Sebastian Riedel is a Professor at University College London (UCL) and a Researcher at DeepMind, leading the UCL NLP Lab. His work focuses on teaching machines to read, reason, and write, integrating Natural Language Processing (NLP) with Machine Learning. He holds an Allen Distinguished Investigator award and has held roles at FAIR, UMass Amherst, Tokyo University, and the University of Edinburgh. Education: PhD in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh (advisor: Ewan Klein), postdoctoral research at UMass Amherst (advisor: Andrew McCallum), and research at Tokyo University (advisor: Tsujii Junichi). Research Interests: NLP, machine learning, information extraction, and multimodal models like Gemini. He develops tools such as UCLEED (BioNLP event extractor), frontlets (Scala map wrappers), and thebibbrag (BibTeX to HTML converter). Awards: Allen Distinguished Investigator. Software contributions include GitHub repositories for NLP, machine learning, and data tools. Contact: s.riedel@ucl.ac.uk | Office: 1st Floor, 90 High Holborn, London WC1V 6LJ | Office Hours: Mondays 11 AM–12 PM.
Vicente Ordóñez-Román is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rice University, part of the George R. Brown School of Engineering. His research focuses on the intersection of computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning, with an emphasis on fair, transparent, and interpretable AI. He leads the Vision, Language, and Learning Lab and contributes to the Ken Kennedy Institute's Closed-loop Computer Vision research cluster. Education: PhD in Computer Science (UNC Chapel Hill, 2015), MS in Computer Science (Stony Brook University), and Engineering (Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, Ecuador). Prior roles include Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia (2016-2021) and visiting positions at Adobe Research, the Allen Institute for AI, and Amazon. Research Interests : Developing multimodal AI systems that integrate visual and textual data, mitigating biases in AI, and advancing generative models. His work emphasizes ethical AI and societal impact, as seen in his contributions to the whitepaper advocating for federal regulation of facial recognition technologies. Awards & Recognition : NSF CAREER Award (2021), Marr Prize (ICCV 2013), Best Paper at EMNLP 2017, and multiple industry grants from Google, Amazon, and Facebook. His research has been featured in media outlets like WIRED, The New York Times, and Bloomberg News. Advising & Grants : Supervises a diverse research group spanning PhD, MS, and undergraduate students. Secured over $1.8 million in external funding, including NSF grants, Amazon FAI awards, and Google Cloud credits. Leads initiatives on bias mitigation, AI ethics, and multimodal learning. Labs & Collaborations : Directs the Vision, Language, and Learning Lab (vislang.ai), collaborating with industry partners like Adobe, Amazon, and SAP. Engages in interdisciplinary projects at the Ken Kennedy Institute, focusing on closed-loop computer vision systems.
Enamul Hoque Prince is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of Information Technology at York University. He leads the Intelligent Visualization Lab, funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and Ontario Research Funds (ORF). He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University. His research integrates information visualization, human-computer interaction (HCI), and natural language processing (NLP) to address information overload challenges. Dr. Prince's educational background includes a PhD from UBC, an MSc from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and a BSc from Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology. He has conducted research at institutions like Tableau Software and the Qatar Computing Research Institute and serves on committees for top conferences like ACL and IEEE Vis. His work is supported by grants from NSERC, CFI, and others. Research interests focus on NLP-driven visual analytics, user-adaptive visualization, and accessible interfaces. Notable projects include Evizeon (natural language interfaces for visual analytics), ConVisIT (topic modeling for online conversations), and CIDER (concept-based image search). Publications highlight trends in multimodal systems, chart comprehension, and accessibility. Key awards include the NSERC Discovery Grant (2019) and a Best Paper Honorable Mention at DIS 2021. He supervises graduate and undergraduate students in areas like visualization, NLP, and HCI. Labs and collaborations emphasize interdisciplinary approaches, with the Intelligent Visualization Lab advancing tools for data exploration and user-centered design. Teaching includes courses on design principles and information visualization.
