Prof Raphaël Phan is a Professor and Deputy Head of the School of IT at Monash University Malaysia. His expertise spans security, cryptography, malicious AI, emotion recognition, motion analysis, and generative AI. He has published over 220 papers and led significant projects including privacy-preserving data mining funded by UK MoD and Malaysian government grants exceeding RM4 million. He co-designed the BLAKE hash function (SHA-3 finalist) and has an h-index of 50. Education: PhD in Cryptography (Multimedia University, 2005), MEngSci (2001), BEng (Hons) Computer Engineering (1999). Research focuses on adversarial AI, brain networks, and secure systems. Current projects include Æmbience: emotion-aware virtual assistants using motion magnification. Supervised 15 PhD graduates and 19 current students. Professional affiliations: Chartered Engineer (IET, UK), HEA Fellow, Board of Engineers Malaysia. Recent work emphasizes causal bias detection in micro-expressions, brain tumor detection via advanced YOLOv8, and generative adversarial networks for medical imaging. His work bridges cybersecurity with neuroscience applications.
Tamon Stephen is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University (SFU), part of the Faculty of Science. His research focuses on operations research, with an emphasis on combinatorial optimization, algorithms, discrete geometry, and computational biology. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan (2002). His work often bridges theoretical and computational aspects, addressing interdisciplinary applications. Stephen is affiliated with the Centre for Operations Research and Decision Sciences (CORDS) and has contributed to software tools for hypergraph transversals and colorful linear programming. He has taught courses such as Math 208W (Introduction to Operations Research) and has advised projects in metabolic network analysis and scheduling optimization. His office is located at the Surrey campus (SRYC 2886). Key research collaborations include studies on firefighter scheduling, nurse rostering, and metabolic pathway analysis. His methodologies often leverage algorithm design, polytope theory, and discrete mathematics. Stephen actively participates in academic service, organizing seminars and contributing to conferences such as the West Coast Optimization Meeting. His work emphasizes practical applications of theoretical results, with a focus on solving real-world optimization challenges.
Alastair F. Donaldson is a Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, where he leads the FastPL research group. His work bridges formal methods, software testing, and programming languages, with a focus on enhancing the reliability of high-performance and parallel software systems. He has held key roles including Director of Research (since 2023) and previously served as Lecturer (2011–2014), Senior Lecturer (2014–2017), and Reader (2017–2020) before being promoted to Professor in 2020. His research interests include formal verification, compiler testing, GPU programming, concurrency, and fuzzing. He has made significant contributions to the verification of GPU kernels, metamorphic testing of graphics drivers, and the development of tools like GPUVerify and GraphicsFuzz. His work combines theoretical rigor with practical impact, demonstrated by the acquisition of his startup GraphicsFuzz by Google in 2018 and his subsequent roles as Senior Software Engineer and Visiting Researcher at Google. His recent publications reflect a sustained focus on compiler and system reliability, with trends in fuzzing, formal specification, and automated testing of complex systems such as WebGPU, CXL cache coherence, and large language models for code generation. His work increasingly integrates empirical validation with formal techniques to uncover subtle bugs in real-world systems. Scientific awards and recognitions include: 2017 BCS Roger Needham Award EPSRC Early Career Fellowship Fellow of the British Computer Society Best Paper awards at EuroSys 2024, MET 2021, IISWC 2019, IWOCL 2019, and ICST 2016 Best Industry Paper at ICST 2024 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper at ISSTA 2023 ACM SIGPLAN Most Influential OOPSLA Paper Award (2012 paper), awarded in 2022 Best Student Paper at PPoPP 2014 He has advised numerous PhD students and leads a vibrant research group. He has secured significant research funding and collaborates extensively with industry and academia. His service includes leadership roles such as General Chair of PLDI 2020, PC Chair of ECOOP 2019, and Steering Committee Chair of PLDI (2022–2025). He also serves on the advisory board of PACM-PL and on program committees for top venues including POPL, OOPSLA, PLDI, ICSE, and ISSTA. He leads the FastPL research group, which focuses on the design and implementation of programming tools and techniques for reliable software. The group conducts cutting-edge research in compiler testing, formal methods, and high-performance systems, fostering collaboration across academia and industry.
