Rodrigo Ventura is an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon. He is also a senior researcher at the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR-Lisbon), leading the Space and Aeronautics thematic line. His research focuses on the intersection of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, emphasizing human-robot interaction, space robotics, and cognitive architectures. He coordinates the Minor in Space Sciences and Technologies at IST and the MBE on Space Systems for Tecnico+. As Adjoint Faculty at the International Space University (ISU), he contributes to global academic initiatives. His work includes experiments on the International Space Station and participation in analog space missions. Research interests span biologically inspired systems, machine learning, and teleoperation interfaces. Recent publications address reinforcement learning for UAVs, microgravity experiments, and pseudo-haptic feedback for robotic control. He teaches subjects like Artificial Intelligence and Decision Systems, Satellite Engineering, and Autonomous Systems.
Yaoqing Yang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College. He earned his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and completed postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley's RISE Lab. His work focuses on robustness in machine learning systems, spectral analysis of neural networks, and algorithm design for structured data like graphs and point clouds. PhD in ECE, Carnegie Mellon University Postdoc, RISE Lab, UC Berkeley BS in Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University Research interests include diagnosing and mitigating model failures through heavy-tailed spectral analysis, decision boundary studies, and loss landscape visualization. He develops methods such as AlphaPruning and SharpBalance to enhance large language models and ensemble learning. Recent work spans 2025 publications on spectral evolution of neural networks, agentic AI for science, and LLM safety. Key collaborations include Michael W. Mahoney and other researchers. Burke Research Initiation Award, Dartmouth (2024) DOE grant for scientific foundation models (2024) DARPA grant for AI robustness (2024) He serves as Area Chair at NeurIPS 2025 and ICLR 2026, and has presented at Google Research, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and leading universities worldwide. His lab at Dartmouth engages in theoretical and applied research, with connections to UC Berkeley's RISE Lab and collaborations across institutions like CMU and Tsinghua University.
Yan Ma serves as Professor and Chair of Biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh, with additional appointments in Orthopaedic Surgery and Clinical and Translational Science. Previously, he was Professor and Vice Chair at George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health (2014-2022) and Assistant Professor at Hospital for Special Surgery/Weill Cornell Medical College (2008-2014). His educational background includes: PhD in Statistics, University of Rochester (2008) MA in Statistics, University of Rochester (2004) MS in Mathematics, Syracuse University (2003) BS in Statistics, Beijing Normal University (2001) Ma's research centers on advanced statistical methodologies including missing data imputation, machine learning, meta-analysis, causal inference, and longitudinal methods, applied across orthopedics, anesthesiology, health disparities, and emergency medicine through team science and translational research frameworks. His publication trajectory demonstrates sustained innovation from methodological foundations (2008-2012) to contemporary applications in health disparities and machine learning (2016-2022), consistently addressing complex biomedical challenges through high-impact journals like JAMA and Health Services Research. His scientific recognition includes: ASA's Statistics in Epidemiology Young Investigator Award (2010) Interorganizational Team Science Award (2012) ORISE FDA Research Fellowship (2017) APHA Achievement in Academia Award Ma has secured R01 funding from NIH/AHRQ for missing data methods in health disparities research while serving as Associate Editor for ASA journals and reviewer for NIH/PCORI/VA panels, demonstrating leadership in statistical methodology development and interdisciplinary collaboration. His team-science approach bridges statistical innovation with clinical implementation across orthopedics and anesthesiology, driving evidence-based practice through methodological rigor and cross-disciplinary partnerships.
Professor He Bingsheng is a faculty member at the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS), where he also serves as Vice-Dean, Research. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (2008) and dual bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science & Engineering and Business Administration from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2003). Education: Ph.D. (HKUST, 2008), B.E./B.B.A. (SJTU, 2003) Prior roles: Microsoft Research Asia (2008-2010), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore His research focuses on Big Data management systems , particularly on cloud computing and emerging hardware architectures (GPU, FPGA, NVM). He has led projects like ThunderGP, a novel FPGA-accelerated graph processing framework achieving 419x speedup for Covid-19 prevalence estimation. His work spans parallel/distributed systems and graph algorithms , with publications in ACM SIGMOD, VLDB, SC, and IEEE Transactions. The selected articles highlight his contributions to GPU/FPGA optimization , LLM applications , and graph analytics . He has received multiple best paper/demo awards, including IEEE/ACM ICCAD (2017), IEEE IC2E (2016), and ACM SIGMOD (2008). As a PC chair and editorial board member for journals like IEEE TPDS and TCC, he actively shapes academic discourse. PhD Students: Chen Xinyu, Tan Hongshi Courses Taught: CS4225/5425 Big Data Systems for Data Science
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).
