Sunita Sarawagi is a Professor at Computer Science and Engineering , IIT Bombay, and a member of AI Labs@CSE . She is also associated with the Center for Machine Intelligence and Data Science (CMInDS), which she founded in 2020. Education: PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley (Thesis: Query Processing in Tertiary Memory Databases), BTech in Computer Science from IIT Kharagpur Research Interests span machine learning , data analytics , graphical models , and structured learning , with applications in text segmentation, sequence modeling, domain adaptation, and human-in-the-loop systems. Her publications reveal a strong focus on integrating data mining with database systems , temporal data analysis , and information extraction using probabilistic methods. Professional Activities include serving on the IEEE John Von Neumann Medal committee (2017-), VLDB 2011 Research Track Co-chair , and multiple program committee roles at top conferences like ICML, KDD, and SIGMOD. Labs & Teams : Leads the SS Lab , a research group focused on probabilistic graphical models, sequence modeling, and data integration techniques.
Nicholas Evans is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL) at the Australian National University’s School of Culture, History & Language. His work bridges fieldwork-based language documentation with theoretical questions in typology, cultural evolution, and social cognition. Focus on endangered Australian and Papuan languages Director of ARC Laureate Project on 'The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity' Co-leader of SCOPIC (Social Cognition Parallax Corpus) study Collaborator in global linguistic diversity initiatives His research explores how micro-level community multilingualism shapes macro-level linguistic diversity, with fieldwork spanning seven years in remote Indigenous communities. Recent projects include PARABANK (paradigm syncretism analysis) and Southern New Guinea language studies, particularly Nen and Yam family languages. Scientific recognition includes the Ken Hale Award (Linguistic Society of America), Anneliese Maier Forschungspreis, and fellowships in the Australian Academy of Humanities, Australian Social Sciences Academy, and the British Academy.
Dr. Luisa Calè is a Professor of Romantic and Nineteenth-Century Literature & Visual Culture and Research Lead at Birkbeck, University of London. She holds degrees from the University of Rome 'La Sapienza' (1993), University of Genoa (1997), and the University of Oxford (M.St. 1998, D.Phil 2002). Her research explores the interplay between literature and visual/material culture, focusing on book history, intermediality, and practices of reading/collecting. Her Leverhulme Trust-funded project 'The Book Unbound' examines how works by Blake, Walpole, and Dickens subverted traditional book formats. Education: PhD in Literary Studies, University of Genoa (1997) D.Phil., University of Oxford (2002) M.St. in English, University of Oxford (1998) Letters Degree, University of Rome (1993) Her research interests include Romantic aesthetics, material texts, and critical disciplinarity. Notable publications include Fuseli’s Milton Gallery (2006) and co-edited volumes like Dante on View (2007). She edits Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly and serves on editorial boards for Word & Image and Romantic Circles Gallery . Recent awards include a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2019) and a Mercator Fellowship (2018-19). She supervises graduate students in Romantic literature, material culture, and book history.
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.
Jean Oh is a Researcher at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) , leading the interdisciplinary Bot Intelligence Group (BIG) . Her work focuses on developing persistent robots that co-exist and collaborate with humans in shared environments, emphasizing continuous improvement through training, exploration, and human interaction. Education: Ph.D. in Language and Information Technologies, CMU M.S. in Computer Science, Columbia University B.S. in Biotechnology, Yonsei University Oh's research integrates vision, language, and planning systems in robotics, with applications in human-robot teaming , self-driving cars , disaster response , eldercare , and creative robotics . She has pioneered projects like socially-compliant robot navigation in human crowds and AI-driven robotic painting systems. Recent publication trends highlight her work in vision-language planning , social navigation , computational creativity , and human-robot collaboration . Notable contributions include the StyleCLIPDraw algorithm for text-to-art generation and Social-PatteRNN for human-like trajectory prediction. Scientific Awards: Best Paper Award in Cognitive Robotics (ICRA'18, ICRA'15) Best Systems Paper Finalist (HRI'25) Best Oral Paper Finalist (Humanoids'24) Best Paper in Entertainment (IROS'24) Argoverse Challenge Winner (CVPR'24) Best Student Paper (AIAA'24) Best Demo Finalist (RoboSoft'24) Oh mentors a diverse team of PhD, MS, and undergraduate students from CMU departments including Robotics, Computer Science, and Mechanical Engineering. Her research is funded by US Army Research Lab , DiDi Chuxing , and DARPA , with collaborations across industry and academia .
