Jacob Eyferth is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, jointly appointed in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Department of History, and the College. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of twentieth-century China, particularly rural communities, gender dynamics, and the intersection of technology and everyday life. Key research themes include the impact of industrialization, collectivization, and revolution on non-elite populations, with an emphasis on rural women's labor and cultural resistance. His current project explores cotton production, clothing, and gender during China's socialist era. Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots (2009) How China Works (2006) Rural Development in Transitional China (2004) He received the 2011 Joseph Levenson Prize for his first book. Eyferth has taught courses on topics such as class inequality, everyday life under socialism, and revolutionary China, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford, Harvard, and Rutgers.
Dawn Song is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, affiliated with multiple research centers including the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR) and the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence (RDI). She holds leadership roles in AI safety, cybersecurity, and blockchain research. Her work bridges machine learning, security, and distributed systems, with notable contributions to formal verification, privacy-preserving technologies, and AI governance. Education: Ph.D. (2002) and M.S. (1999) in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University, respectively. She previously served as an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University before joining UC Berkeley in 2007. Research Interests: Dawn's work focuses on AI safety, cybersecurity, and the ethical implications of frontier AI. She explores topics such as large language model vulnerabilities, zero-knowledge proofs, blockchain security, and policy frameworks for AI governance. Her research combines theoretical rigor with practical applications, addressing challenges in secure systems, adversarial machine learning, and privacy-preserving computation. Publications: Her recent work includes groundbreaking studies on LLM memorization, smart contract decompilation, and AI agent cybersecurity evaluation. She also leads initiatives like the Singapore Consensus and California Report on AI safety priorities, emphasizing global collaboration in risk mitigation. Notable Awards: MacArthur Fellowship (2010), ACM Fellow (2019), IEEE Fellow (2019) Advising & Grants: She advises projects on AI policy and cybersecurity, securing grants from NSF, DARPA, and industry collaborations. Her lab develops tools like CyberGym for evaluating AI agents and zkPyTorch for secure machine learning. Labs & Teams: Her research groups at UC Berkeley focus on cutting-edge projects in AI safety, blockchain, and cybersecurity, collaborating with industry leaders and policymakers to advance both technical and ethical standards.
Wei Xu is an Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Computing and School of Interactive Computing, with affiliations to the Machine Learning Center. Their research bridges machine learning, natural language processing, and social media with focus areas in large language models, cultural bias mitigation, multilingual capabilities, and human-AI collaboration in text evaluation. NSF CAREER and Google Academic Research Award recipient Director of NLP X Lab PhD from New York University, BSMS from Tsinghua University Research interests span: Multilingual Multicultural LLMs addressing representational gaps and cultural adaptation in language models (NAACL 2025, ACL 2024); Robustness and Reasoning through dynamic AGI evaluations (ACL 2024, EMNLP 2024); Interdisciplinary NLP applications in security, healthcare, and law (EMNLP 2024, ACL 2024). Recent publications focus on multilingual alignment (NAACL 2025), privacy risk estimation (arXiv 2025), cultural bias analysis (ACL 2024), and medical text simplification (EMNLP 2024). Key themes include bias mitigation, multimodal processing, and practical LLM evaluation. Scientific Awards : NSF CAREER, Google/Sony/Criteo research awards, ACL'24 Best Social Impact Award, COLING'18 Best Paper Advising 15 PhD/MS/BSMS students including Yao Dou (human-centered LLM evaluation), Tarek Naous (multilingual LLMs), and alumni like Chao Jiang (Apple AI/ML) and Yang Chen (NVIDIA research scientist). Teaches graduate courses on NLP and LLMs.
Dr. Chang Xu is an Associate Professor in Machine Learning and Computer Vision at the University of Sydney's School of Computer Science. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Tianjin University and a PhD from Peking University. His research focuses on machine learning, data mining, and their applications in AI and computer vision, including multi-view learning, visual search, and face recognition. He is an ARC Future Fellow and a member of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre and The Net Zero Institute. Education: B.E. in Engineering (Tianjin University), Ph.D. in Computer Science (Peking University). His research interests emphasize handling heterogeneous data, exploring data variety, and developing algorithms for robust AI systems. His work includes adversarial robustness, neural architecture search, and efficient deep learning models. Research trends in his articles include adversarial robustness in neural architectures, efficient vision transformers, multimodal 3D style transfer, and underwater image restoration. Key contributions span image restoration, video super-resolution, and lightweight network design. He has advised multiple PhD and master's students on topics like diffusion models, radar image synthesis, and graph similarity. Awards: ARC Future Fellow. Collaborations focus on cross-domain data integration and AI applications. His labs and teams explore generative models, robust learning, and scalable robotics policies. Recent work includes diffusion models for action segmentation and robust vision-language systems.