Desmond Elliott is an Associate Professor and Villum Young Investigator at the Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on vision-language models, multilingual and multimodal processing, with particular emphasis on tokenization-free language modeling approaches. He leads a research group actively working on pixel language models and cross-lingual multimodal understanding. University of Copenhagen, Department of Computer Science Villum Young Investigator Associate Editor for JAIR (2025-2028) Senior Area Chair for ACL 2025 Elliott's research spans vision-language integration, multilingual NLP, and multimodal machine learning. His work explores how language models can operate directly on visual pixels without traditional tokenization, enabling more seamless integration of vision and language processing. He investigates compositional generalization in multimodal systems, retrieval-augmented image captioning, and cross-lingual transfer in vision-language tasks. His group develops methods for low-resource language processing and creates benchmarks for evaluating multimodal systems across diverse cultural contexts. His recent publications demonstrate strong trends in pixel-based language modeling, synthetic dataset generation through retrieval augmentation, and multilingual vision-language processing. The work spans theoretical advances in model architectures and practical applications in areas like medical text analysis, food culture understanding, and social media content moderation. His research often bridges computer vision and natural language processing with a focus on making these technologies accessible across diverse languages and cultures. Best Paper Honorable Mention at CVPR Visual Concepts Workshop 2025 Best Long Paper Award at EMNLP 2021 Area Chair Favourite paper at COLING 2018 Elliott actively supervises student projects in BSc and MSc programs related to his research interests. His research has received substantial funding from Google (2024-2025), Facebook (2022-2024), Villum Foundation (2021-2026), Novo Nordisk Foundation (2019-2024), and European Union (2023-2026). He regularly recruits postdocs for projects including the Danish Foundation Models project and the Responsible AI for the People Project. His group holds regular meetings on Tuesdays from 13:00-14:00 in IF G.03, with an active mailing list for announcements. The research environment appears collaborative, with frequent co-authorship across institutions and regular participation in major NLP and computer vision conferences.
Yuzhe Yang is an Assistant Professor of Computational Medicine and Computer Science at UCLA, with a visiting research scientist role at Google Health. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT (2024), advised by Dina Katabi, and a B.S. with honors from Peking University. Research Focus: Machine learning for healthcare, medical AI fairness, and AI-driven biomedical discovery Key Contributions: Ten Notable Advances (Nature Medicine) and Ten Crucial Advances (The Lancet Neurology) His lab develops Trustworthy Learning Algorithms and Generalist Health Models that integrate Multimodal Data for personalized health coaching. Notable projects include AI-based Parkinson's Disease Biomarkers via nocturnal breathing and Foundation Models for Equitable Medicine . Recent publications at ICLR 2025 (wearable foundation models), Nature Medicine 2024 (medical AI fairness), and Science Advances 2025 (vision-language medical bias) highlight his interdisciplinary work. He serves on ML4H workshops and reviews for top conferences like NeurIPS and ICML. Awards include Forbes 30 Under 30 , Takeda Fellowship , and Baidu PhD Fellowship . Advising opportunities: Recruiting PhD students (CS/CompMed) and postdocs in AI for health. Lab: Health Intelligence Lab (HAIL)
Ali Ramezani-Kebrya is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo (UiO), where he leads research in machine learning theory. He holds dual Principal Investigator roles at the Norwegian Center for Knowledge-driven Machine Learning (Integreat) and SFI Visual Intelligence, and is an active member of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) Society. His service includes Area Chair positions for NeurIPS and AISTATS, and Action Editor for Transactions on Machine Learning Research. His research focuses on theoretical foundations of deep learning with emphasis on understanding input data distribution encoding in neural network layers. Key themes include minimizing statistical risk under resource constraints, addressing distribution shifts in distributed settings, and developing practical tools for robust federated learning. Current applications span emotion recognition, marine data analysis, and neuroscience, reflecting his commitment to real-world machine learning challenges as evidenced by his FRIPRO-funded Machine Learning in Real World (MLReal) project. Recent publication trends reveal three dominant threads: (1) label/covariate shift mitigation in distributed systems through entropy regularization and density ratio estimation; (2) communication-efficient optimization via layer-wise quantization and adaptive compression techniques achieving 150% speedups; and (3) robustness guarantees against tailored attacks and distribution shifts. These works consistently bridge theoretical bounds with empirical validation across domains from GAN training to federated settings. Scientific recognition includes: FRIPRO Grant for Early Career Scientists (2025) for MLReal project SFI Visual Intelligence Spotlight Publication award (2023) for federated learning work He actively mentors 11 graduate students across Oslo and Tromsø universities, with recent PhD placements at Apple and NVIDIA. Current grant portfolio features the FRIPRO Early Career award and leadership roles in two major Norwegian research centers. His lab maintains strong industry collaborations through Vector Institute and EPFL, with recent hiring for PhD and postdoc positions in physics-informed machine learning.
