Benjamin Van Roy is a Professor at Stanford University since 1998, affiliated with the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Management Science and Engineering, and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. He leads the Efficient Agent Team at Google DeepMind and previously held leadership roles at Morgan Stanley, Unica, and Enuvis. He holds SB, SM, and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT, advised by John Tsitsiklis. His research focuses on reinforcement learning, alignment, and information theory, with contributions to machine learning foundations, optimization, and finance. He has authored over 150 publications, including influential works on Thompson Sampling, approximate dynamic programming, and exploration strategies. His honors include INFORMS and IEEE Fellowships and the INFORMS Lanchester Prize. Van Roy advises doctoral students across academia and industry, with graduates at top institutions and companies like Meta, Tesla, and Citadel. He teaches courses on reinforcement learning, stochastic control, and optimization. His open-source projects include Epistemic Neural Networks and the Neural Testbed for evaluating machine learning models. Key contributions include foundational work in reinforcement learning theory, scalable methods for recommendation systems, and applications in finance and resource allocation. His research bridges theoretical insights with practical applications, emphasizing alignment and safety of AI systems.
Sewoong Oh is a Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he has been faculty since 2019. His research focuses on the foundations of machine learning with particular emphasis on differential privacy, secure and robust machine learning, and federated learning. Prior to joining UW, he was at the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2012-2019. He is affiliated with multiple NSF AI Institutes including ACTION (Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation), AI-EDGE (Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence), and IFML (Foundations of Machine Learning). Oh received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2011 under Andrea Montanari, followed by postdoctoral work at MIT's Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems under Devavrat Shah. His educational background spans top institutions in theoretical computer science and electrical engineering. His research spans the critical intersection of machine learning security, privacy, and robustness. Oh's work addresses fundamental challenges in making AI systems reliable and trustworthy, with particular focus on defending against backdoor attacks, developing privacy-preserving algorithms, and creating efficient tokenization methods for language models. His recent SuperBPE work demonstrates how moving beyond traditional subword tokenization can significantly improve language model efficiency and performance. His research consistently bridges theoretical foundations with practical implementations, as evidenced by numerous open-source repositories containing production-ready code. Oh's publications reveal a consistent trajectory toward addressing security and privacy concerns in increasingly complex machine learning systems, with recent work focusing on language model tokenization, data-centric AI, and federated learning frameworks. His research shows strong interdisciplinary connections between theoretical computer science, statistics, and practical machine learning systems. ACM SIGMETRICS best paper award (2015) NSF CAREER award (2016) ACM SIGMETRICS rising star award (2017) GOOGLE Faculty Research Awards (2017, 2020) 2024 ICML Best Paper Award (for work by advisee Jon Hayase) Professor Oh maintains an active research group with numerous PhD students, postdocs, and undergraduate researchers. His students have secured prestigious positions at leading tech companies including Amazon, Google, and Snap, as well as academic appointments at institutions like University of Wisconsin-Madison and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has received substantial research funding through his participation in multiple NSF AI Institutes and industry research awards from Google. His lab maintains several active GitHub repositories implementing cutting-edge research in backdoor defense, robust statistics, and privacy-preserving machine learning.
David Bamman is an Associate Professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, specializing in applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning to cultural and social science questions. He leads research in born-literary NLP, computational humanities, and cultural analytics, with affiliated roles in EECS, Linguistics, and Computational Precision Health. Bamman holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon (Ph.D., 2015), Boston University (M.A., 2006), and University of Wisconsin-Madison (B.A., 1998). His work is supported by NEH, NSF, and industry grants. Educations: Ph.D. in Computer Science (2015), Carnegie Mellon University M.A. in Applied Linguistics (2006), Boston University B.A. in Classics (1998), University of Wisconsin-Madison Research Interests: NLP for underserved domains (e.g., literature, social media), coreference resolution, cultural analytics, and computational methods for studying literature and culture. Projects include LitBank and BookNLP datasets. Grants & Awards: Hellman Fellow (2019), Amazon Research Award (2017), NSF CAREER Award, and NEH funding. Teaching: Courses include Natural Language Processing (Info 159/259), Computational Humanities (INFO 190), and Applied NLP (INFO 256). His research group explores topics like racial representation in high school literature, Hollywood diversity metrics, and the sociocultural implications of LLMs. Bamman advises multiple PhD students and collaborates on datasets like CMU Book Summaries and 11K Latin Books.