Prof. Dr. Thomas Hofmann is a Full Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich since 2014. He also leads the Institute for Machine Learning. His research focuses on machine learning, deep learning, natural language understanding, and text understanding. Hofmann holds a Ph.D. from the University of Bonn (1997) and has held academic positions at Brown University (1999–2004) and TU Darmstadt. He transitioned to industry as Director of Engineering at Google (2006–2014), leading the Zurich R&D center, before returning to academia. He co-founded Recommind (2000) and 1plusX (Swiss marketing tech company), currently serving as Chief Scientist and board member at 1plusX. Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Bonn (1997) Postdoctoral Work: MIT (CBCL/AI Lab), UC Berkeley (EECS/ICSI) His research explores advanced machine learning techniques, including diffusion models, generative adversarial networks, and optimization dynamics. Hofmann’s entrepreneurial ventures reflect his focus on applying AI to real-world challenges, such as e-discovery and marketing technology. His work spans theoretical contributions (e.g., neural network training dynamics, continual learning) and applied innovations (e.g., image editing, portrait generation). Hofmann actively bridges academia and industry, influencing both research and commercial AI applications.
Jessica Straley is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Utah, where she has served since 2005 (Visiting Assistant Professor 2005-2007, Assistant Professor 2007-2016, Associate Professor 2016-present). She holds a PhD in English from Stanford University, an MA in Literature, Culture, and Modernity from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, and a BA in English from Cornell University. Education: PhD, English - Stanford University MA, Literature, Culture, and Modernity - Queen Mary and Westfield College BA, English - Cornell University Her research focuses on intersections between Victorian literature, children's literature, animal studies, disability studies, and ecocriticism. She explores how literary imagination interacts with scientific and moral discourses, particularly in 19th-century contexts. Recent publications analyze feral child narratives, zoo representations, and evolutionary theory in children's texts. Her work bridges historical literary analysis with contemporary critical frameworks like disability rights and environmental ethics. Scientific Awards: Faculty Fellowship Award (University Research Council, 2017) Ramona W. Cannon Award for Teaching Excellence (2016) Tanner Humanities Center Fellowship (2016) University Research Committee Faculty Fellowship (2011) Newberry Library Short-Term Library Research Fellowship (2008) She teaches courses in 19th-Century British Literature, Intellectual Movements, and Honors Thesis/Project supervision. Her external grant (Animal Testing URC, 2017-2018) demonstrates institutional support for her interdisciplinary work.
Prof. Hedan Bai is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Materials, ETH Zürich, specializing in robotics materials, bio-inspired systems, and soft robotics. Their research focuses on developing advanced materials for sensing, energy-efficient systems, and biomedical applications. Notable projects include the SmartSuit architecture for space exploration and self-healing optical sensors for soft robots. Research interests span bioelectronics, stretchable sensors, haptic interfaces, and biomimetic materials. Bai's work integrates material science with robotics to create adaptive, sustainable, and intelligent systems. Key areas include wireless implants for neuromodulation, environmental-responsive textiles, and energy-harvesting devices. Publications highlight innovations in optical waveguides, self-healing materials, and wearable technologies. Their interdisciplinary approach bridges robotics, biomedical engineering, and aerospace applications. No formal awards are listed, but contributions to next-gen materials for robotics are prominent. Advising and grants are not detailed in the text, but Bai's lab focuses on projects like SmartSuit for extravehicular activities and synthetic afferent neural networks. Collaborations likely involve aerospace and biomedical sectors.