Antoine Bosselut is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, where he leads the EPFL NLP group. His research focuses on developing AI reasoning agents that can model, represent, and reason about human and world knowledge, with applications in health, education, and global fairness. His research interests span multiple critical areas in modern AI: LLM Representations of Knowledge: Understanding what language models know and how they represent that knowledge internally Reasoning Algorithms: Developing methods to improve LLMs' reasoning capabilities through symbolic systems, neuroscience, and cognitive science Large-scale AI Development: Creating open-source foundation models with multilingual capabilities AI Democratization: Ensuring equitable access to AI technologies across different cultural and regulatory contexts His recent publications reveal a strong focus on the intersection of language models and cognitive science, with multiple studies examining how LLMs align with human cognition. He's also deeply engaged in practical applications of NLP technology, particularly in education and multilingual settings, as evidenced by his work on evaluating AI's impact on higher education and developing culturally-aware language models. His scientific achievements have been recognized with several prestigious awards: Outstanding Paper Award at NAACL 2025 ELLIS Scholar designation in 2024 Outstanding Paper Award at ACL 2023 Inclusion in Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Science & Healthcare in 2021 Bosselut actively mentors numerous PhD students across diverse NLP research areas and has secured significant recognition for his work in both academic and media circles. His lab has been featured in major publications including Communications of the ACM, The Atlantic, and Quanta Magazine, highlighting the societal impact of his research on commonsense reasoning and AI capabilities.
Claire Bowern is Professor of Linguistics at Yale University specializing in historical linguistics, language documentation, and Australian Indigenous languages. Her research employs computational phylogenetics to study language evolution and supports language revitalization through digital archives and fieldwork methodologies. Recent publications address: Phylogenetic signal in lexical evolution across language families Digital infrastructure for endangered language documentation (FLEx software analysis) Decolonizing linguistics pedagogy and research practices Her work consistently integrates linguistic, anthropological, and computational approaches to analyze language diversity and change. She contributes to global databases including Grambank and D-PLACE, examining links between linguistic, cultural, and environmental patterns.
David Silver is a Professor of Computer Science at University College London and Principal Research Scientist at DeepMind, leading the Reinforcement Learning Research Group. His pioneering work in deep reinforcement learning has revolutionized artificial intelligence through breakthroughs in computer game-playing algorithms. His educational background includes: Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Cambridge University (1997, 2000) PhD in Computer Science from the University of Alberta (2009) Silver specializes in deep reinforcement learning where algorithms learn through trial-and-error in interactive environments. His research combines deep neural networks with reinforcement learning strategies to solve complex decision-making problems. He is renowned for developing AlphaGo (defeating Go world champion Lee Sedol in 2016), AlphaZero (mastering Chess, Shogi and Go through self-play), and AlphaStar (conquering Starcraft II). His work demonstrates unprecedented generality in game-playing AI and has catalyzed industry-wide adoption of reinforcement learning techniques. Analysis of his publications reveals a consistent trajectory toward self-supervised learning systems. His 2015-2016 Nature papers established foundational architectures combining neural networks with Monte Carlo tree search, shifting the field from human-data dependency toward pure self-play methodologies. This evolution enabled superhuman performance across diverse game domains while minimizing domain-specific knowledge. His scientific awards include: ACM Prize in Computing (2019) for breakthrough advances in computer game-playing Marvin Minsky Medal (2018) for outstanding achievements in AI Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal (2017) for UK engineering contributions Mensa Foundation Prize (2017) for best AI scientific discovery Silver's research has generated significant real-world impact beyond gaming, including optimizing the UK power grid, reducing Google data center energy consumption, and planning European Space Agency probe trajectories. While not explicitly documented in advising roles, his leadership at DeepMind fosters collaborative research environments that train next-generation AI scientists through high-impact projects. As lead of DeepMind's Reinforcement Learning Research Group, Silver directs cutting-edge work extending deep reinforcement learning to robotics, complex real-world systems, and multi-agent environments. Current initiatives focus on transferring game-playing breakthroughs to industrial automation and scientific discovery applications.
