Osbert Bastani is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, leading the trustml@Penn research group. He is affiliated with the ASSET , PRECISE , and PRiML centers, and the PLClub research group. His research focuses on Trustworthy Neurosymbolic Systems , Synthesizing Neurosymbolic Programs , and Machine Learning for Programmer Productivity , with applications in verification, fairness, and human-AI collaboration. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2023. His recent publications (2024-2025) emphasize AI Safety , LLM Robustness , and Algorithmic Fairness , including work on adversarial robustness, conformal prediction, and program synthesis. Students he has advised include Sagnik Anupam, Stephen Mell, Jason Ma, Shuo Li, and others. Awards: NSF CAREER Award (2023)
Maja J Matarić is the Chan Soon-Shiong Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering, with courtesy appointments in Neuroscience and Pediatrics. She serves as founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center, co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab, and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. Previously, she held leadership roles as USC's interim Vice President of Research (2020-2021) and Vice Dean for Research (2006-2019). Her educational background includes: PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT (1994) MS in Computer Science from MIT (1990) BS in Computer Science from University of Kansas (1987) Matarić pioneers Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) , a field her lab named, focusing on human-robot interaction that provides assistance through social rather than physical support. Her research targets critical health and wellness challenges including post-stroke rehabilitation, autism spectrum disorder therapy, cognitive exercises for Alzheimer's patients, ADHD academic support, and mental health interventions. She develops systems modeling user engagement, personality, and motivation, with extensive real-world deployments in schools, rehabilitation centers, and homes. Analysis of her recent publications reveals dominant themes in cognitive health robotics (2025 CHI paper on LLM-powered elder care), pediatric assistive technology (2025 IDC speech therapy review), and adaptive preference modeling (2025 HRI contrastive learning work). Her research consistently bridges machine learning with human-centered design for vulnerable populations. Major scientific recognition includes: ACM Athena Lecturer Award (2024) ACM Eugene L. Lawler Humanitarian Award (2024) ACM Fellow (2020) Presidential Mentoring Award (2011) Multiple society fellowships (AAAS, IEEE, AAAI) As a dedicated mentor, Matarić has championed underrepresented groups through CRA-W, placing numerous women in faculty positions. She leads USC Viterbi's K-12 STEM Outreach Program serving low-income Los Angeles schools and authored The Robotics Prime for student education. Her research has secured significant funding enabling real-world technology transfer, with documented impact in rehabilitation centers and homes through deployable SAR systems. Her Robotics Research Lab at USC drives innovation in embodied AI, with current projects spanning LLM-integrated elder care robots, ADHD academic companions, and autism therapy systems. The lab emphasizes co-design with end-users and rigorous real-world validation across diverse populations.
Tijana Gajić is a researcher at Singidunum University in Belgrade, Serbia. She holds a Ph.D. in Philology (2020), an MA in English Language and Literature (2009), and a BA in the same field (2007) from the University of Belgrade. Her work focuses on the intersection of language education, digital tools, and critical pedagogy. Doctoral Studies: Philology , University of Belgrade (2017-2020) Master Studies: English Language and Literature , University of Belgrade (2008-2009) Bachelor Studies: English Language and Literature , University of Belgrade (2003-2007) Dr. Gajić’s research explores the impact of digital technologies on language acquisition, critical thinking development, and the sociopolitical dimensions of English language learning. She has published extensively on mobile applications like Duolingo, HelloTalk, and WordUp, analyzing their efficacy in modern pedagogy. Her recent publications (2024-2025) examine digital tools’ influence on language education, critical pedagogy in Serbian classrooms, and AI-driven language learning innovations. Earlier works (2020-2016) established her expertise in tandem learning, vocabulary enhancement via apps, and affective factors in language acquisition. Notable collaborations include partnerships with researchers like N. Maenza , A. Gagić , and J. Nikolić . While no specific grants or awards are mentioned, her involvement in conferences such as Sinteza and ELTA Serbia underscores her active role in advancing language education. Her 2022 book, Nastava stranih jezika i razvoj kritičkog mišljenja u eri neoliberalizma , synthesizes her critical pedagogy framework. Current projects likely continue her focus on digital transformation in language teaching.