Yang Zhou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Auburn University, part of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. His research focuses on big data algorithms, machine learning, data mining, and distributed computing. He has contributed to advancements in federated learning frameworks, graph mining tools, and spatial machine learning for environmental applications like flood mapping. Education includes a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech (2021), M.E. in Computer Application Technology from Chongqing University (2016), and B.E. in Engineering from Jiangnan University (2014). His work emphasizes scalable algorithms for large-scale systems, with tools like DirDense for dense subgraph mining and FedASMU for federated learning optimization. Recent publications explore adversarial robustness, blockchain strategies in IoT, and curriculum-based learning for large language models. He advises on interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of AI and environmental science.
Professor Ernest Foo is a distinguished academic at Griffith University's School of Information and Communication Technology, specializing in cybersecurity with a focus on industrial control systems and cryptographic protocols. With over 15 years of experience in computer networking, he has established himself as a leading expert in SCADA security and smart grid cybersecurity. His research has significant practical applications in critical infrastructure protection, and he has developed hands-on security training programs that have trained professionals from major Australian utilities and government agencies. Professor Foo's educational background includes: Bachelor of Engineering with Honours in Electronic and Computer Engineering from University of Queensland Doctor of Philosophy from Queensland University of Technology Professor Foo's research interests center around secure cryptographic protocols with specific applications in industrial control system security and cyber physical systems. His work spans SCADA security, smart grid protection, wireless sensor network security, and post-quantum cryptography. He has made significant contributions to understanding vulnerabilities in industrial protocols like Modbus and DNP3, and has pioneered the application of process mining and data mining techniques for attack detection in critical infrastructure systems. His research bridges theoretical security concepts with practical implementations in real-world industrial environments. Professor Foo's recent publications demonstrate a clear trajectory toward increasingly sophisticated security frameworks for critical infrastructure. His work shows a progression from foundational SCADA security research to advanced applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and formal methods in cybersecurity. A notable trend is the integration of zero trust principles with industrial control systems, alongside growing emphasis on post-quantum cryptographic solutions. His publications span high-impact journals and conferences in cybersecurity, with increasing focus on anomaly detection in cyber-physical systems and the application of graph-based machine learning techniques to network security challenges. Professor Foo's notable scientific achievements include: Best paper award at the 2nd International Cyber Resilience Conference for "Gap analysis of Intrusion Detection in Smart Grids" Professor Foo has secured significant research funding including an ARC Linkage grant with Powerlink Queensland focused on cyber security for electricity sub-stations. He currently leads multiple research projects including Westpac Micro-Credentials in Financial Crime Investigation, Digital Banking Micro-credentials with ANZ, and research on quantum-safe cryptography. As a dedicated educator, he serves as Program Director for multiple cybersecurity programs including the Master of Cyber Security, and has supervised numerous doctoral and masters students. His Cyber Security: Industrial Control System course, conducted annually from 2013-2018, featured innovative hands-on training with real-world participants from major Australian utilities. Professor Foo has been instrumental in establishing the SCADA security research laboratory with multiple vendor system miniatures running industrial PLCs. His work bridges theoretical security concepts with practical implementations, making significant contributions to the security of industrial control systems and critical infrastructure worldwide.
William Yang Wang serves as the Mellichamp Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2019-present). He directs the UCSB Center for Responsible Machine Learning, the Mind and Machine Intelligence Initiative, and the UCSB NLP Group. His research focuses on theoretical foundations and practical algorithms for AI, particularly in NLP, LLMs, and neuro-symbolic reasoning. PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University Active in AI theory and applications (2016-present) Research interests span multiple AI domains, with special emphasis on NLP and responsible machine learning. He has pioneered datasets like HybridQA, TabFact, and VaTeX, enabling advancements in multi-hop QA, fact verification, and video-language tasks. His work combines statistical relational learning with modern deep learning paradigms. Recent publications center around multimodal reasoning, knowledge graph integration, and responsible AI development. He has received numerous accolades including the IEEE SPS Pierre-Simon Laplace Award (2024) and NSF CAREER Award (2021). Karen Sparck Jones Award (2022) DARPA Young Faculty Award (2018) IBM Faculty Award Mentoring 15+ PhD and postdoc researchers who now hold positions at Microsoft Research, Amazon, Meta GenAI, and academic institutions like Arizona and Rutgers. His lab maintains active collaborations with industry partners through initiatives like ChipAgents.ai, which he founded as CEO.