Colin Raffel , currently an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and Associate Research Director at the Vector Institute , is a leading researcher in machine learning and natural language processing . His career spans roles at Hugging Face (Faculty Researcher), Google Brain (Senior Research Scientist), and UNC Chapel Hill (Assistant Professor). Education: PhD in Electrical Engineering (Columbia), MA in Music/Science (Stanford), BA in Mathematics (Oberlin) Key affiliations: Google Brain (2016-2020), Hugging Face (2021-present), Vector Institute (2023-present) His research focuses on language model development , attention mechanisms , efficient machine learning , and music information retrieval . Recent work explores model merging , parameter-efficient fine-tuning , and data-constrained language models . Teaching : Has instructed courses at University of Toronto and UNC Chapel Hill on Neural Networks , Deep Learning , and Information Theory . Academic service includes organizing ICLR workshops and serving as Senior Area Chair for NeurIPS and EMNLP . Notable awards : NSF CAREER (2022), Caspar Bowden Award (2023), NeurIPS Outstanding Paper (2023) Key contributions : Core developer of WT5 , Git-Theta , and mir_eval software
University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignUnited States
Huan Zhang serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with affiliate appointments in the Department of Computer Science and the Coordinated Science Laboratory. His research focuses on building trustworthy AI systems with formal verification techniques to provide provable guarantees for safety-critical applications, particularly in machine learning and neural networks. Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA in 2020, advised by Professor Cho-Jui Hsieh. His academic journey includes an M.S. in Computer Engineering from UC Davis (2014) and a Bachelor of Engineering from Zhejiang University (2012). Prior to joining UIUC, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University (2021-2023) with Professor Zico Kolter. Huan Zhang's research program centers on formal verification of machine learning systems, with particular emphasis on neural network verification, AI safety, robustness, and reliability. He pioneered the linear bound propagation-based verification framework that enables formal verification for networks with millions of neurons. His work spans five major research categories: formal verification of machine learning, training trustworthy ML models, machine learning safety and adversarial attacks, reinforcement learning safety, and optimization for scalable machine learning. His CROWN framework (NeurIPS 2018) established a foundational approach for neural network verification through efficient linear bound propagation. His recent publications demonstrate a strategic expansion from foundational verification techniques toward increasingly complex systems including large language models, vision-language models, and robotic control systems. The research trajectory shows a clear progression from theoretical frameworks to practical implementations with real-world applications, particularly in safety-critical domains. His work increasingly bridges formal methods with practical AI deployment requirements. Winner of International Verification of Neural Networks Competition (VNN-COMP) as team leader (2021-2024) Schmidt Futures AI2050 Early Career Fellowship ($300,000 research grant) Adversarial Machine Learning (AdvML) Rising Star Award (2021) IBM PhD Fellowship (2018) Dr. Zhang leads the development of α,β-CROWN, a neural network verifier that has won VNN-COMP 2021-2023, and auto_LiRPA, a PyTorch-based library for perturbation analysis on general computational graphs. He has mentored numerous graduate students from CMU, UCLA, UIUC, and Columbia University. His research is supported by significant funding including the Schmidt Futures fellowship and industry collaborations. He teaches courses including ECE 120, ECE 484, ECE 584, and ECE 598 HZ on topics ranging from computing fundamentals to safe autonomy and machine learning. Dr. Zhang maintains active research collaborations across multiple institutions and is affiliated with UIUC's Coordinated Science Laboratory. His work has significant implications for safety-critical AI applications in autonomous systems, healthcare, and other mission-critical domains where reliability guarantees are essential. He regularly gives guest lectures at institutions including Yale, Stony Brook, and the University of Nebraska Lincoln on formal verification techniques.