Bo Dai is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computational Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. His research focuses on Agent AI, Generative Models, and Representation Learning, aiming to create decision-making agents through world modeling. He holds a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech (2013–2018) and previously worked at Google Brain. Dai has authored numerous influential papers in top conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR, and received the AISTATS Best Paper Award (2016). Education: Ph.D., School of Computational Science and Engineering, Georgia Tech (2013–2018) Research Interests: Reinforcement Learning and Representation Learning for decision-making agents Generative Models and their integration with Agent AI Provable and scalable algorithms for real-world applications His work bridges theory and practice, emphasizing spectral representations and provable guarantees in complex systems. Key Article Trends: His recent work emphasizes scalable spectral methods for multi-agent systems, diffusion policies, and representation-based techniques in reinforcement learning. He also explores LLM alignment and sim-to-real transfer learning. Awards: AISTATS Best Paper Award (2016) NeurIPS Workshop Best Paper (2017) Ross Fellowship (2011–2012) Advising & Grants: Supervises 6 current Ph.D. and M.S. students. Active in organizing workshops on reinforcement learning and serves as an Area Chair for top conferences. Labs & Software: Leads development of Representation-based Reinforcement Learning and Repr-Control toolboxes for nonlinear control and stochastic systems.
Professor Ihab Ilyas is a leading figure in data management and machine learning at the Cheriton School of Computer Science , University of Waterloo , where he holds the Thomson Reuters Research Chair in Data Quality . He is currently on leave from the university, serving as a Distinguished Engineer, Proactive Intelligence at Apple Inc . His research focuses on data cleaning , large-scale data integration , knowledge graphs , and machine learning applications in data quality . He has pioneered systems like HoloClean and Saga , with commercial impacts through co-founded startups Inductiv (acquired by Apple) and Tamr . PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University Co-founder of Inductiv (acquired by Apple) Co-founder of Tamr Research Interests include: Probabilistic and uncertain data management Machine learning for data quality and enrichment Big data systems and information extraction Knowledge graph construction and optimization Scientific Awards and Recognitions include: Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2024) C.C. Gotlieb Computer Award (2024) IEEE Fellow (2021) ACM Fellow (2020) Cheriton Faculty Fellowship (2013-2016) Ontario Early Researcher Award
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.
Olga Sorkine-Hornung is a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich and head of the Institute of Visual Computing. She leads the Interactive Geometry Lab, focusing on theoretical and practical advancements in digital content creation, geometry processing, and shape modeling. Current position: ETH Zurich, Department of Computer Science Previous roles: Courant Institute (NYU), Technical University of Berlin Education: BSc and PhD from Tel Aviv University, postdoc at TU Berlin Her research spans shape representation, digital fabrication, computer animation, and fundamental geometry processing. Key contributions include Laplacian surface editing, as-rigid-as-possible deformation, and generalized winding numbers. She works on applications in VR, AR, and autonomous systems. Awards include Test of Time Awards (2024), ACM Fellow (2020), ERC Consolidator Grant (2020), and EUROGRAPHICS Young Researcher Award (2008). She has supervised numerous students and co-developed software libraries like libigl and Instant Meshes . Co-chair roles for SIGGRAPH, Eurographics, and Pacific Graphics Editorial board member for ACM Transactions on Graphics and other journals Keynote speaker at VMV, CVPR, and SIAM conferences Her work bridges mathematical rigor with practical implementation, advancing computer graphics and geometry processing through intuitive algorithms that maintain surface detail while enabling efficient computation.
