Dr. Balaraman Ravindran is a Professor and Head of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) at IIT Madras. He also leads the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (RBCDSAI) and the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI). His research focuses on reinforcement learning, geometric deep learning, and ethical AI deployment. Education includes a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2004) and MSc from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (1996). He holds prestigious fellowships from AAAI and INAE, and is an ACM Distinguished Member. Key contributions include work on class imbalance learning (e.g., TODUS algorithm) and applications in healthcare, transportation, and social networks. He has advised over 20 students and secured grants from Google, TCS Research, and others. Labs/Teams: Heads RBCDSAI and CeRAI, collaborates with TCS Research and Google.
Matthew Louis Mauriello is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Delaware , where he directs the Sensify Lab . He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Maryland (2018) and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University (School of Medicine, 2020; School of Public Policy & Environmental Engineering Department, 2019). Research interests span Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Ubiquitous Computing, and User-Centered Design with applications in: Sustainability Human-Building Interaction Wearable Technology Personal Informatics Educational Game Design Mental Health Interventions Recent publications highlight trends in stress monitoring (skin-like biosensors, workplace wellbeing), energy auditing (thermography systems), and educational technology (block-based programming tools for teachers). His work appears in ACM CHI, ACM Human-Computer Interaction, and Building and Environment. Scientific awards include: Best Paper Honorable Mention, CHI 2016 Best Paper Honorable Mention, CHI 2015 Best of WebSci'18 Teaching at University of Delaware encompasses courses like Educational Game Design Operating Systems Advanced Web Technologies Computing for Social Good with a focus on project-based learning and systems thinking.
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.
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.
Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering , Indian Institute of Technology Bombay , specialising in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning . His research spans sequential decision making , multiagent learning , multi-armed bandits , and humanoid robotics , with applications in robot soccer , computer games , and online advertising . He teaches advanced courses like CS 747: Foundations of Intelligent and Learning Agents and CS 748: Advances in Intelligent and Learning Agents , focusing on end-to-end system design and theoretical analysis. His scientific awards include the Best Student Paper Award at RoboCup International Symposium 2006 and nomination for Best Student Paper Award at AAMAS 2007 . His work on reinforcement learning and policy iteration has been published in leading venues such as IJCAI , ICML , and COLT , with recent contributions to railway scheduling and bandit algorithms. While no explicit list of advisees is provided, his research projects and publications suggest mentorship of students in collaborative efforts. Contact : shivaram@cse.iitb.ac.in .
Carl Vondrick is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University. His research focuses on creating robust and versatile perception systems that leverage video and interaction with the natural world, with applications in 3D reconstruction, visual question answering, and robot manipulation. Former research scientist at Google Visiting researcher at Cruise Education: PhD (2017) from MIT, advised by Antonio Torralba BS (2011) from UC Irvine, advised by Deva Ramanan His research explores multimodal approaches for cross-task and cross-modal transfer, scene dynamics, audiovisual perception, interpretable models, and spatial awareness systems. The lab emphasizes zero-shot generalization and neuro-symbolic methods while addressing safety and robustness in AI systems. Key publication trends include: 2025: Video generation for robotics 2024: Differentiable rendering and cross-modal reasoning 2023: Robust perception and 3D modeling Scientific Awards: 2024 PAMI Young Researcher Award 2021 NSF CAREER Award Teaching Roles: Teaching Computer Vision II (2021-2025), Computer Vision I (2018-2019), and Representation Learning (2020-2022). Advising: Advises 8 current PhD students and has mentored 5 graduated students now at institutions like MBZUAI and UMD. The lab recruits 1-2 PhD students annually through Columbia’s PhD program. Grants and Collaborations: Funded by NSF, DARPA, Toyota Research Institute, Amazon Research, and Google.
Kevin Jamieson is an Associate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington . His academic journey includes a B.S. (2009) , M.S. (2010) , and Ph.D. (2015) in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, Columbia University, and University of Wisconsin–Madison respectively. He completed a postdoc at UC Berkeley's AMP Lab before joining UW in 2017. Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison (2015) M.S., Electrical Engineering, Columbia University (2010) B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Washington (2009) Jamieson's research lies at the intersection of interactive machine learning , active learning , and sequential decision making . His work focuses on: Adaptive sampling strategies in multi-armed bandits and reinforcement learning (RL) Developing instance-dependent optimal algorithms that adapt to problem difficulty Applications in robotics , human perception studies , and hyperparameter optimization Representation learning for large models and experimental design frameworks His 15 most recent publications (2025-2022) demonstrate expertise in bandit theory , contextual RL , and game-theoretic learning . Notable trends include sample-efficient optimization , adaptive A/B testing , and sim-to-real transfer in robotics. Jamieson has received: NSF CAREER award for foundational contributions Amazon Faculty Research award for innovation in learning systems He actively recruits graduate students and postdocs , emphasizing collaboration in areas like: Multi-agent RL and strategic actor learning Empirical process suprema and adaptive sampling theory Applications in robotics , large language model finetuning , and biomedical data analysis Jamieson leads the Washington AI Lab (WAIL) and develops open-source learning systems like the NEXT framework for real-world adaptive data collection. He serves as co-PI for the Institute for the Foundations of Data Science (IFDS) and co-organizes the Distinguished Seminar in Optimization & Data .
