Shoudong Huang is a Professor at the School of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering , University of Technology Sydney, and Deputy Director of the UTS Robotics Institute. His research focuses on mobile robot navigation , SLAM , nonlinear state estimation , and surgical robotics . He has published over 200 papers and is recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential Scholars in Robotics (Aminer, 2018). PhD in Automatic Control, Northeastern University (China) Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Hong Kong (1998-2000) Research Fellow, Australian National University (2001-2003) Full-time academic roles at UTS since 2004 His work addresses challenges in robot localization across extreme environments (underwater, underground mining, surgical settings) and develops globally optimal SLAM algorithms with guaranteed performance. He has secured over $4 million AUD in external funding, including ARC Discovery grants and industry partnerships. Recent publications emphasize cross-modal calibration (camera-LiDAR), interval analysis for bounded noise , and template-based deformable surface reconstruction . These span applications in autonomous driving, surgical navigation, and UAV guidance. Chancellor’s Medal for Research Excellence (2020) Supervisor of the Year (2023) Best Paper Award (2016 ICARCV) Huang serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Robotics and International Journal of Robotics Research , and has held leadership roles in top robotics conferences like IROS and RSS. His collaborations span MIT, USC, Zhejiang University, and industry partners including PMSW Research Pty Ltd and Multiplex Constructions Pty Ltd.
Jackie Chit Kit Cheung is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill University, where he co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab. He holds the Canada CIFAR AI Chair and serves as an Associate Scientific Co-Director at the Mila Quebec AI Institute. He is also a consulting researcher at Microsoft Research Montreal. Academic Background: Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Toronto (2010–2014) M.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Toronto (2008–2010) B.Sc. (Honours) in Computer Science, minors in Linguistics and German, University of British Columbia (2004–2008) Research Interests: Jackie Cheung's research lies at the intersection of natural language processing, machine learning, and cognitive science. He focuses on natural language generation , automatic summarization , commonsense and pragmatic reasoning , and the evaluation of NLP systems . His work aims to build language models that reflect real-world structure and reasoning, with applications in health, education, and language revitalization. He is particularly interested in how implicit meaning is processed in context, a core concern in linguistic pragmatics. Publication Trends: His recent publications (2024–2025) show a strong emphasis on evaluation methodologies (e.g., COSMIC, ECBD), hallucination and factuality in language models, coreference and reasoning , and long-context modeling . He frequently collaborates across institutions and integrates insights from linguistics and psychology into NLP system design and analysis. Scientific Awards: Best Paper Award, ACL 2018 Outstanding Paper Award, NAACL 2018 Student Research Workshop SAC Award, ACL 2024 (for COSMIC) Best Poster Award, CMDO AI-Health Symposium 2024 Advising and Grants: He advises a large and diverse group of graduate students, including PhD and Master’s candidates, often in co-supervision with other faculty. His group has received support from major AI and health research initiatives, including CIFAR and Mila. He has trained alumni who have gone on to faculty and industry research positions. He has served in leadership roles in top NLP conferences, including as Senior Area Chair, Workshop Chair, and Program Chair of Canadian AI 2018. Labs and Teams: He co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab at McGill and is deeply involved with Mila – Quebec AI Institute . He founded the NLP Reading Group at McGill, which brings together researchers from computer science, linguistics, and information studies to discuss theoretical and applied NLP topics.
Catherine Lai is a Reader (~Associate Professor) in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh, with strong affiliations to the Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR) and the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC) in the School of Informatics. She is based in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences and is actively involved in research, teaching, and academic service. Department: Department of Linguistics and English Language School: School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences Research Institutes: Centre for Speech Technology Research, Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation Email: C.Lai@ed.ac.uk Her research centers on the role of prosody—non-lexical aspects of speech—in spoken communication. She investigates how prosody contributes to discourse structure, information structure, and affect in dialogue, using interdisciplinary methods from linguistics and machine learning. Her work bridges theoretical linguistics and practical speech technology, aiming to improve spoken language understanding and synthesis systems. She is particularly interested in how prosody shapes listener expectations and how affect and topic are expressed and perceived in conversation. Her recent publications reflect a strong focus on self-supervised learning in speech models, emotion recognition, ASR error correction using large language models, cognitive state classification, and ethical considerations in language technology. She explores topics such as the uncanny valley in synthetic speech, gender expression through voice, and community-centered development of language technologies. Prize from Scopus Profile Catherine Lai has supervised several PhD students, including Leimin Tian and Yuanchao Li, and has been involved in significant research projects, such as a Toyota-funded initiative on spoken dialogue for robot companions. She has secured multiple grants and leads a research agenda that integrates theoretical inquiry with real-world applications in assistive technologies and social science. Her academic service includes organizing major conferences like Interspeech and UK and Ireland Speech. She is a key member of research teams at CSTR and ILCC, collaborating across disciplines to advance the understanding of spoken communication and the development of robust, ethical speech technologies.