Alane Suhr is an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) department and a member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR). Her research focuses on natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and computer vision, emphasizing systems that interact with humans through language. She designs models and datasets for language grounding (e.g., NLVR) and develops algorithms for learning through interaction. Education: PhD in Computer Science, Cornell University (2022), advised by Yoav Artzi Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering, Ohio State University (2016), with a Linguistics minor Research Interests: Interactive systems for collaborative language use (e.g., CerealBar) Language grounding in multimodal contexts Embodied agents and reinforcement learning Generalization in NLP and the role of language in learning Key Contributions: Developed the NLVR dataset for visual reasoning with natural language Pioneered work on SWE-Gym for training software engineering agents Contributed to research on language models' sensitivity and commonsense reasoning Awards: ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award (2022) Outstanding Paper Awards at ACL 2023 and EMNLP 2021 Professional Activities: Organized workshops at ICML, NeurIPS, and ACL on topics like agents, generalization, and theory of mind Active in academic outreach and conference speaking (e.g., ICML, NeurIPS, CVPR) Labs/Teams: Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab SWE-Gym research group
Roberto Martin-Martin is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he leads the Robot Interactive Intelligence (RobIN) Lab. His research bridges robotics, computer vision, and machine learning to enable robots to operate autonomously in human-centric environments like homes and offices. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab working with Fei-Fei Li and Silvio Savarese, and an AI Researcher at Salesforce AI. Education: Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Robotics from Technische Universität Berlin (TUB), advised by Professor Oliver Brock B.Sc. from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Dr. Martin-Martin's research focuses on developing AI algorithms that combine reinforcement learning and imitation learning with advanced planning and control to address core challenges in robot perception. His work spans mobile and whole-body manipulation, dexterous and contact-rich interactions, and long-horizon tasks in unstructured environments. He takes inspiration from human cognition through psychology and cognitive science to develop solutions for skills ranging from simple pick-and-place operations to complex tasks like cooking and furniture assembly. His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward enabling robots to learn from human demonstrations, particularly through video, and to safely adapt these demonstrations to their own morphology. There's significant emphasis on mobile manipulation, bimanual tasks, and developing hardware that supports robust robot learning through trial and error. His work shows increasing integration of large language models and vision-language models to enhance robot understanding and task execution. Scientific Awards: RSS Pioneer (2020) Winner of Amazon Picking Challenge (2015) RSS Best Systems Paper Award (2016) ICRA Best Paper Award IROS Best Mechanism Award Amazon Faculty Award AAAI Young Faculty IJCAI Early Faculty Nominated for Best Paper at IROS (2014, 2017) Dr. Martin-Martin advises PhD students including Arpit Bahety, who is working on mobile manipulation and learning. He serves as Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Mobile Manipulation and is a co-founder of QueerInRobotics. His research is supported by industry partnerships and academic funding sources that enable his lab to develop both hardware and software innovations in robotics. He directs the Robot Interactive Intelligence (RobIN) Lab at UT Austin, which takes a holistic approach to robot intelligence, developing both the hardware (like the BaRiFlex gripper) and software frameworks necessary for robots to learn from interaction. The lab's research addresses the full pipeline from perception to action, with particular emphasis on learning from human demonstrations, safe exploration, and adapting to novel objects and environments.
Peter Bühlmann is a Professor at ETH Zürich within the Seminar für Statistik , focusing on high-dimensional statistics, causal inference, and machine learning. His work bridges theoretical advancements with practical software implementations in R packages like pcalg , mboost , and glmmlasso , impacting fields such as genomics, proteomics, and intensive care analytics. Key Contributions : Causal structure learning, stability selection, anchor regression, and deconfounding. Software : Developed widely used R packages for statistical modeling and causal inference. Teaching : Courses on high-dimensional statistics at ETH Zürich and international institutions. Research Trends : Recent articles emphasize causal robustness, domain adaptation, and applications in medicine. His work addresses challenges in heterogeneous data, missing values, and covariate shifts using methods like spectral deconfounding and residual prediction tests. Scientific Recognition : Co-author of a paper designated as a New Hot Paper (Meinshausen and Bühlmann, 2006) by Essential Science Indicators, indicating significant impact in high-dimensional multiple testing.