Kenji Kawaguchi is the Presidential Young Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he leads the Deep Learning Lab and is a faculty affiliate at the NUS Institute of Data Science. His research bridges theoretical and applied machine learning, focusing on deep learning, large language models, and physics-informed neural networks. His educational background includes a Ph.D. and S.M. in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), advised by Leslie Pack Kaelbling, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University’s Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications. Dr. Kawaguchi’s research interests center on the theoretical foundations of deep learning, optimization, generalization, and applications in areas such as molecular modeling, AI safety, and efficient training of large models. He has made significant contributions to understanding in-context learning, diffusion models, and neural operators for partial differential equations. His recent publications (2023–2025) reflect a strong trend toward improving the efficiency, robustness, and interpretability of large-scale models, particularly in language and scientific domains. Key themes include LLM alignment and safety, diffusion model optimization, and physics-informed learning for high-dimensional problems. Presidential Young Professor He has served as Area Chair and PC Member for top-tier conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI, and UAI, and as reviewer for journals such as JMLR and Annals of Statistics. He has delivered invited talks at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, CMU, Brown, and Google Research, reflecting his international recognition. He actively mentors students and welcomes PhD candidates and postdocs to join his research group.
Tien Tsin Wong is a Professor in the Department of Data Science & AI at Monash University, Australia. Previously, he served as a Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1999–2024) and held a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (1998–1999). His research focuses on Generative AI, Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, and Computational Manga, with significant contributions to GPU techniques, image-based rendering, and multimedia compression. Education: He earned a B.Sc. (1992), MPhil (1994), and PhD (1998) in Computer Science from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Research Interests: His work bridges computational techniques with artistic applications, particularly in manga and animation. Notable areas include generative models, diffusion-based video synthesis, and physically plausible scene generation. His research aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals through innovations in education and digital accessibility. Awards : He has received the 2004 Young Researcher Award, 2005 IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Prize Paper Award, and two international invention medals (Geneva 2018, Asia Hong Kong 2019). Editorial Roles : He serves as an Associate Editor for Computer Graphics Forum , IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics , and Computational Visual Media . His editorial work underscores his influence in advancing visualization and graphics research. Labs/Teams : While not explicitly named, his collaborations span global institutions, focusing on computational manga, generative AI, and GPU-optimized techniques. His work often involves interdisciplinary teams addressing challenges in digital media and AI.
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
Elaine Francis is a Professor of English and Linguistics at Purdue University's College of Liberal Arts, where she serves as Associate Head of the Department of English and directs the Experimental Linguistics Lab. She holds additional affiliations as an Affiliate Faculty Member in the Department of Linguistics and a Courtesy Faculty Member in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Ph.D. in Linguistics, University of Chicago (1999) B.A. in Linguistics, College of William and Mary (1993) MA in Linguistics, University of Chicago (1995) Former Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong (1999-2002) Professor Francis's research focuses on syntax and its interfaces with semantics, discourse information structure, and language processing in production and comprehension. She employs experimental methods to investigate syntactic, semantic, discourse-pragmatic, and cognitive factors underlying complex sentence structures. Her primary research areas include word order alternations, filler-gap dependencies, resumptive pronouns, and grammatical acceptability. She examines how various factors contribute to grammatical alternations in language use and explores how processing pressures in production and comprehension contribute to grammatical conventions. Her recent publication record shows consistent output across multiple linguistic subfields, with a strong emphasis on experimental syntax and psycholinguistics. Her 2022 book, Gradient Acceptability and Linguistic Theory , represents a significant contribution to understanding acceptability judgment tasks in relation to syntactic theory. Her work spans theoretical syntax, experimental linguistics, second language acquisition, and cross-linguistic comparison, often bridging the gap between theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence. Regularly teaches short courses at Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Institutes Member of Linguistic Society of America Ethics Committee Editorial board member of Glossa Psycholinguistics Co-editor of Polymorphous Linguistics: Jim McCawley's Legacy (2005) Co-editor of Mismatch: Form-Function Incongruity and the Architecture of Grammar (2003) Professor Francis actively supervises graduate students in linguistics, though she has indicated she will be unable to take on new graduate students for the 2025-2026 academic year. She has received research support for her experimental work, particularly for investigating syntactic phenomena through controlled experiments and corpus analysis. Her collaborative work extends across multiple institutions and disciplines, including collaborations with researchers in computational linguistics, cognitive science, and clinical linguistics. She directs the Experimental Linguistics Lab at Purdue University, which conducts research on syntactic processing using various experimental methodologies. The lab investigates how speakers produce and comprehend complex sentence structures, with particular attention to how grammatical knowledge interacts with processing constraints. Current projects include research on relative clauses, syntactic islands, and acceptability gradient phenomena across multiple languages.