Geoffrey Pleiss is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Science. He is also a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute and an inaugural member of CAIDA's AIM-SI (AI Methods for Scientific Impact) cluster. His work bridges statistical theory, machine learning, and computational methods with applications across various scientific domains. Pleiss received his PhD from the Computer Science department at Cornell University in 2020, where he was advised by Kilian Weinberger and worked closely with Andrew Gordon Wilson. Prior to his faculty position at UBC, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University with John P. Cunningham. His research focuses on the intersection of deep learning and probabilistic modeling, particularly on developing heuristic and approximate notions of uncertainty from machine learning models. His work has significant implications for reliable and optimal decision-making in experimental design and scientific discovery. Major research thrusts include neural network uncertainty quantification, Bayesian optimization, Gaussian processes, and ensemble methods. Pleiss develops theoretical frameworks while maintaining strong connections to practical applications across scientific domains. An analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong focus on uncertainty quantification in deep learning models, with particular attention to the limitations and capabilities of ensemble methods in the era of overparameterized models. His work increasingly addresses practical challenges in Bayesian optimization for scientific discovery, especially in materials science. There's also a growing emphasis on computational efficiency in Gaussian process methods, reflecting his commitment to making advanced statistical techniques accessible for real-world applications. CIFAR AI Chair Pleiss currently advises several graduate students including Donney Fan (PhD, Computer Science), Tim G. Zhou (MSc, Computer Science), Zachary Lau (MSc, Statistics), Nathan Cantafio (BSc, Statistics), and Tristan Cinquin (Research Intern at Vector Institute). His research is supported by multiple funding sources including his CIFAR AI Chair position, which provides significant research resources for advancing machine learning methodologies with scientific impact. Pleiss co-created and maintains GPyTorch, a highly efficient and modular implementation of Gaussian processes in PyTorch designed for speed, modularity, and prototyping. He is also involved with CoLA (Compositional Linear Algebra), a library for structured linear algebra operations in JAX and PyTorch that enables fast linear algebra computations by automatically exploiting matrix structure.
Sara Stymne is a Senior Lecturer in Computational Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, where she has been working since 2012. She initially joined as a post-doc (2012-2015), then worked as a researcher (2015-2017), and served as an assistant professor (2017-2023) before her current position as Senior Lecturer. Prior to Uppsala, she was a researcher at Linköping University's Department of Computer and Information Science. Dr. Stymne earned her PhD in Computational Linguistics from Linköping University in 2012 with the thesis 'Text Harmonization Strategies for Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation,' following a Licentiate degree in Computational Linguistics (2009) and a Master's degree in Cognitive Science (2006), both also from Linköping University. During her doctoral studies, she spent the autumn of 2010 and spring of 2009 at Xerox Research Centre Europe in Grenoble, France. Her primary research interests focus on cross-lingual natural language processing and digital humanities, with particular emphasis on multilingual dependency parsing. Dr. Stymne is passionate about applying computational linguistics to solve research questions in other fields, including language history, literary analysis, and political science. Her earlier work concentrated on machine translation, with specific interests in discourse-aware translation, compound processing, and error analysis. She has made significant contributions to the development of language technology tools for analyzing dialogue, narrative, and stylistic features in literature. Analysis of Dr. Stymne's recent publications reveals a strong focus on cross-lingual and cross-domain natural language processing. Her work spans multiple subfields including dependency parsing across genres and topics, discourse relation analysis in low-resource languages like Egyptian Arabic, direct speech identification in Swedish literature, and causality detection in governmental documents. A notable trend is her application of NLP techniques to digital humanities problems, particularly in analyzing literary texts and historical language change. Her research often involves creating and utilizing specialized datasets for specific linguistic phenomena across multiple languages. Dr. Stymne actively supervises graduate students, having guided numerous master's and bachelor's theses on topics ranging from speech recognition to multilingual parsing and causality detection. She leads or participates in several research projects including 'Fictional prose and language change' (funded by VR, 2021-2023) and 'Enabling climate-resilient development' (funded by Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation, 2023-2027), demonstrating her commitment to interdisciplinary research with practical applications. Her work has resulted in several notable software resources including uuPronPred for cross-lingual pronoun prediction, uuparser for dependency parsing, and Docent for document-level machine translation. Within the Computational Linguistics and Language Technology group at Uppsala University, Dr. Stymne contributes to multiple research initiatives focused on developing language technology tools for digital humanities applications. Her team works closely with literary scholars and historians to create computational methods for analyzing large corpora of literary texts, particularly focusing on Swedish literature across different historical periods. Her research bridges the gap between theoretical computational linguistics and practical applications in the humanities, creating new methodologies for quantitative analysis of literary and historical texts.