Mark Riedl is a Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and Associate Director of the Georgia Tech Machine Learning Center (ML@GT). His research focuses on human-centered artificial intelligence, emphasizing the development of AI technologies that naturally interact with humans. Key areas include story understanding/generation, computational creativity, explainable AI, and ensuring AI safety. He holds affiliations with the GVU Center, Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), and Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). His work is supported by NSF, DARPA, ONR, and industry partners like Google and Meta. Notable awards include the DARPA Young Faculty Award and NSF CAREER Award, plus three Pulitzer Prizes (collaborative with Roko M. Bask). Riedl's recent projects include STORY2GAME (AI-driven game design) and ethical AI frameworks addressing transparency and accountability. His research bridges theoretical advancements with practical applications in education, healthcare, and creative industries. Research interests span AI ethics, narrative systems, and AI's societal impact. He explores how AI can be made more transparent through explainable mechanisms while maintaining creativity and safety. Collaborations with Roko Bask on futuristic culinary trends have produced influential works. His labs and teams focus on interdisciplinary approaches, combining computer science with social sciences to shape responsible AI development. Key grants and projects include NSF-funded initiatives on AI in education and DARPA-supported work on AI safety. His contributions to explainable AI challenge traditional XAI paradigms, advocating for human-centered approaches that prioritize user understanding and ethical implications. Current efforts emphasize adapting LLMs for world modeling and enhancing RL agents with causal reasoning capabilities.
Jackie Chit Kit Cheung is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill University, where he co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab. He holds the Canada CIFAR AI Chair and serves as an Associate Scientific Co-Director at the Mila Quebec AI Institute. He is also a consulting researcher at Microsoft Research Montreal. Academic Background: Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Toronto (2010–2014) M.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Toronto (2008–2010) B.Sc. (Honours) in Computer Science, minors in Linguistics and German, University of British Columbia (2004–2008) Research Interests: Jackie Cheung's research lies at the intersection of natural language processing, machine learning, and cognitive science. He focuses on natural language generation , automatic summarization , commonsense and pragmatic reasoning , and the evaluation of NLP systems . His work aims to build language models that reflect real-world structure and reasoning, with applications in health, education, and language revitalization. He is particularly interested in how implicit meaning is processed in context, a core concern in linguistic pragmatics. Publication Trends: His recent publications (2024–2025) show a strong emphasis on evaluation methodologies (e.g., COSMIC, ECBD), hallucination and factuality in language models, coreference and reasoning , and long-context modeling . He frequently collaborates across institutions and integrates insights from linguistics and psychology into NLP system design and analysis. Scientific Awards: Best Paper Award, ACL 2018 Outstanding Paper Award, NAACL 2018 Student Research Workshop SAC Award, ACL 2024 (for COSMIC) Best Poster Award, CMDO AI-Health Symposium 2024 Advising and Grants: He advises a large and diverse group of graduate students, including PhD and Master’s candidates, often in co-supervision with other faculty. His group has received support from major AI and health research initiatives, including CIFAR and Mila. He has trained alumni who have gone on to faculty and industry research positions. He has served in leadership roles in top NLP conferences, including as Senior Area Chair, Workshop Chair, and Program Chair of Canadian AI 2018. Labs and Teams: He co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab at McGill and is deeply involved with Mila – Quebec AI Institute . He founded the NLP Reading Group at McGill, which brings together researchers from computer science, linguistics, and information studies to discuss theoretical and applied NLP topics.