Dr. Hyung Jin Chang is an Associate Professor at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, and a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. He holds a Ph.D. and B.S. from Seoul National University. His research focuses on human-centered visual learning, particularly in human-robot interaction, with expertise in computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning. He has been involved in organizing conferences like ECCV and ICCV workshops (e.g., VOTS Challenge, HANDS Workshop) and serves on program committees including AAAI and CVPR. His work spans areas like gaze estimation, domain adaptation, 3D pose estimation, and robotic perception for assistive technologies. Key achievements include receiving the Royal Society Research Grant (2019–2020) and Wellcome Trust funding. Notable contributions include frameworks for unsupervised domain adaptation, gaze estimation models (e.g., RT-Gene), and collaborative learning methods for hand-object reconstruction. He has led projects in medical robotics, personalized dressing assistance, and safety-critical systems like driver attention prediction. His 15 most recent articles (2024–2025) emphasize advancements in diffusion models, domain adaptation, 3D reconstruction, gaze-controllable systems, and generative AI for motion and interaction modeling. These reflect a trend toward integrating multimodal data (vision + language) and bridging theoretical foundations with applied robotics. Awards: Royal Society Grant, Wellcome Trust, Turing Fellowship Grants: Active in securing funding for robotics, vision, and healthcare applications He leads the Personal Robotics Lab and collaborates on projects like the VOTS Challenge for visual object tracking. His research bridges academia and real-world applications in healthcare robotics and human-technology interaction.
Stefanie Jegelka is an Associate Professor (currently on leave) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a Humboldt Professor at Technical University of Munich. At MIT, she is a member of CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), IDSS (Institute for Data, Systems, and Society), the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning, and is affiliated with the Operations Research Center. Her educational background includes a PhD from ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, followed by postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley's AMPlab and computer vision group. Her research program focuses on algorithmic machine learning, with particular emphasis on exploiting mathematical structure for discrete and combinatorial machine learning problems, robustness in learning systems, and developing methods for scaling machine learning algorithms to large datasets. She has made significant theoretical contributions to submodular optimization and its applications in machine learning. Jegelka's publication record demonstrates a consistent focus on the intersection of discrete mathematics and machine learning. Her work spans theoretical foundations of optimization with discrete structures, applications in computer vision, and practical algorithms for submodular function optimization. Her research has evolved from foundational work on submodular functions to broader applications in deep learning and robust machine learning systems, showing increasing impact through numerous workshop best paper awards and high-impact conference publications. NSF CAREER Award Google Research Award German Pattern Recognition Award (Mustererkennngspreis) ICML Best Paper Award Sloan Research Fellowship DARPA Young Faculty Award NSF BIGDATA Award ONR MURI NSF AI Institute for Optimization Professor Jegelka has advised several successful students including Keyulu (recipient of MIT's George M. Sprowls Ph.D. Thesis Award), Derek (NSF Fellowship recipient), Ching-Yao (IBM Fellowship recipient), and Nisha (now Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech). Her research has been generously supported by multiple NSF grants, DARPA awards, and industry funding from Google, Two Sigma, and Adobe. She has also organized multiple workshops and tutorials on discrete optimization and submodularity in machine learning. At MIT, Jegelka is affiliated with the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning and collaborates with researchers across CSAIL. Her work bridges theoretical computer science, optimization, and practical machine learning applications, with recent focus on high-dimensional learning dynamics and in-context learning as evidenced by her group's multiple papers at leading conferences like ICLR.