James McCann is an Associate Professor at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, where he leads the Carnegie Mellon Textiles Lab. He has been a faculty member since May 2017 after working at Disney Research Pittsburgh. McCann's academic journey includes a PhD from Carnegie Mellon advised by Nancy Pollard, followed by a postdoc at Adobe Research and a period developing video games. McCann's research focuses on building creative tools that operate in real-time and build user intuition, with particular emphasis on textiles fabrication and machine knitting. His work spans computer-aided fabrication, simulation, graphics, and creative tools development. He has pioneered systems for machine knitting design, including compilers for knitting instructions and tools for automatic conversion of 3D meshes to knitting patterns. His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward computational textiles, with significant contributions to knitting semantics, deployable textile structures, and applications of machine knitting in healthcare and robotics. McCann's work bridges computer science, robotics, and textile arts, creating practical systems for once-off manufacturing with industrial knitting machines. McCann actively mentors students, with current PhD candidates working on solid knitting machines, knit calibration, and assistive devices. His teaching portfolio includes courses on Real-Time Graphics, Algorithmic Textiles Design, and Game Programming. He has taught at CMU since 2017, developing innovative courses that blend computer science with physical fabrication. As director of the Textiles Lab, McCann oversees research projects spanning machine knitting, robotic painting, and real-time graphics systems. His lab develops practical tools for creators, emphasizing intuitive interfaces and real-time feedback that lower barriers to advanced fabrication techniques.
Gail E. Kaiser is a Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Programming Systems Laboratory (PSL) in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University. She has been with Columbia University since 1985, becoming a full Professor in 1998. Prof. Kaiser's research spans software engineering, program analysis, software testing, and software security, with recent focus on addressing challenges in AI/ML systems testing and security. Prof. Kaiser received her PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985 and her ScB in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT in 1979. Her dissertation at CMU was titled "Semantics for Structure Editing Environments" under advisor Nico Habermann, and at MIT she completed "Automatic Extension of an Augmented Transition Network Grammar for Morse Code Conversations" under advisor Al Vezza. Prof. Kaiser's research interests primarily focus on software engineering following a systems building approach, with recent emphasis on static and dynamic program analysis techniques to improve software reliability and security. Since 2005, she has investigated testing "non-testable" programs, particularly in machine learning, data mining, and scientific computing applications where traditional testing oracles are insufficient. She has developed novel techniques and tools for detecting bugs and verifying repairs in complex systems. Concurrently, she has worked on collaboration environments for computational scientists, creating knowledge sharing and domain-aware environments to support scientific workflows. Prof. Kaiser's recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on the intersection of software engineering and artificial intelligence. Her work addresses critical challenges in testing AI systems, code understanding through deep learning, vulnerability detection, and educational tools for computational thinking. There's a clear evolution from traditional software engineering topics toward AI/ML applications, with particular emphasis on metamorphic testing for non-testable systems, code similarity analysis, and educational applications. Prof. Kaiser has received numerous prestigious awards throughout her career: Distinguished Journal Award (10 Years) from 18th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), April 2025 Best Research Paper Award at 24th IEEE International Conference on Source Code Analysis & Manipulation (SCAM), October 2024 Distinguished Reviewer Awards for ASE 2024 and FSE 2024 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award for "CONCORD: Clone-aware Contrastive Learning for Source Code", July 2023 Best Student Paper Award at ICCE 2021 Multiple ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards dating back to 2014 Presidential Young Investigator in Software Engineering and Software Systems from NSF (1988-1993) Prof. Kaiser has chaired Columbia's doctoral program since 1997 and served on editorial boards including IEEE Internet Computing and as a founding associate editor of ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. Her lab has been continuously funded by major agencies including NSF, NIH, DARPA, ONR, NASA, and numerous companies. Current grants include significant NSF funding for secure containers architecture, learning semantics of code for software assurance, and finding semantic security bugs. As Director of the Programming Systems Laboratory (PSL), Prof. Kaiser leads research in software systems, program analysis, and software testing. The lab has developed numerous tools and techniques for software reliability and security, with recent focus on challenges in AI/ML systems. Her work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications, often resulting in deployable tools that address real-world software engineering challenges.