Professor Lyudmila Mihaylova is a distinguished academic at the University of Sheffield's School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, where she holds the position of Professor of Signal Processing and Control. She has established herself as a leading researcher in the fields of signal processing, Bayesian methods, and autonomous systems, with significant contributions to particle filtering techniques for intelligent transportation systems. Her work bridges theoretical developments with practical applications across multiple domains including transportation, healthcare, and industrial automation. Prof. Mihaylova's research interests center on nonlinear filtering, sequential Monte Carlo methods, statistical signal processing, and sensor data fusion. Her work spans both theoretical advancements and practical implementations, with particular focus on high-dimensional problems including vehicular traffic flow estimation, image processing, and localization in sensor networks. She has extensive experience with various image modalities such as optical, thermal, LIDAR, SAR, and hyperspectral imaging. Her group actively develops novel methods for autonomous intelligent systems focusing on sensing, tracking, decision making, and machine learning applications. Analysis of Prof. Mihaylova's recent publications reveals a strong trend toward uncertainty quantification in machine learning models, particularly for safety-critical applications. Her work increasingly integrates traditional signal processing techniques with modern deep learning approaches, with applications spanning sewer inspection robotics, medical diagnostics (particularly sleep apnea detection), UAV swarm tracking, industrial manufacturing, and autonomous vehicle systems. A significant portion of her recent research focuses on developing robust methods that can handle incomplete or outlier-corrupted data while providing reliable uncertainty estimates. Among her notable professional achievements: President of the International Society of Information Fusion (ISIF) Senior member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems Associate Editor for Elsevier Signal Processing Journal Prof. Mihaylova has successfully mentored numerous PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom have gone on to prominent academic and industry positions. Her research has been supported by major funding bodies including EPSRC, EU, MOD/DSTL, and industry partners, with recent projects including 'Protecting Environments with UAV Swarms' (InnovateUK, 2022-2024), 'ShiRAS: Towards Safe and Reliable Autonomy in Sensor Driven Systems' (NSF-EPSRC, 2019-2023), and 'Confident safety integration for Cobots' (Lloyd's Register Foundation, 2019-2020). Her research group follows a collaborative approach with the philosophy 'We share knowledge, we grow.' Prof. Mihaylova maintains active research collaborations with institutions worldwide and has held previous academic positions at Lancaster University (2006-2013) and University of Bristol (2004-2006), along with research visiting positions at the University of Ghent, Katholic University of Leuven, and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Prof. George Magoulas is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of London's School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Director of the Birkbeck Knowledge Lab. He specializes in machine intelligence, machine learning algorithms, and AI system architectures, with applications in healthcare (e.g., neurodegenerative disease diagnosis) and educational technologies. His research has received awards from IEEE, ACM, and others. He holds a PhD in Nonlinear Optimization for Neural Networks and a PGCE in Higher Education. Education: BEng/MEng (Integrated Master's in Systems & Control Engineering), University of Patras, Greece PhD in Nonlinear Optimization for Neural Networks Learning, University of Patras, Greece PGCE in Teaching and Learning (Higher Education) Research & Leadership: He leads the Birkbeck Knowledge Lab, focusing on AI's impact on learning and communication. His work includes designing learning algorithms for psychophysiological data modeling and developing the cloudUPDRS app for Parkinson's disease assessment. He has supervised over 12 PhD students and contributed to 200+ publications. Awards & Recognition: Stanford’s “World’s top 2% of Scientists” (2024) Best Paper Awards at IEEE, ACM, and EUNITE Keynote speaker at major AI and e-learning conferences Honorary membership in the Hellenic Artificial Intelligence Society Administrative Roles: Director of Teaching & Learning Quality (2016–2023) Chair of Postgraduate Programmes Exam Board (2010–2022) Editor-in-Chief, International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools Teaching: He teaches courses on Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, and Project Management at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Labs & Collaborations: He directs the Birkbeck Knowledge Lab and is a member of the Data Science and AI Research Group. His projects include analyzing violent cycles using AI and collaborating on EU-funded initiatives.