Ignasi Sau Valls is a Directeur de Recherche (DR2) at CNRS, affiliated with the LIRMM laboratory at Université de Montpellier, France. He is a member of the AlGCo team, focusing on algorithms for graphs and combinatorics. His academic background includes dual degrees in Mathematics and Telecommunications Engineering from UPC (Barcelona), a PhD in joint supervision between UPC and Projet Mascotte (Sophia Antipolis), and a postdoctoral position at the Technion (Israel). He has been with CNRS since 2010 and was promoted to his current role in October 2024. He also served as a Visiting Professor at UFC (Brazil) from 2016–2017. His research interests lie primarily in Graph Theory and Parameterized Complexity , with a focus on structural graph properties, kernelization, and algorithm design. He has made significant contributions to problems involving minor-closed graph classes, treewidth, and graph modification. His work bridges theoretical foundations with algorithmic applications, particularly in discrete optimization and network problems. The recent articles highlight a strong trend in parameterized algorithms, especially for graph modification, kernelization, and structural graph problems. Topics such as hitting minors, dynamic programming on tree decompositions, and edge contractions reflect a deep engagement with structural parameterizations and fixed-parameter tractability. His publications frequently appear in top-tier journals like SIAM Journal on Computing, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, and Algorithmica, as well as major conferences such as ICALP, SODA, and IPEC. Best paper award of Track C of ICALP'10 Best student paper award of WG'09 Ignasi Sau has been a principal investigator of the ANR JCJC project ELIT (ANR-20-CE48-0008-01), funded with 169k€ from 2021 to 2026. He serves as an editor for DMTCS and Information and Computation , and has held significant organizational roles, including PC member of numerous conferences (MFCS, WG, IPEC, COCOON) and as co-chair and main organizer of WG 2019, ICGT 2022, and JCALM 2023. He has delivered invited courses at international schools in France, Argentina, and Brazil. He is actively involved in the research community through editorial duties, conference organization, and collaborative research. His lab affiliation is the AlGCo team at LIRMM, a leading group in algorithmic graph theory and combinatorics.
Vincent Dufour-Décieux is a researcher at the Professorship for Energy and Process Systems Engineering at ETH Zürich , focusing on developing computational methods for material screening in separation processes and global net-zero transitions. He earned his Master's in Materials Chemistry from Ecole Polytechnique (France) and a PhD in Materials Science from Stanford University , where he pioneered statistical methods combining Kinetic Monte Carlo and random graph theory to study planetary diamond formation. Research Highlights: Application of Classical Density Functional Theory (cDFT) for 100x faster adsorption property predictions in porous materials Development of science-based definitions for "hard-to-abate" emissions to guide climate action prioritization Integration of Coulombic interactions in cDFT for CO2 adsorption accuracy Article Trends : His work spans computational materials science (cDFT, random graph theory) and climate policy analysis, with recent publications in Joule , AIChE Journal , and Physical Review E . These studies emphasize scalable solutions for carbon capture, material screening efficiency, and accurate thermodynamic modeling. Collaborations : Active in international conferences (FOA15, MolMod, Gordon Research Conference) and cross-institutional projects with teams at Stanford, ETH Zürich, and industry partners.
Yuanbo Xiangli is a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University , advised by Prof. Noah Snavely. Previously, he obtained his Ph.D. from the Multimedia Lab in the Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) , supervised by Prof. Dahua Lin. His research focuses on 3D computer vision and deep generative modeling for urban scene reconstruction. 3D scene reconstruction from sparse images Neural rendering and Gaussian splatting Deep generative modeling for urban environments Multi-source geospatial data processing City-scale modeling and synthetic datasets His recent work includes advanced NeRF extensions (BungeeNeRF, GridNeRF), Gaussian splatting enhancements (GSDF, Scaffold-GS), and urban scene datasets (MatrixCity, OmniCity). A pioneer in combining classical vision techniques with modern deep learning approaches. ICLR 2020 Spotlight Award Collaborates with leading researchers in photorealistic rendering, including Noah Snavely and Dahua Lin. Develops systems enabling efficient 3D reconstruction from diverse data sources like satellite imagery and street-level panoramas.