Wim Gevers is a faculty member at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and leads the CS4S – Cognitive Control & Sleep laboratory within the CRCN research centre. His work bridges cognitive psychology, neuroscience and sleep research to understand how the brain exerts control over thoughts and actions and how sleep contributes to these processes. Research Interests Cognitive Control & Metacognition: Investigating how subjective experiences such as confidence and the "urge-to-err" guide strategic adjustments in behaviour. Working Memory & Ordinal Cognition: Examining how order information is maintained and manipulated, and how these processes relate to mathematical competence. Sleep, Memory & Decision Making: Exploring how sleep-dependent consolidation influences motor learning and decision strategies. Across his 2022–2025 publications a clear trend emerges: a focus on metacognitive monitoring —how humans evaluate their own cognitive states—and the role of emotional and temporal context in shaping those evaluations. Studies range from reaction-time introspection and confidence judgements in perceptual tasks to the impact of aging and depression on metacognitive accuracy. Doctoral Supervision & Mentoring Whitney Stee (PhD 2024) – Sleep-dependent structural brain reorganization & motor learning Gaia Corlazzoli (PhD 2024) – Subjective experience in decision-making Myrtille Dewulf (PhD 2023) – Ordinal coding mechanisms in working memory Rebeca Sifuentes-Ortega (PhD 2023) – REM sleep and memory reactivation All dissertations were defended at ULB, Faculté des Sciences psychologiques et de l’éducation, with Wim Gevers formally listed as Promotor . Laboratory & Collaborative Networks As head of CS4S, Gevers coordinates a multidisciplinary team that combines behavioural experimentation, EEG/MEG, computational modelling and sleep polysomnography. The lab is embedded in the larger CRCN ecosystem, fostering collaborations with groups such as CO3 (consciousness), LCLD (language & deafness), and UR2NF (neurofunctional imaging).
Brendan O'Connor is an Associate Professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focuses on computational social science and natural language processing (NLP), particularly exploring how social factors influence language technologies and using text analysis to understand societal trends. His work includes studies on racial bias in NLP, political event analysis, and social media linguistics. He holds a PhD in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University (2014) and dual MS/BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University (2006). Education: PhD in Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon University (2014) MS in Symbolic Systems, Stanford University (2006) BS in Symbolic Systems, Stanford University (2006) Research interests span AI ethics, social media analysis, and computational methods for studying language and society. Notably, he investigates racial disparities in NLP systems, linguistic variation in African American English, and event detection in news and social media. His work has been recognized with NSF CAREER and Google Faculty awards, and his research has been cited thousands of times. His lab, the Statistical Social Language Analysis Lab, develops tools for analyzing large-scale text data. He is affiliated with the Center for Data Science, Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval, and Computational Social Science Institute. Recent projects include analyzing global news coverage of critical events and developing frameworks for zero-shot argument explication. Awards and Honors: NSF CAREER Award Google Faculty Research Award Best Paper Award Advising and Grants: O'Connor has advised projects on social media polling representativeness and demographic analysis. His grants include collaborative research on sociopolitical event extraction and bias mitigation in AI systems. He has also contributed to platforms like Rookie for news archive exploration and ezCoref for coreference resolution. Labs/Teams: Leads the Statistical Social Language Analysis Lab and collaborates with the UMass NLP Group and Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science. His work bridges NLP with social science methodologies, emphasizing transparency in algorithms and causal inference using text data.