Prof. Luke Zettlemoyer is an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, with affiliations to the Department of Linguistics. He focuses on machine learning, natural language processing, and multimodal systems, contributing to advancements in large language models, ethical AI, and scalable architectures. His research addresses challenges in model alignment, generalization, and cross-domain integration. Key research interests include multimodal reward models, efficient tokenization strategies, and model optimization techniques. He has explored topics such as neural trajectories for robot learning, content-adaptive image processing, and ethical mitigation of verbatim data reproduction. His publications span 2023–2025, emphasizing practical applications of AI in robotics, vision-language systems, and scalable retrieval-based models. While no formal awards are listed, his work reflects significant contributions to foundational AI research.
Chris Donahue is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University . He also serves as a part-time Research Scientist at Google DeepMind on the Magenta team. His work focuses on leveraging generative AI to enhance human creativity, particularly in music. Education: PhD in Computer Science (UC San Diego), Postdoctoral Scholar (Stanford University) His research spans controllable generative modeling of music and audio , with a focus on real-time interactive systems. Projects like Piano Genie , Beat Sage , and Copilot Arena demonstrate his commitment to real-world deployment. His Generative Creativity Lab (G-CLef) explores AI applications beyond music, including programming and natural language. Recent publications highlight advancements in multimodal music evaluation , real-time adaptation , and AI-driven sound morphing . He co-developed Magenta RealTime , an open-weight real-time music generation model, and MusicFX DJ Mode . Scientific Awards: Best Paper Award (top 1) at NAACL Student Research Workshop 2025 Best Paper Award (top 1% of submissions) at CHI 2025 Best Paper Runner-up at ISMIR 2021 He co-advises PhD students like Wayne Chi (NDSEG Fellow) and mentors Irmak Bukey . His lab receives support from the AIxArts incubator fund at CMU .
Alan Ritter is an Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Computing , Georgia Institute of Technology, with additional affiliation to the Machine Learning Center . His research focuses on Natural Language Processing , particularly robust models across domains/languages with fewer labels and efficient resource use, plus data-driven dialogue agents for open-topic conversations. Research Interests : Robust NLP models, cross-lingual transfer, resource-efficient learning, dialogue systems, cultural bias measurement, and privacy-aware language models Students : Mentors Ph.D. students in Georgia Tech's ML and CS programs, including Junmo Kang, Yang Chen, and Duong Minh Le. Alumni include Fan Bai (Ph.D. 2023), Yang Chen (Ph.D. 2024), and Andrew Li (M.S. 2024). Awards : NSF CAREER Award, Amazon Research Award, ACL 2024 Best Social Impact Paper, IUI 2009 Best Student Paper. Recent Work : Studies training budget allocation between supervised and preference-based finetuning, cross-lingual information extraction, cultural bias in LLMs, and privacy risk mitigation in social media disclosures. Service : Served as Program Chair for NAACL 2025, Area Chair for multiple top-tier conferences (COLM, EMNLP, ACL, EACL, AAAI). Email : alan.ritter@cc.gatech.edu
Tijana Gajić is a researcher at Singidunum University in Belgrade, Serbia. She holds a Ph.D. in Philology (2020), an MA in English Language and Literature (2009), and a BA in the same field (2007) from the University of Belgrade. Her work focuses on the intersection of language education, digital tools, and critical pedagogy. Doctoral Studies: Philology , University of Belgrade (2017-2020) Master Studies: English Language and Literature , University of Belgrade (2008-2009) Bachelor Studies: English Language and Literature , University of Belgrade (2003-2007) Dr. Gajić’s research explores the impact of digital technologies on language acquisition, critical thinking development, and the sociopolitical dimensions of English language learning. She has published extensively on mobile applications like Duolingo, HelloTalk, and WordUp, analyzing their efficacy in modern pedagogy. Her recent publications (2024-2025) examine digital tools’ influence on language education, critical pedagogy in Serbian classrooms, and AI-driven language learning innovations. Earlier works (2020-2016) established her expertise in tandem learning, vocabulary enhancement via apps, and affective factors in language acquisition. Notable collaborations include partnerships with researchers like N. Maenza , A. Gagić , and J. Nikolić . While no specific grants or awards are mentioned, her involvement in conferences such as Sinteza and ELTA Serbia underscores her active role in advancing language education. Her 2022 book, Nastava stranih jezika i razvoj kritičkog mišljenja u eri neoliberalizma , synthesizes her critical pedagogy framework. Current projects likely continue her focus on digital transformation in language teaching.