Weiyu Xu is a Professor at the University of Iowa, affiliated with both the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences. He joined the College of Engineering in 2012 and leads the Intelligent Information Processing Lab (IIPL). Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 2009 M.S., Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 2006 M.S., Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, 2005 B.E., Information Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 2002 His research focuses on compressive sensing, information theory, signal processing, network optimization, and deep learning applications in medical imaging and cybersecurity. He has made significant contributions to adversarial attack robustness, distributed optimization algorithms, and medical imaging techniques for OCT segmentation and brachytherapy. Recent publications highlight trends in Adversarial machine learning Medical imaging algorithms Compressed sensing for diagnostics Optimization in wireless communication He has also contributed to federated learning over tree networks and theoretical guarantees for sparse signal recovery. Weiyu Xu's lab, IIPL, integrates deep learning with classical optimization and signal processing. His work bridges foundational theories (e.g., information-theoretic robustness) with real-world applications in healthcare (e.g., cancer treatment planning) and communication systems (e.g., MIMO channel estimation).
Professor Alexander Koller is a leading academic in Computational Linguistics at Saarland University's Department of Language Science and Technology. He holds a courtesy appointment in Computer Science and contributes to the Saarland Informatics Campus - one of Europe's premier computer science research centers. He leads the Computational Linguistics group and serves as speaker for the DFG-funded Research Training Group 'Neuroexplicit Models of Language, Vision, and Action'. PhD in Computer Science (Saarland University) Former positions: University of Potsdam, Columbia University, University of Edinburgh Sabbatical experiences: Meta AI (Paris), Allen Institute for AI (Seattle) His research focuses on computational modeling of meaning and reasoning in NLP, combining neural and symbolic approaches. Key contributions include semantic parsing systems like the AM parser and Alto, neurosymbolic models, and the GIVE Challenge for NLG evaluation. His recent work explores LLMs' limitations in problem-solving and compositional generalization. Recent publications highlight diverse applications across semantic parsing, dialogue systems, and LLM evaluation. Awards include ACL 2020 Best Theme Paper and multiple Outstanding Paper recognitions at ACL conferences. 2025 - AI Action Summit keynote speaker 2023 - ACL Outstanding Paper Awards 2022 - ELLIS Faculty appointment He maintains the DialogOS system for spoken dialogue development and teaches advanced computational linguistics topics. His group includes multiple postdocs and PhD students working across LLMs, dialogue systems, and semantic modeling.
Maks Ovsjanikov is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at École Polytechnique, France , and a Visiting Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. His research focuses on mathematically principled approaches for geometric data analysis and synthesis, including learning on surface meshes, 3D point clouds, and graphs. Key Collaborations: Google DeepMind, Sanofi, Dassault Systèmes Research Themes: Non-rigid shape matching, 3D reconstruction, transfer learning, learning on geometric data, functional maps, deep learning for scientific discovery Recent Article Trends emphasize geometric deep learning, with publications at top venues like SIGGRAPH Asia, ICCV, and CVPR. Topics include surface reconstruction, functional maps, 3D keypoint detection, and diffusion models for shape matching. Scientific Honors include: ERC Consolidator Grant (VEGA Project, 2023) ERC Starting Grant (2017) ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 Test-of-Time Award Best Paper Awards at 3DV 2021 and 3DV 2022 Student Advisees have received prestigious awards, such as the IP Paris Best PhD Thesis Award (Souhaib Attaiki, 2023) and GdR IG-RV Runner-Up (Nicolas Donati, 2024). The GeomeriX Team at École Polytechnique drives his group's research, supported by the VEGA and AIGRETTE projects.