Prof. Ingmar Posner is a leading figure in applied artificial intelligence at the University of Oxford, where he serves as Principal Investigator for the Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab (A2I) and founding Director of the Oxford Robotics Institute. His work focuses on enabling robots to operate effectively in complex real-world environments through experience-driven learning. Key research areas: robot learning, scene interpretation, data-efficient learning, and transfer learning Applications in manipulation, autonomous driving, logistics, and space exploration His team has produced groundbreaking work in world models, sim-to-real transfer, and constraint-based manipulation systems (e.g., COMBO-Grasp). Notable contributions include the TWIST distillation framework and foundational research in tactile data generation (TactGen). He has received multiple best paper awards at top robotics venues. Publications reveal evolving research themes: 2025 work emphasizes language-conditioned learning (Lumos) and multi-agent decision-making, while 2024 focused on diffusion models for locomotion and differentiable simulators. Earlier work spans from urban scene analysis to physically plausible scene synthesis (RELATE).
Justin Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan's College of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). His work bridges computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning, focusing on visual reasoning, vision-language tasks, image generation, and 3D reasoning using neural networks. PhD, Stanford University (advised by Fei-Fei Li) His research interests span visual reasoning , vision and language , 3D vision , and image generation , with a focus on innovative applications of deep neural networks. Recent publications highlight work on 3D consistency, self-supervised learning, and multimodal integration of vision and text. Notable contributions include PyTorch3D for 3D data processing, and foundational work in visual question answering , neural style transfer , and scene graph-based image generation . Publications span top conferences like ICCV, CVPR, and NeurIPS. He teaches courses including EECS 498/598: Deep Learning for Computer Vision and EECS 442: Computer Vision at University of Michigan, with prior involvement in Stanford's CS 231N in co-teaching roles. Software projects include open-source frameworks like fast-neural-style for real-time artistic style transfer, and PyTorch3D for efficient 3D deep learning. These tools demonstrate his commitment to practical implementations and community-driven research.
Robert West is an Associate Professor at EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences , leading the Data Science Lab (dlab) . His research focuses on Natural Language Processing , Machine Learning , and Computational Social Science , analyzing human-generated data from the web, social media, and online platforms. Education : PhD in Computer Science (2016) - Stanford University MSc in Computer Science (2010) - McGill University BSc in Computer Science (2007) - Technische Universität München Research Interests : West develops algorithms for analyzing large-scale web data, with emphasis on multilingual NLP , social network analysis , and AI ethics . His work bridges machine learning with social science to understand digital human behavior. Scientific Awards : ICWSM’22 Adamic–Glance Distinguished Young Researcher Award Google Faculty Research Award Facebook Research Award Multiple Outstanding Paper Awards at ICWSM and WWW Advising & Grants : He advises 12 PhD students and has secured funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation , Swiss Data Science Center , and industry partners. His lab maintains collaborations with Microsoft Research and CROSS . Labs & Collaborations : West leads the Data Science Lab at EPFL, which focuses on web-scale data analysis , privacy-preserving machine learning , and AI for social good . The lab develops tools like Wikispeedia and Quotebank for public data exploration.
Shimon Whiteson is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, leading the Whiteson Research Lab focused on reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems, and deep learning. His research develops algorithms for efficient learning in complex environments. Current work explores meta-reinforcement learning frameworks that enable agents to rapidly adapt to new tasks, with applications in autonomous driving simulation and robotics. Recent innovations include novel methods for offline reinforcement learning, multi-agent coordination, and morphology-aware control. Publications demonstrate advances in: Meta-RL algorithm design for few-shot adaptation Multi-agent reinforcement learning environments and benchmarks Imitation learning in autonomous driving Bayesian methods for sample-efficient learning Research outputs include widely used benchmarks and tools including JaxMARL for accelerated multi-agent RL research. Current doctoral supervision focuses on temporal abstraction in RL, multi-agent coordination, and reinforcement learning theory.
Yuki M. Asano is a full Professor at the University of Technology Nuremberg , leading the Fundamental AI (FunAI) Lab . Previously, he led the QUVA Lab at the University of Amsterdam and earned his PhD at the Visual Geometry Group (VGG) of the University of Oxford under Andrea Vedaldi and Christian Rupprecht. University of Technology Nuremberg (2024–present) University of Amsterdam (prior to 2024) University of Oxford (PhD, 2020) His research spans Artificial Intelligence , Machine Learning , and Computer Vision , with a focus on Causal Representation Learning , Self-Supervised Learning , and Efficient Model Adaptation . He pioneered techniques like BISCUIT (causal variable identification) and VeRA (parameter-efficient fine-tuning). His work extends to Medical Imaging and Environmental Monitoring through applications in fetal ultrasound analysis and marine debris detection. Recent publications (2023–2025) highlight advancements in Self-Supervised Learning , Vision-Language Models , and 3D Understanding . Notable papers include TWIST & SCOUT (multimodal LLM grounding), SIGMA (masked video modeling), and GeneralAD (anomaly detection). His ICCV 2023 work on Self-Ordering Point Clouds and MoSiC (optimal-transport motion trajectories) underscores his interdisciplinary approach. He received the JUPITER compute grant (2025) and an Outstanding Paper Award at ICLR 2024 . His collaborations span institutions like MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, Qualcomm AI Research, and University of Amsterdam.