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.
Professor Hutan Ashrafian is a clinician-scientist and surgeon at the University of Leeds Business School, holding dual roles as Professor of Research Impact and Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London. His expertise spans AI in healthcare, metabolic surgery, and ancient history. He pioneered STARD-AI and QUADAS-AI guidelines for AI diagnostics, collaborated on AI-driven breast cancer screening with Google and NHS, and led global health policy initiatives. Ashrafian’s work bridges medicine, history, and philosophy, including his contributions to understanding historical figures’ medical conditions, such as King Tutankhamun’s epilepsy. He has authored over 550 publications, 12 books, and holds a PhD in computational physiology and an MBA with distinction. Awards include the Hunterian Prize and Wellcome Trust Fellowship. His research also explores AI ethics, quantum physics paradoxes, and art-based medical diagnostics. Education: PhD in Computational Physiology (Imperial College London) MBA (Warwick Business School) MD (University College London) Bachelor of Science in Immunology (University College London) Research Interests: Ashrafian’s work spans: AI in Medicine: Diagnostic algorithms, guideline development (STARD-AI/QUADAS-AI), and ethical frameworks. Metabolic Surgery: Bariatric interventions, gut microbiome, and obesity treatments. Ancient History: Medical analyses of historical figures (e.g., Tutankhamun, Julius Caesar) and art-based pathology identification. Philosophy: AI rights (AIONAI law), temporal paradoxes, and the Simulation Argument. Awards: Royal College of Surgeons Arris and Gale Lectureship Hunterian Prize Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship Advising & Innovation: Supervised >50 PhD students, co-founded Oxford Medical Products (weight loss tech), and serves as CSO at Flagship Pioneering’s Preemptive Health division. He advises on NHS digital transformation and global health policy. Labs/Teams: Leads AI initiatives at Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation and collaborates with Google, NICE, and international institutions on health tech solutions.
Dr. Diyi Yang is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. She leads the Social and Language Technologies (SALT) Lab, affiliated with the Stanford NLP Group, Stanford HCI Group, Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), and Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Her research focuses on socially aware natural language processing, large language models (LLMs), and human-AI interaction, aiming to improve human-human and human-computer communication through socially grounded AI systems. Education: Ph.D. in Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University (2013–2019) B.S. in ACM Honored Class, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2009–2013) Research Interests: Dr. Yang’s work bridges computational social science and NLP. She explores how AI can understand social contexts in language use and develop systems that respect cultural norms, ethical standards, and human values. Her lab’s projects include AI companions for skill training (e.g., Rehearsal Dialects), norm-aware LLMs (NormBank), and frameworks for human-AI collaboration (Co-Gym). Recent efforts address bias in AI, societal impacts of LLMs, and ethical evaluation of human-AI systems. Awards & Honors: 2024: Sloan Research Fellowship, ONR Young Investigator Award 2023: Adamic-Glance Young Distinguished Award (ICWSM), Kavli Fellow (NAS) 2022: NSF CAREER Award, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow 2020: IEEE AI’s 10 to Watch Advising & Grants: Dr. Yang advises over 10 PhD students and postdocs, co-leading projects on LLM evaluation (SWE-bench/SWE-smith), human-AI ethics, and culturally aware NLP. Her research is supported by NSF, Amazon, DARPA, Google, and Stanford’s HAI initiative. Labs & Teams: The SALT Lab collaborates across disciplines, with projects spanning computer science, linguistics, and social sciences. Current initiatives include developing AI tools for mental health support (AI Partner & Mentor) and auditing societal impacts of LLMs.
Minh Q. Phan is an Associate Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering. His expertise spans system identification, iterative learning control, model predictive control, robotic swarm control, and intelligent control systems. He holds a BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and MS/M.Phil/PhD degrees from Columbia University in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Phan has contributed to over 50 peer-reviewed publications and serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. His research focuses on advancing control theory applications in robotics, structural health monitoring, and sustainable construction materials. Key contributions include the development of OKID (Observer/Kalman Filter Identification) methods and bilinear system identification frameworks. Education History: Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley, 1985 Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, 1986 Master of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, 1988 Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, 1989 Research Interests: Advanced control methodologies for dynamic systems Model-based predictive control strategies Applications in robotics and aerospace engineering Structural health monitoring via system identification Machine learning for materials science Teaching Responsibilities include courses like ENGG 149 (Systems Identification), ENGS 145 (Modern Control Theory), and ENGG 148 (Structural Mechanics). His work bridges theoretical control systems with practical industrial applications, including automation in food processing and sustainable construction practices. Dr. Phan has collaborated on projects addressing viral epidemiology in Vietnam and coastal erosion mitigation strategies.
