieties (Angola, Mozambique, Afro-Brazilian communities) Computational modeling of grammatical structure emergence Comparative analysis of pidgins, creoles, and non-contact languages Neurocognitive prerequisites for language and cultural complexity Publications highlight trends in language evolution models , compositional systems , and cross-linguistic complexity cycles . Her work demonstrates how demographic factors and learnability pressures drive linguistic innovation in multilingual settings. The Center for Cultural Evolution at Stockholm University serves as the primary platform for her interdisciplinary research initiatives.
Georgios Arvanitidis is an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, specifically within the Section for Cognitive Systems (CogSys). He has established himself as a leading researcher in geometric machine learning, focusing on the application of differential geometry principles to enhance machine learning models. His work bridges theoretical mathematics with practical applications in artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on understanding the geometric structure of data manifolds and latent spaces. Dr. Arvanitidis completed his educational journey with a Bachelor's degree from the Department of Informatics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, followed by a Master's degree in Computer Science from Saarland University supported by the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. He earned his PhD at DTU's Cognitive Systems section under the supervision of Søren Hauberg, with additional research experience at Philipp Hennig's Probabilistic Numerics group. Prior to his current position as associate professor, he was a PostDoc at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems working with Bernhard Schölkopf. Dr. Arvanitidis's research primarily focuses on differential geometry in machine learning , where he explores how geometric structures can enhance representation learning and statistical modeling. His work in generative models investigates how learning the geometry of data manifolds can improve deep learning architectures. In the domain of deep learning theory , he examines why deep learning models generalize effectively on unseen data, with particular attention to the curvature properties of loss landscapes. His research in approximate Bayesian inference applies geometric principles to improve uncertainty quantification in neural networks. Through his innovative approaches, Dr. Arvanitidis has established himself as a leading researcher in geometric machine learning, contributing to both theoretical foundations and practical applications across various domains including robotics and life sciences. The publication trends of Dr. Arvanitidis reveal a consistent and evolving focus on geometric approaches to machine learning problems. His recent work (2023-2025) demonstrates increasing sophistication in applying Riemannian geometry to deep learning architectures, with particular emphasis on latent space geometry, optimization on manifolds, and geometric interpretations of neural network behavior. A notable pattern is the progression from foundational work on geometric representations to more applied research in areas like robotics and causal inference. His publications span top-tier conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and AISTATS, reflecting the high impact of his research. The interdisciplinary nature of his work is evident in collaborations across mathematics, computer science, and robotics domains, with recent papers addressing challenges in multimodal sampling, safety guarantees for dynamical systems, and counterfactual explanations. Dr. Arvanitidis has received several notable scientific awards and recognitions: Sapere Aude starting grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) GADL funding i-Rase, Pathfinder, and EIC (European Innovation Council) funding Best reviewer award for NeurIPS 2019 Best reviewer award for NeurIPS 2018 Best student paper award at Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS) 2021 Dr. Arvanitidis actively mentors PhD students and researchers, currently supervising Alejandro Valverde, Johanna Gegenfurtner, and Albert Kjøller Jacobsen. He has previously co-supervised Alison Pouplin's PhD and worked with research assistant Georgios Pantis. His group receives substantial funding through multiple prestigious grants including the Sapere Aude starting grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark, as well as European Innovation Council funding. He has been instrumental in creating opportunities for students interested in geometric machine learning, offering BSc and MSc thesis projects focused on generative models, deep learning theory, and optimization techniques. Dr. Arvanitidis also contributes significantly to the academic community as a reviewer for top conferences including ICLR and TMLR, and as an area chair for NeurIPS, ICML, AISTATS, and UAI. He co-organized the Machine Learning Summer School 2020 in Tübingen, further demonstrating his commitment to education and community building. Dr. Arvanitidis leads a vibrant research group focused on geometric machine learning within the Cognitive Systems section at DTU. His team includes multiple PhD students working on cutting-edge research at the intersection of differential geometry and artificial intelligence. The group has developed notable software tools, including the "geometric_ml" GitHub repository with over 70 stars, which contains implementations for applying Riemannian geometry in machine learning. His research has practical applications in robotics, where geometric approaches enable more robust motion planning, as evidenced by his work on "Reactive Motion Generation on Learned Riemannian Manifolds" which received a best student paper award. Additionally, his methodologies have found applications in life sciences, as mentioned in his 2022 AISTATS paper. The collaborative nature of his work is evident through extensive partnerships with researchers at institutions including the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Cambridge, and various European universities. His recent news items indicate active engagement with the academic community through talks, conference presentations, and ongoing supervision of new PhD students joining his group.