Antti Honkela is a Professor of Data Science at the University of Helsinki's Department of Computer Science, within the Faculty of Science. He also serves as the Coordinating Professor for the Privacy-preserving and Secure AI Research Programme at the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI), and as Deputy Director of the Master's Programme in Data Science. His roles include membership in the Health and Social Data Permit Authority (Findata) and as an Action Editor for Transactions on Machine Learning Research. Honkela's research focuses on privacy-preserving machine learning, differential privacy, Bayesian methods, and their applications in computational biology and healthcare. He leads projects such as the European Lighthouse in Secure and Safe AI (ELSA) and the Data Literacy for Responsible Decision-making initiative. His work emphasizes developing robust frameworks for privacy-aware AI, including differentially private synthetic data and federated learning. Honkela has advised numerous PhD and Master's students, and his contributions span theoretical advancements and practical implementations, such as the D3p Python package for differentially private probabilistic programming. Key contributions include advancements in Bayesian inference from synthetic data, privacy accounting mechanisms, and computational methods for genomic epidemiology. His interdisciplinary approach bridges machine learning, statistics, and healthcare, addressing challenges in data privacy and secure AI deployment.
Dr. Sirui Li is a Lecturer at Murdoch University's School of Information Technology within the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Her research focuses on Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning, Knowledge Graphs, Data Analysis, Temporal Data, and Multi-modal Models, with applications in medicine, agriculture, and mining. She collaborates with industry partners like BHP and has published in journals such as Food Chemistry and Knowledge and Information Systems , as well as conferences like ICSME and IJCNN. Education: Bachelor of Advanced Computing (Honours) in Computer Science at Australian National University Master of Computing (Specialising in AI) at ANU Ph.D. in Information Technology (AI) at Murdoch University Research interests include interdisciplinary applications of AI, such as clinical coding privacy solutions, disease spread modeling, and drug repurposing for pandemics. Her work emphasizes practical industry integration, demonstrated through awards like the 2024 EMNLP Best Demo Award and the 2023 Iron Ore Circuit Hackathon innovation prize. Professional roles include IEEE Western Australia Section committee membership, conference chair positions, and peer review for top journals. She actively mentors students pursuing Honours, Master's, or PhD projects in her areas of expertise.
Toby Jia-Jun Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, where he leads the SaNDwich Lab. He also serves as the Director of the Human-Centered Responsible AI Lab in the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society and is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI). Previously, he was affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and GroupLens Research. Dr. Li's research spans the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), End-User Software Engineering, Machine Learning (ML), and Natural Language Processing (NLP), with recent work focusing on addressing societal challenges in the future of work through human-AI collaborative approaches. His work has resulted in over 40 publications at premier venues including CHI, UIST, CSCW, ACL, and ICSE, with 8 papers winning Best Paper or Honorable Mention awards. His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on human-AI collaboration across various domains, including code understanding, privacy, accessibility, and creative tools. The work shows a trajectory toward increasingly sophisticated integration of human-centered design with AI capabilities, particularly using large language models to enhance human productivity and address societal challenges. Google Research Scholar Award recipient Recipient of Yahoo! Fellowship ($100,000/year) Best Paper Award at UIST 2020 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at CHI 2021 Best Paper Award at CSCW 2024 Best Paper Award at CHI 2025 Dr. Li actively mentors Ph.D. students and has established collaborations with Google, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Adobe, Verizon, and J.P. Morgan. His research has been supported by NSF, Google Research Scholar Program, AnalytiXIN Initiative, Yahoo! InMind project, and J.P. Morgan. He is currently recruiting Ph.D. students and undergraduate researchers for his SaNDwich Lab, which focuses on developing interactive systems to empower individuals to create, configure, and extend AI-powered computing systems.