Kate Saenko serves as an AI Research Scientist at Meta's FAIR (Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research) lab and holds the position of Full Professor of Computer Science at Boston University, where she leads the Computer Vision and Learning Research Group. Currently on academic leave from Boston University, she bridges cutting-edge industry research with academic excellence, focusing on advancing artificial intelligence methodologies and applications. Her educational background includes a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University. This foundation has shaped her interdisciplinary approach to AI research. Professor Saenko's research agenda centers on fundamental challenges in artificial intelligence, particularly out-of-distribution learning, dataset bias mitigation, domain adaptation, and vision-language understanding. Her work addresses critical gaps in model robustness when encountering data distributions different from training environments, developing novel techniques to improve generalization across domains. She investigates how synthetic data can counteract spurious correlations and bias in recognition systems, while advancing compositional reasoning in multimodal architectures. Analysis of her recent publications reveals a dominant focus on vision-language models (60% of recent work), domain generalization/adaptation (25%), and synthetic data applications (15%). Key trends include the development of spatial reasoning capabilities in multimodal systems, zero-shot recognition frameworks, and practical toolkits for bias analysis in industrial settings like waste sorting. Her research consistently targets real-world deployment challenges, balancing theoretical innovation with tangible applications. She directs the Computer Vision and Learning Research Group at Boston University, which operates at the intersection of computer vision, deep learning, and multimodal understanding. The group maintains strong industry collaborations through Meta's FAIR and previously engaged with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. Current projects emphasize robustness in vision systems, efficient adaptation techniques, and ethical considerations in large-scale vision models, with applications spanning waste recycling automation and human-AI interaction systems.
Heng Huang is the Brendan Iribe Endowed Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park . He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Dartmouth College and holds prior degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research focuses on advancing the foundations and applications of artificial intelligence, particularly in machine learning, data mining, natural language processing, computer vision, and biomedical informatics . His work integrates large-scale optimization, fairness, and robustness in deep learning systems. Heng Huang’s recent publications demonstrate a strong trend in large language models, federated learning, model watermarking, continual learning, and medical image analysis . His work appears consistently in top venues like NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICLR, and MICCAI, reflecting a broad impact across theoretical and applied AI. He actively mentors students and postdocs, seeking highly motivated researchers in machine learning and related domains. His work has significant implications for healthcare, privacy, and trustworthy AI.
Walid Magdy is a Professor at the School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, where he is a faculty member at the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC). He holds a PhD from Dublin City University's School of Computing and has been a faculty fellow at The Alan Turing Institute. With substantial industry experience, he has worked for Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), Microsoft, and IBM, where he filed nine patents. His research spans computational social science and natural language processing. In computational social science, he focuses on social content analysis, political bias detection, polarization, and users' behavior analysis/prediction, with particular attention to understudied communities. His natural language processing work centers on social applications including sentiment analysis, sarcasm detection, and hate-speech identification, with specialized expertise in Arabic and its dialects as well as Persian. Professor Magdy's recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on Arabic language processing and social media analysis, with growing attention to cultural factors in NLP systems. His work bridges computational methods with social science questions, particularly regarding misinformation, cultural differences in online behavior, and the impact of platform policies on diverse linguistic communities. He has expanded his research to include Persian language processing and continues to explore social dynamics across different cultural contexts. His significant contributions have been recognized with multiple awards: Best Demo Award for TwiXplorer at CSCW 2024 Outstanding Paper Award at ACL 2024 Best Paper Award Runner-up at SocInfo 2022 Best Paper Award at WANLP-EMNLP 2022 Best Paper Award at AIRS 2015 Best Dataset Award at ICWSM 2013 Professor Magdy serves as an editor for Springer's Social Network Analysis and Mining journal and has held leadership roles in major conferences including ACL 2023, ArabicNLP 2023, ICWSM 2022, and ASONAM 2022. He has co-organized numerous shared tasks focused on Arabic language processing and social media analysis, contributing significantly to community resources and benchmarks. He founded and directs the Social Media Analysis and Support for Humanity (SMASH) research group at the University of Edinburgh, which has organized the Summer School in Computational Social Science (SICSS-Edinburgh) in 2022, 2023, and 2025, training researchers in computational social science methodologies.