Manik Varma is a Distinguished Scientist and Vice President at Microsoft Research India, and an Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academies of Science (IASc, INSA, NASI), the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He has received prestigious awards such as the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and Microsoft Gold Star Award. Education : BSc in Physics from St. Stephen's College (David Raja Ram Prize) BA in Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholar) DPhil in Computer Vision and Machine Learning from the University of Oxford (University Scholar) Post-doctoral Fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), Berkeley Visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley His research focuses on Machine Learning (Extreme Classification, Resource-efficient ML, Supervised Learning), Information Retrieval (Computational Advertising, Dense Retrieval, Recommender Systems), and Computer Vision (Image Search, Object Recognition). Recent work includes graph-regularized encoders, label variance reduction, and multimodal classification frameworks. His publications span extreme classification algorithms like NGAME , SiameseXML , and DECAF , with applications in IoT, web search, and recommendation systems. He leads a research group at Microsoft Research India and advises PhD students at IIT Delhi. Scientific Awards : Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (Government of India) Microsoft Gold Star and Achievement Awards WSDM 2019 Best Paper Prize BuildSys 2019 Best Paper Runner-up Fellow of ACM, IASc, INSA, NASI, INAE He has supervised numerous PhD students, including Sonu Mehta and Suchith Prabhu, and collaborates with institutions like Microsoft Research India, IIT Delhi, and UC Berkeley. His research has led to scalable solutions for billion-label classification and resource-constrained IoT applications.
Herman Barkema is a Professor in Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, with a joint appointment in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine. His research focuses on preventing infectious diseases in cattle herds (e.g., mastitis, Johne’s disease) and antimicrobial resistance, integrating animal and public health perspectives under the One Health framework. He founded the Department of Production Animal Health and leads the AMR – One Health Consortium and CAN-AMR-Net. DVM, Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University (1988) PhD, Veterinary Science, Utrecht University (1998) His work spans clinical veterinary epidemiology, antimicrobial resistance mechanisms, and zoonotic disease control. He has over 425 publications and collaborates globally, including as a Foreign Expert at China Agricultural University. Recent research trends highlight his focus on multi-omics approaches, ceRNA networks, and antimicrobial stewardship in dairy systems, with significant contributions to Johne’s disease diagnostics and mastitis prevention. Roger Morris ISVEE Award (2024) Plowright Prize (2022) Killam Annual Professorship (2019) Multiple Journal of Dairy Science Most Cited Awards (2011–2024) Fellow, Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2014) Dr. Barkema supervises graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, emphasizing interdisciplinary mentorship. He co-developed the Veterinary DialogueTrainer for clinical communication training and participates in public engagement initiatives like Breakfast on the Farm. He leads the AMR – One Health Consortium and CAN-AMR-Net, integrating stakeholders across Canada and internationally. His affiliations include the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases and strategic initiatives on Infectious Diseases and One Health (2015–2025).
Mark Steedman is a Professor in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where he conducts research in Artificial Intelligence, Computational Cognitive and Social Science, and Natural Language and Speech Processing. He is affiliated with the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC), the Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR), and the Human Communications Research Center (HCRC). He also holds an adjunct professorship in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) , computational linguistics , prosody and intonation , temporal semantics , gesture in communication , and computational music analysis . He has authored foundational books including Surface Structure and Interpretation , The Syntactic Process , and Taking Scope . The recent publications reflect a strong trend toward integrating formal grammatical frameworks like CCG with modern neural and distributional models, particularly in semantic parsing, entailment reasoning, and cognitive modeling. His work bridges symbolic and statistical approaches in NLP, often focusing on robust, wide-coverage parsing and semantic interpretation. Best Paper Award at AACL/IJCNLP 2023 for 'Smoothing Entailment Graphs with Language Models' Best Paper Award at ACL 2023 for 'Extrinsic Evaluation of Machine Translation Metrics' Influential Paper Award 2017 from IFAAMAS for 'Animated Conversation' Mark Steedman has supervised numerous PhD students and collaborated widely across institutions. He leads research in formal grammar applications to cognitive modeling, dialogue, and multimodal communication. His lab contributes to CCG software and semantic parsing tools, and he continues to be actively involved in advancing the integration of symbolic and neural AI.