Linyi Li is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University (SFU), leading the Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (TAI) Lab. His research focuses on certifiably trustworthy deep learning systems, combining machine learning and computer security. He holds a PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and a B.Eng. from Tsinghua University. Affiliations: Simon Fraser University, TAI Lab Education: PhD in Computer Science, UIUC, 2023 B.Eng (Cum Laude), Tsinghua University, 2018 His research interests include deep learning , trustworthy machine learning , large language models , and software engineering . He emphasizes rigorous certification of robustness, fairness, and numerical reliability in AI systems. Recent work includes the InfiBench benchmark for evaluating code LLMs and advancements in neural network verification. Recent Research Trends: His publications span certified robustness, fairness guarantees, and scalable verification techniques for deep learning models. He also explores scientific evaluation of foundation models and adversarial defense mechanisms. Awards: Rising Stars in Data Science AdvML Rising Star Award Wing Kai Cheng Fellowship Finalist: Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (2022) Winner: VNN-COMP'23 Competition (Team α, β-CROWN) Advising & Grants: As a PI, he oversees the TAI Lab's research. Though no specific grants are listed, his work is funded through competitive awards and university resources. Labs/Teams: Leads the TAI Lab at SFU, focusing on foundational and applied research in trustworthy AI.
Eli Ben-Michael is an Assistant Professor jointly appointed in the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy and the Department of Statistics & Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is affiliated with the CMU-NIST AI Measurement Science & Engineering Cooperative Research Center (AIMSEC), contributing to cutting-edge research at the intersection of statistics, policy analysis, and artificial intelligence. His educational background includes a PhD in Statistics from U.C. Berkeley and undergraduate studies at Columbia University where he earned a dual degree in Computer Science and Statistics. Prior to his current position, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science and Department of Statistics. Ben-Michael's research focuses on developing innovative statistical and computational methods for causal inference and policy evaluation, with particular emphasis on integrating machine learning techniques to address complex problems in public policy and social science. His work bridges theoretical statistics with practical applications in healthcare, criminal justice, education, and social policy. Current research directions include safe policy learning, sensitivity analysis for clustered data, and methodological innovations for the synthetic control method. His publication record shows a strong trajectory in top-tier journals including Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, and Proceedings of ICML. Recent work demonstrates increasing focus on policy-relevant applications including abortion legislation impacts, pre-trial risk assessment, and healthcare disparities, while maintaining methodological rigor in causal inference frameworks. Ben-Michael has developed open-source software tools including augsynth and multical R packages, which implement his methodological contributions for synthetic controls and multilevel calibration weighting. These packages have been adopted by researchers in multiple disciplines for causal inference applications.
Soheil Salehi is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona, with a joint appointment in Systems and Industrial Engineering. He is the Director of the Privacy-preserving, Intelligent, and Secure Computing (PRISM) Lab, established in August 2022. Prior to this, he was an NSF-Sponsored Computing Innovation Fellow and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California, Davis. Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Central Florida, 2020 M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Central Florida, 2016 B.S., Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, 2014 Dr. Salehi's research focuses on the intersection of hardware, AI, and security. His work spans hardware and AI-enabled security in IoT , Generative AI for hardware design and security , neuromorphic and biologically-inspired AI hardware , emerging spin-based devices , reconfigurable architectures , low-power VLSI circuits , and digital twins and mixed reality for semiconductor workforce development . He also explores the application of Generative AI in personalized education . His recent publications, spanning 2023–2025, reveal a strong trend toward integrating AI and machine learning into hardware security and design. Key themes include automated secure IC design flows , AI-driven hardware obfuscation , firmware and side-channel attack analysis , security in neuromorphic and spiking neural networks , and educational frameworks using digital twins and generative models . His work appears in top venues like DAC, ICCAD, USENIX Security, IEEE TCAS-I, and ISCAS. Outstanding Reviewer Award, IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2023 Best Presentation of the Symposium Award, UC Davis Postdoctoral Research Symposium, 2021 UCF Excellence by a Graduate Teaching Assistant (University-Level), 2016 Nominated for 30-under-30 Award, UCF, 2020 Nominated for Postdoctoral Research Excellence Award, UC Davis, 2022 Dr. Salehi has secured significant research funding as PI and Co-PI, including a $300K NSF SaTC EAGER grant on Generative AI-based Personalized Cybersecurity Tutor, a $174,000 University of Arizona PIF Award, and multiple RII grants totaling over $198K. He has also received industry funding from CHEST. He actively mentors students and leads the PRISM Lab, which focuses on privacy-preserving and intelligent secure computing. His service includes roles as Technical Program Committee (TPC) Member and Session Chair at premier conferences such as DAC, ICCAD, CCS, NDSS, and GLSVLSI. The PRISM Lab, under his direction, conducts cutting-edge research in secure and intelligent hardware systems, with applications in IoT, edge computing, and workforce development. The lab emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in both research and education.