Asaf Cidon is an Associate Professor at Columbia University, jointly affiliated with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a member of the Data Science Institute. His research focuses on software systems , storage , large-scale machine learning , and cybersecurity . Stanford University - PhD in Electrical Engineering Stanford University - MS in Electrical Engineering Technion - BS in Computer and Software Engineering His work in distributed storage systems has been commercialized by companies such as Facebook, Tibco, and Rubrik. He has led projects like Sentinel and Forensics during his industry career. Recent publications highlight advancements in software-based radiation protection (ASPLOS'26), PCIe pooling with CXL (HotOS'25), and AI phishing detection (IMC'25). These reflect his expertise in system architecture , security , and networking . Scientific recognitions include best paper awards at OSDI, Usenix Security, CIDR, and ATC, along with NSF CAREER and ARO Young Investigator Awards . His papers Cookie Monster (SOSP'24) and Chablis (CIDR'24) received notable accolades. He has mentored numerous PhD and Master's students , including Edward Guo, Harry Wang, and Teng Jiang, many of whom now hold roles at Google, Meta, Amazon, and academic institutions. His lab at Columbia is actively recruiting CS and EE PhD students. Prior to Columbia, he founded and led the startup Sookasa to acquisition and served as Senior Vice President of Email Protection at Barracuda Networks , managing a $200M business with 100 engineers.
Dr. Moran Lazar is a Senior Lecturer at the Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, specializing in the early foundations of entrepreneurship and innovation with emphasis on new venture team formation, ideation processes, and organizational innovation leadership. Her educational background includes: PhD in behavioral science and management from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Research fellow at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland Research fellow at INSEAD Dr. Lazar integrates organizational behavior and strategy perspectives to investigate entrepreneurship micro-foundations, utilizing diverse methodologies including entrepreneurship competitions, hackathons, accelerators, educational programs, and crowdfunding platforms. Her work examines how individuals and teams generate, evaluate, and develop entrepreneurial ideas through behavioral lenses. Her publication trends reveal consistent contributions to top management journals focusing on team dynamics in nascent ventures, with recent works analyzing attachment theory in idea evaluation, relationship-business balance in team composition, and comprehensive frameworks for entrepreneurial team formation across multiple contexts including accelerators and international delegations. Dr. Lazar actively consults for global companies and facilitates innovation processes for international delegations from Europe, the United States, East Asia, and the United Arab Emirates, while sharing insights through her TEDx talk on entrepreneurial team formation.