Hao Su is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego . He serves as Chairman & CTO of Hillbot Inc , and leads the SU Lab which focuses on building autonomous systems that learn actively in physical environments. His affiliations include the Institute for Learning-enabled Optimization at Scale , Artificial Intelligence Group , Contextual Robotics Institute , Halicioğlu Data Science Institute , and Center for Visual Computing . As a researcher in Computer Vision, Robotics, and Neural Geometry , he has made significant contributions to 3D foundation models, reward-free world models, diffusion policy frameworks, and GPU-accelerated simulation environments. His 2024-2025 publications include advancements in hand-eye calibration, dynamic mesh reconstruction, and multi-stage robotic manipulation. His scientific awards include: Frontiers of Science Award (2025) TPAMI Young Research Award (2025) NSF CAREER Award (2023) ACM SIGGRAPH Best Doctorate Thesis Honorable Mention (2019) He has served as Program Chair for CVPR 2025 and Area Chair for ICLR 2022 and NeurIPS 2023 , while previously serving as Publication Chair for 3DV 2016 and Program Committee for SIGGRAPH Asia Workshops .
Nadia Figueroa is the Shalini and Rajeev Misra Presidential Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds secondary appointments in Computer and Information Science (CIS) and Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), and is a core faculty member at the GRASP Lab. Prior to Penn, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT’s CSAIL and earned her PhD in Robotics from EPFL under Prof. Aude Billard. Her research focuses on physical and perceptual adaptive intelligence for robots, enabling fluid collaboration with humans in dynamic environments. Key applications include robot learning from demonstration , human-robot co-manipulation , safe navigation in human-centric spaces , and rehabilitation robotics . Her work integrates machine learning control theory artificial intelligence biomechanics psychology with guarantees of stability, safety, and robustness . Recent publications highlight advancements in reactive collision avoidance dynamical system learning intent estimation EEG-driven assistive control origami-based reconfigurable robots across platforms like autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. She has authored a 2022 textbook on dynamical systems for robot control and received the Presidential Assistant Professorship at Penn.
Professor Andrew Davison holds the position of Professor of Robot Vision at Imperial College London's Department of Computing. He leads the Dyson Robotics Laboratory and the Robot Vision Research Group, focusing on advancing SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and Spatial AI. His groundbreaking work includes the MonoSLAM algorithm (2003), enabling real-time 3D vision for robotics and AR/VR. Current research emphasizes scalable, semantic-rich Spatial AI systems, as outlined in his FutureMapping papers (2018–2019). Education: BA in Physics (Oxford, 1994), D.Phil. (Oxford, 1998). Postdoctoral work at AIST, Japan (1998–2000), followed by a lectureship at Imperial (2002–present). Industrial collaborations include SLAMcore, a Spatial AI startup, and Dyson Robotics Lab. Over 18 PhD students supervised, many now leading roles at Meta, NVIDIA, SLAMcore, and academia. Notable contributions include DTAM, KinectFusion, and Event Camera SLAM. Recognized for software tools like SceneLib and contributions to robotics benchmarks (SLAMBench). Active on Twitter (@AjdDavison) for research updates.
Furong Huang is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland's Department of Computer Science, with affiliations at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Center for Machine Learning, Maryland Robotics Center, and Applied Mathematics, Statistics, and Scientific Computation Program. Her research bridges trustworthy machine learning, sequential decision-making, and foundation models for robotics, emphasizing reliability, interpretability, and ethical standards. Research Interests: Trustworthy AI Generative AI Reinforcement Learning AI Security Algorithmic Fairness Foundation Models for Robotics Recent Publications span leading conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR) and journals, focusing on: Robustness in Vision-Language Systems Trustworthy Generative AI Foundation Models for Sequential Decision-Making AI Security and Watermarking Scientific Awards MIT TR35 Innovator Under 35 (Asia Pacific 2022) Best Paper Award, AdvML Frontier Workshop, NeurIPS 2024 NSF NAIRR Pilot Awardee Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research Award (2023) JP Morgan Faculty Research Awards (2019–2022) Advising and Grants : Her lab has graduated students to roles at OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Netflix. Research funded by DARPA, NSF, ONR, AFOSR, and industry partners like Microsoft, Adobe, and Capital One. Labs & Teams : Leads research groups focused on Trustworthy AI and Robotics at the University of Maryland, collaborating with the Maryland Robotics Center and Applied Mathematics Program.