Sean Welleck is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, Language Technologies Institute, leading the L3 Lab. His research focuses on bridging informal and formal reasoning with AI, spanning machine learning for mathematics and code, inference algorithms, and AI agents. PhD in Computer Science from New York University (advised by Kyunghyun Cho) Postdoctoral work at University of Washington (advised by Yejin Choi) His work explores AI-driven formal methods for mathematics and code generation, test-time compute scaling, and algorithms enabling AI improvement over time. Recent publications analyze reasoning evaluation, premise selection, and automated proof optimization in systems like Lean. Key article trends include neural theorem proving, code generation, and inference-time compute optimization. Awards: NVIDIA AI Labs Pioneering Research Awards (2017, 2018), NAACL 2025 Best Paper. Current advisees include PhD students Pranjal Aggarwal, Weihua Du (co-advised with Yiming Yang), Andre He (co-advised with Daniel Fried), and Seungone Kim (co-advised with Graham Neubig). He co-organizes workshops like Autoformalization for the Working Mathematician (ICERM 2025) and VerifAI: AI Verification in the Wild (ICLR 2025), and teaches Advanced NLP at CMU.
Juan Zhai is an Assistant Professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She co-directs the Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research (LASER) and is a member of the UMass NLP group. Her research advances software engineering through automated techniques for building high-quality systems with emphasis on behavioral specifications, AI safety, and trustworthy AI. Her work addresses the fundamental challenge of aligning software behavior with intended specifications through two main directions: automated specification synthesis (translating natural language comments to formal specifications via tools like C2S and LLMCup) and defect detection/repair (developing frameworks for AI system testing, bias mitigation, and training diagnostics). Her vision integrates these into end-to-end assurance systems that continuously validate, repair, and audit evolving software in dynamic environments. Recent publications (2024-2025) reveal dominant trends at the software engineering/AI intersection: formal specification synthesis for IoT and code generation, comment maintenance using LLMs, deep learning framework testing (DevMuT, Citadel), bias detection in LLMs, and automated training repair (AutoTrainer, DREAM). These contributions appear in top venues including ICSE, FSE, ASE, ISSTA, and ACL. Professor Zhai currently advises PhD student Gehao Zhang (focusing on Software Engineering and AI Safety) and actively recruits new PhD/Master's students. Her LASER lab develops practical tools for specification inference, LLM-driven synthesis, and trustworthy AI, while collaborating with the UMass NLP group on language-centric software analysis. The LASER lab, co-directed by Zhai, pioneers techniques for behavioral specification enforcement across traditional and AI-powered systems. Key projects include CPC for bidirectional code-comment analysis, ModelMeta for deep learning framework testing, and frameworks for bias mitigation across the ML lifecycle. The lab emphasizes practical, scalable tools that enhance correctness, robustness, and fairness in critical AI applications.
Stephen Meisenbacher is a Research Associate at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) , affiliated with the School of Computation, Information and Technology and the Department of Computer Science, I19 . He has been part of the Software Engineering for Business Information Systems (SEBIS) chair since March 2022. His research focuses on Privacy-Preserving Natural Language Processing (NLP) , Differential Privacy , and Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) , with a particular interest in their integration into software development and business applications. His work also explores Hybrid, Expert-Driven Classification Systems and Usable Privacy solutions. Stephen’s recent publications address trends in AI Privacy Risks , Text Rewriting with DP , Legal AI Use Cases , and Data Protection Compliance . He has contributed to GDPR-related research and PETs adoption in small enterprises. His teaching includes Natural Language Processing seminars and Software Engineering lecture courses for Master’s and Bachelor’s students at TUM. He also organizes Entrepreneurship for Small Software-Oriented Enterprises seminars. Stephen holds a Master’s in Informatics from TUM (DAAD Graduate Scholarship) and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from the University of Notre Dame, with additional studies in German Language and Literature. Contact: stephen.meisenbacher@tum.de | LinkedIn