Jiaxuan You is an Assistant Professor at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, leading the U Lab focused on achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in digital environments. His research spans graph neural networks (GNNs), relational data, foundation models, and machine learning systems. PhD and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University (2021) Developed GraphGym and PyTorch Geometric (PyG) for graph learning Core member at Kumo AI (2021-2023) His research explores: Graph-enhanced LLMs: Integrating relational structures into foundation models AGI Development: Self-optimizing AI agents and tool utilization ML Systems: Scalable architectures and redundancy-free computation Interdisciplinary Applications: Financial networks, crop yield prediction, and metro systems Recent publications focus on temporal reasoning, multi-agent dynamics, and hybrid architectures for LLMs. He actively develops open-source tools like DBGYM and GraphRouter. Scientific recognition includes: JPMC PhD Fellowship Baidu Scholarship Best Student Paper at AAAI 2017 World Bank Big Data Innovation Challenge winner He mentors PhD and intern students, emphasizing machine learning systems expertise. His lab collaborates on AGI workshops (e.g., ICLR 2024) and industry projects.
Clifford Stein is a Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) and Computer Science at Columbia University, and Associate Director for Research at the Data Science Institute. He holds a Ph.D. (1992), M.S. (1989), and B.S.E. (1987) from MIT and Princeton University, respectively. His research focuses on algorithms, combinatorial optimization, operations research, scheduling, and computational biology. A co-author of the best-selling textbook Introduction to Algorithms , Stein has published widely in top venues and holds prestigious awards like ACM Fellow and NSF Career Award. His work includes foundational contributions to minimum cut algorithms, scheduling theory, and network optimization, supported by NSF and Sloan Foundation grants. Stein has advised over 40 graduate and undergraduate students, many now in academia and industry.
Snježana Babić serves as Associate Professor and Head of the Graduate Study Program Informatics - Teaching Major at the Faculty of Informatics in Pula , University of Pula. With a PhD obtained in 2016 and university affiliation since 2017, she teaches across undergraduate and graduate programs focusing on ICT fundamentals, web design, digital competencies, and informatics education methodology. Her educational background includes graduation in 1993 followed by doctoral studies culminating in 2016. Though specific institutions aren't detailed in the text, her career trajectory shows progression from foundational ICT teaching to specialized informatics education leadership. Babić's research centers on educational technology adoption with particular emphasis on programming pedagogy for young learners through the MEMA method. Her work investigates digital competencies across multiple educational contexts, from primary schools to higher education. Recent publications demonstrate rapid adaptation to emerging technologies, with 2025 studies examining ChatGPT integration in Croatian educational settings and cross-cultural applications of programming methods. Analysis of her 15 most recent publications reveals consistent focus on technology acceptance models applied to Croatian educators and students. The research trajectory shows evolution from foundational e-learning systems (2016-2020) to cutting-edge AI and robotics applications (2022-2025), maintaining strong methodological focus on teacher motivation , implementation barriers , and culturally-specific adoption factors . Her teaching portfolio demonstrates deep integration with research interests: Undergraduate: ICT Fundamentals, Web Design and Application Graduate: Digital Competencies in Education, Informatics Education Methodology, Practicum for IT Educators Cross-disciplinary: ICT in Nursing, Healthcare Informatics Babić actively contributes to institutional leadership as program head while maintaining robust research productivity. Her work bridges theoretical technology adoption frameworks with practical implementation challenges in Croatian educational contexts, particularly examining how emerging technologies like humanoid robots and AI assistants can be effectively integrated into teaching practices.
Professor Mohammad FARD is a faculty member at RMIT University's School of Engineering, specializing in Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems. He leads research in autonomous vehicles, crash safety, and driver monitoring using AI. His industry experience includes six years at Nissan Technical Centre, focusing on vehicle body design. He holds a PhD from Tohoku University and has collaborated across Engineering, Health, and Science disciplines, achieving international media coverage for work on driver drowsiness and road safety. Research Interests: Autonomous Vehicles Advanced Crash Safety Driver State Monitoring AI in Noise/Vibration Human Factors/Ergonomics Teaching & Projects: Teaches Advanced CAE, Vehicle NVH, and research supervision in areas like crash simulation and vibration control. Current projects include Formula One safety barriers and driver education for autonomous vehicles. Awards & Labs: No awards listed. Active in cross-disciplinary teams and labs addressing automotive innovation and safety.