Ngoc Thanh Nguyen is a Full Professor at Wroclaw University of Science and Technology where he serves as Head of the Department of Applied Informatics. He holds the prestigious title of Professor granted by the President of Poland and has been recognized as a Distinguished Scientist of ACM since 2009. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of both the Journal of Information and Telecommunication (JIT) and the Vietnam Journal of Computer Science (VJCS), and chairs the IEEE SMC Technical Committee on Computational Collective Intelligence. His research spans computational collective intelligence, knowledge integration, data mining, social media analysis, and sentiment analysis. Professor Nguyen has pioneered significant methodologies in spatial data clustering within network space, inter-sequence pattern mining, and graph neural network applications. His work bridges theoretical computer science with practical applications in intelligent information systems, demonstrating particular expertise in handling complex spatial and sequential data structures. His research has evolved from foundational pattern mining techniques to sophisticated neural network approaches for geospatial and social data analysis. The analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong focus on spatial data analysis in network environments, with significant contributions to clustering algorithms, graph neural networks, and pattern mining. His work consistently addresses efficiency challenges in data processing while expanding into emerging areas like Vietnamese language processing and topological data analysis. The research demonstrates a clear trajectory from traditional data mining techniques toward more sophisticated AI-driven approaches that incorporate spatial relationships and network topologies. Distinguished Scientist of ACM (2009) ACM Distinguished Speaker (2009-2013) IEEE Distinguished Visitor (2009-2013) Title of Professor granted by the President of Poland Professor Nguyen has supervised over 20 PhD students to completion and currently mentors several ongoing doctoral candidates. His academic leadership extends to founding two major conference series: the Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems (ACIIDS) and the International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence (ICCCI), which have become significant venues in their respective fields. His collaborative network spans multiple institutions, particularly with Yeungnam University as evidenced by several co-supervised PhD projects. As founder and chair of the IEEE SMC Technical Committee on Computational Collective Intelligence, he leads an international community of researchers advancing this specialized field. His departmental leadership at Wroclaw University of Science and Technology positions him at the center of applied informatics research and education in Poland, with particular emphasis on computational intelligence applications.
Goran Oreški is an Associate Professor and Head of the Laboratory at the Faculty of Informatics in Pula (University Jurja Dobrile, Croatia), where he has been employed since 2019. He teaches courses on databases, object-oriented programming, data warehousing, and artificial intelligence at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Education: Ph.D. in Informatics (2016), Faculty of Organization and Informatics Industry Experience: 9 years as software architect and programmer in banking sector Research Focus: Artificial Intelligence systems, classical machine learning algorithms, and deep learning architectures. His work bridges theoretical advancements with practical applications in autonomous vehicles, traffic monitoring, and financial risk assessment. Recent Publication Trends: 2023-2025 works emphasize generative AI for synthetic credit data, traffic object segmentation with monocular cameras, and context-aware detection models (YOLO*C). Earlier works focus on genetic algorithms and ensemble learning for imbalanced datasets. Awards: Google RFP Award for autonomous vehicle research Highly Cited Paper (Web of Science, top 1%) Best Paper at CECIIS conference Leadership: Director of FIPU Laboratory since 2022, leading projects like ai.Shuttle (autonomous mini-bus) and CenAI (industry collaboration with Cenosco).