Esa Ollila serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics at Aalto University, Finland, and holds an adjunct professorship in Statistics at the University of Oulu. His academic appointments include Academy of Finland Research Fellow (2010-2015) and prior senior research/lecturing roles at both institutions. His educational background features: M.Sc. in Mathematics, University of Oulu (1998) Ph.D. in Statistics (with honors), University of Jyväskylä (2002) D.Sc.(Tech) in Signal Processing (with honors), Aalto University (2010) Professor Ollila's research centers on statistical signal processing and robust statistical methodologies , with significant contributions to array processing, high-dimensional data analysis, and covariance matrix estimation. His work bridges theoretical statistics with practical applications in radar systems, wireless communications, and big data analytics, emphasizing robustness against outliers and computational efficiency in modern data-intensive environments. Current focus areas include compressed sensing, sparse approximation, and blind source separation techniques. Analysis of his 15 most recent publications (2024-2025) reveals three dominant trends: (1) robust covariance learning for massive random access systems, (2) integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) for 6G networks using advanced beamforming, and (3) geometric approaches to elliptical distributions in statistical inference. His work increasingly incorporates deep learning (GANs, graph neural networks) while maintaining strong foundations in classical signal processing theory. Key recognitions include: Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Fellowship (2004-2007) Academy of Finland Research Fellowship (2010-2015) His research has been supported through prestigious Academy of Finland grants totaling over a decade of continuous funding. Professor Ollila currently leads an active research group at Aalto University, supervising doctoral candidates and collaborating internationally with institutions including Princeton University (where he served as Visiting Post-doctoral Research Associate during 2010-2011). He maintains strong ties with the University of Oulu through his adjunct professorship and has contributed to EURASIP's Special Area Team on Theoretical and Methodological Trends in Signal Processing. The Esa Ollila Research Group focuses on cutting-edge challenges in statistical signal processing, with current projects spanning robust DOA estimation under non-Gaussian noise, covariance matrix learning for massive MIMO systems, and machine learning-enhanced radar-communication integration. The group actively develops open-source tools like the fitHeavyTail R package for heavy-tailed distribution modeling and maintains collaborations with industry partners in wireless communications.
Arash Joorabchi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Limerick, Ireland. His research focuses on the intersection of machine learning, educational technology, and digital library systems, with particular emphasis on automated assessment, text mining, and knowledge organization techniques. Research Trends: Analysis of his publications reveals sustained contributions to automated short-answer grading, Arabic text classification, and semantic integration of Wikipedia with academic resources. Key methodologies include sentence transformers, hybrid text representation models, and citation-based indexing techniques. Technical Domains: His work spans natural language processing, educational data mining, metadata management, and semantic web technologies. Specific applications include Q&A platform analysis, library resource discovery, and curriculum development systems.
Mark S. Handcock is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he leads research at the intersection of statistical methodology and applied problems in social sciences, epidemiology, and environmental science. His work bridges theoretical statistics with real-world challenges through innovative methodological development. His primary research interests encompass statistical models for social networks, network inference, methodology for hard-to-reach population surveys, spatial processes, demography, and environmetrics. Handcock has pioneered advances in exponential-family random graph models (ERGMs) and developed foundational R packages like ergm and tergm within the statnet suite, enabling sophisticated network analysis across disciplines. Analysis of his recent publications (2023-2025) reveals three dominant research thrusts: (1) Antarctic sea ice modeling using Bayesian reconstruction and temporal variability analysis, (2) epidemiological modeling of infectious disease transmission dynamics (particularly COVID-19), and (3) methodological innovations in network inference and causal analysis over stochastic networks. His work consistently integrates advanced computational statistics with domain-specific applications in climate science, public health, and social systems.
Yevgeny Seldin is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, specializing in Machine Learning Theory . He leads the Machine Learning Section and is a member of the DeLTA Lab . Education : PhD in Computer Science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem under supervision of Prof. Naftali Tishby His research focuses on Machine Learning , particularly Online Learning and PAC-Bayesian Analysis , with applications to Bandit Algorithms , Reinforcement Learning , and Information Theory . Recent work includes optimal algorithms for delayed feedback, stochastic-adversarial trade-offs, and feedback graphs. Positions Available : PhD and Postdoc positions in Theoretical Machine Learning or energy sector applications Labs & Collaborations : Head of Machine Learning Section Member of DeLTA Lab