Shreyas Sen is the Elmore Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, jointly affiliated with the School of Biomedical Engineering. He directs the Center for Internet of Bodies (C-IoB) and leads the SPARC Lab, focusing on circuits/systems for secure, energy-efficient body-centric communication and biomedical applications. Education: B.E. (Jadavpur University, 2006), M.S. & Ph.D. (Georgia Tech, 2009-2011). His research spans Human Body Communication (HBC), hardware security, IoT/IoB systems, and low-power sensing. Notable innovations include Electro-Quasistatic HBC (EQS-HBC) technology, which enables covert body-wire communication with 100x lower energy than conventional methods. Research Themes: Secure communication for medical wearables Physical layer security in IoT Ultra-low-power biosensors Side-channel attack mitigation in cryptographic ICs Publications: Over 200 papers in top venues (ISSCC, DAC, CICC, HOST) with focus on HBC systems, electromagnetic security, and biomedical circuits. Recent work explores EQS-HBC privacy properties (Nature Scientific Reports, 2019) and 350x current-domain signature attenuation for AES security (ISSCC 2020). Awards: NSF CAREER Award (2020) AFOSR Young Investigator (2016) MIT TR35 India (2018) 9 Best Paper Awards Intel Outstanding Researcher (2020) He advises over 20 students and leads industry collaborations through Ixana Inc. (founded 2020), commercializing EQS-HBC technology. Current efforts include EQS-based authentication systems and radiation dosimetry wearables.
Prof. Matthias Nießner is a Professor at the Technical University of Munich, leading the Visual Computing Lab. His research intersects computer graphics, vision, and AI, focusing on 3D reconstruction, semantic understanding, and AI-driven video synthesis. He holds a PhD from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2013) and was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University (2013–2017). Notable awards include the ERC Starting Grant (2018), Nvidia Professorship Award, and Eurographics Young Researcher Award (2019). His work has been featured in mainstream media and led to startups like Synthesia Inc. Research spans Gaussian splatting, neural radiance fields, and generative AI for 3D avatars. Over 150 publications include SIGGRAPH, CVPR, and ECCV, with best paper awards. Projects like Face2Face and ScanNet have driven innovation in facial reenactment and 3D scene datasets. Education: PhD in Computer Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2013) Diploma in Computer Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (2010) Research Interests: 3D digitization, neural rendering, generative AI, non-rigid reconstruction, and applications in AR/VR. Awards: ERC Starting Grant (2018) Nvidia Professorship Award (2018) Google Faculty Award (2018) SIGGRAPH Best Emerging Tech Award (2016) Grants: Over €1.5M from ERC and industry partnerships. Labs/Teams: Visual Computing Lab at TUM and Synthesia Inc. (co-founder). Key projects include ScanNet (large 3D indoor dataset), Face2Face (real-time facial reenactment), and Gaussian-based 3D avatars. Current work focuses on diffusion models, neural radiance fields, and AI-generated media detection.
Alexei A. Efros is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Howard Friesen Professorship and is affiliated with the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab. He previously served on the faculty at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. His research spans data-driven computer vision, self-supervised learning, computational photography, and applications to computer graphics and robotics. His research interests include: Data-Driven Computer Vision Self-Supervised and Unsupervised Learning Generative Models and Image Synthesis Visual Representation Learning Applications in Robotics and Human-Computer Interaction Intersections with Human Vision and the Humanities The recent publications highlight a strong trend toward self-supervised learning, visual reasoning, and generative modeling, particularly diffusion models and 3D scene understanding. His work increasingly bridges computer vision with language, robotics, and cognitive science, emphasizing interpretability and real-world applicability. There is a clear focus on leveraging unlabeled data and developing methods for robust, generalizable AI systems. His scientific awards and recognitions include: Berkeley Fellowship Google Fellowship Soros Fellowship NSF Fellowship SIGGRAPH Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award Facebook Fellowship Adobe Fellowship CMU School of Computer Science Distinguished Dissertation Award ACM Doctoral Dissertation Honorable Mention Alexei Efros has advised numerous PhD students and postdocs, many of whom have gone on to faculty positions at top institutions including CMU, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, NYU, and Georgia Tech. His lab has received research funding from major tech companies and federal agencies, though specific grants are not detailed in the text. He teaches core computer vision and machine learning courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels at UC Berkeley. His research group is highly active, with ongoing projects in 3D perception, generative modeling, and vision-language systems. He leads a vibrant research lab at UC Berkeley, part of the BAIR consortium, collaborating with leading researchers such as Jitendra Malik, Trevor Darrell, Pieter Abbeel, and Angjoo Kanazawa. His lab fosters strong interdisciplinary connections with institutions worldwide, including Oxford, INRIA, and École Normale Supérieure.