Dr. Chenang Liu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering & Management at Oklahoma State University's College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology (CEAT). Their research focuses on smart manufacturing systems, real-time quality monitoring, and machine learning applications in manufacturing and healthcare. Ph.D., Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech, 2019 M.S., Statistics, Virginia Tech, 2017 B.S., Mathematics (Statistics track), Zhejiang University, China, 2014 B.S., Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, China, 2014 Research Interests: Dr. Liu develops advanced sensing and data analytics methodologies for smart manufacturing, statistical frameworks for real-time quality control, and mathematical models integrating machine learning with healthcare applications. Their work bridges industrial engineering principles with cutting-edge data science techniques. Publication Trends: Recent articles demonstrate expertise in diabetic retinopathy prediction via interpretable AI, supply chain coordination mechanisms, EHR analytics for disease progression modeling, and combinatorial optimization algorithms. Key themes include healthcare data science, resilient manufacturing systems, and stochastic resource allocation. Scientific Recognition: Featured Article in ISE Magazine, IISE, 2019 Gilbreth Memorial Fellowship, IISE, 2018-2019 Best Poster Award, INFORMS Annual Meeting, 2018 Best Student Paper Finalist, IISE Annual Conference, 2018 Best Paper Awards at INFORMS (2017) and IISE (2017)
Dewei Yi is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Computing Science, School of Natural and Computing Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, UK. He holds a PhD from Loughborough University and is an active researcher in AI, computer vision, and intelligent systems. He serves as Director of the MSc AI and MSc Robotics and AI programmes. Research Interests: His research spans AI-enabled healthcare, medical image processing, intelligent vehicles, robotics, precision agriculture, remote sensing, and applied machine learning. He focuses on hybrid intelligent systems, personalised AI, federated learning, fairness, and explainability. Recent Publication Trends: His latest work includes medical image quality evaluation using contrastive learning, federated learning for diabetic retinopathy, UAV-based solar panel inspection, vascular image analysis, and emotion recognition from ECG data, reflecting a strong trend toward healthcare and intelligent systems with real-world impact. Scientific Awards: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) Outstanding Reviewer, Transportation Research Part C (TRC) Advising and Grants: Dr Yi supervises multiple PhD students in AI, computer vision, and machine learning. His graduated PhDs include Debinal Bakyavathi Rajan, Sami Hamid Al Sulaimani, and Adinath Abhimanyu Ghadage. He has secured significant funding as PI and Co-PI, including a £408K Smartawl 5.0 project and a £794K Cancer Research UK grant (Co-PI). Labs and Teams: He leads research in AI for healthcare and intelligent vehicles, collaborating with institutions like University of Warwick, Loughborough University, and industry partners such as AVL Powertrain Ltd. His work is supported by interdisciplinary teams focusing on embedded AI, medical applications, and sustainable technologies.
Amir Shmuel is a Professor at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine, holding appointments in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Department of Physiology. He serves as Director of the Brain Imaging Signals Lab and Core Faculty at the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre of the Montreal Neurological Institute. His leadership includes chairing the 2018 International Society for Brain Connectivity conference and securing an $18.7M Canada Foundation for Innovation grant for Quebec's first large-bore 7 Tesla MRI scanner. Dr. Shmuel's research focuses on understanding neuronal mechanisms underlying functional brain imaging signals and visual information processing. His integrative approach combines fMRI, optical imaging, multi-channel neurophysiological recordings, and optogenetics across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Current research priorities include resting-state functional connectivity mechanisms, cortical lamina-resolved neurophysiology, and computational modeling of brain signals. His lab emphasizes parallel model development with experimental data acquisition. Recent publications demonstrate strong trends in multimodal neuroimaging integration, with emphasis on high-resolution fMRI techniques (especially 7T applications), resting-state connectivity analysis across species, and computational modeling of neurovascular coupling. Key subfields include laminar-specific activity mapping, artifact detection in medical imaging using deep learning, and cross-species functional connectivity frameworks. Dr. Shmuel's research is currently funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the US Department of Defense. His lab maintains active collaborations through initiatives like the International Society for Brain Connectivity and the PRIME-DE database consortium. Operating within the Brain Imaging Signals Lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute, Shmuel's team develops and applies advanced multimodal techniques including simultaneous fMRI-electrophysiology, voltage-sensitive dye imaging, and computational modeling frameworks. The lab maintains strong ties with the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre and participates in major open-science initiatives including the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute.