Dr. Zhenman Fang is an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering Science , Simon Fraser University (SFU) , where he founded and directs the HiAccel Lab . He also holds an associate membership in the School of Computing Science at SFU. His research focuses on customizable computing with software-defined hardware acceleration , addressing performance, energy-efficiency, and reliability in post-Moore’s law computing across domains like machine learning , big data analytics , quantum chemistry , and precision medicine . Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science from Fudan University (2014), with a visit to University of Minnesota during his studies. Postdoctoral Work: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (2014-2017). Industry Experience: Staff Software Engineer at Xilinx (2017-2019). Dr. Fang’s research spans the entire computing stack , including application characterization , accelerator-rich architecture design , and programming/tool support . He has developed frameworks like HiSpMV , SyncNN , and SQL2FPGA , emphasizing FPGA acceleration for vision transformers , quantum chemistry , and spiking neural networks . His work has been recognized with 3 best paper awards (FPL 2024, TCAD 2019, MEMSYS 2017) and 3 best paper nominees (FCCM 2025, HPCA 2017, ISPASS 2018). Recent publications highlight trends in low-precision machine learning ( ShiftQuant , ESRU ), quantum chemistry acceleration ( SERI ), and vision transformer optimization ( Quasar-ViT ). His HiAccel Lab actively mentors PhD and MASc students , with notable graduates like Alec Lu (PhD 2024, now at Meta) and Philip Stachura (MASc, now with BC Graduate Scholarship). Scientific Awards: Inaugural SFU Research Excellence Award - Horizon Award (2025) FPL 2024 Stamatis Vassiliadis Best Paper NSERC Alliance Award (2020) CFI JELF Award (2019) Xilinx University Program Award (2019) IEEE Senior Member (2023) Grants: NSERC Discovery Grant (2019) CFI JELF Funding (2019) Huawei and Xilinx sponsorships Dr. Fang leads open-source initiatives like SyncNN , PASTA , and SQL2FPGA , and serves as General Chair for ASAP 2025 and Program Co-Chair for RAW 2025 . His lab collaborates globally with institutions such as UCLA , Northeastern University , and Xidian University .
Prof. Dr. André Bardow is a Full Professor in Energy and Process Systems Engineering at ETH Zurich , leading research at the intersection of thermodynamics, machine learning, and sustainable energy systems. Previously, he held professorships at RWTH Aachen University (2010-2020) and TU Delft (2007-2010). He also served as part-time director at Forschungszentrum Jülich (2017-2022) and visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara (2015/16). His work focuses on energy systems optimization , computer-aided molecular design , and CO2 capture & utilization . PhD from RWTH Aachen University Current ETH Zurich affiliation Former roles at RWTH Aachen, TU Delft, Jülich Research Center His research integrates machine learning with thermodynamic modeling to optimize processes like crystallization and electrochemical cooling . Recent publications demonstrate advancements in solvent design, CO2 transport LCA, and ORC working fluid optimization. He chairs the VDI Technical Committee for Thermodynamics (2016-2024) and has received multiple awards including the Covestro Science Award and Arnold-Eucken-Award . Current projects address carbon circular economies , electrified chemical production , and AI-driven process optimization . His lab at ETH Zurich develops cutting-edge technologies like ML-CAMPD frameworks for sustainable separation processes and photoacid-based CO2 capture systems. Funding from the H2020 Systemic Expansion of Circular Ecosystems (grant 101036854) supports these initiatives. 2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher 2022 Inaugural Lecture: "To sustainability and beyond: A computer-animated story on energy & chemicals" Recipient of multiple teaching and research excellence awards
Adrian Lew is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, specializing in computational solid mechanics and numerical algorithms. His research focuses on hydraulic fracturing simulation, embedded boundary methods, and material model design. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech (2003). His work bridges advanced numerical techniques with real-world applications in geophysics, material science, and structural engineering. Education: PhD, Mechanical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 2003 Research Interests: Lew's group develops algorithms for time-integration embedded boundary methods and hydraulic fracturing simulations. Key areas include curvilinear crack propagation, universal meshing for complex geometries, and high-fidelity fracture mechanics. His work on variational integrators and discontinuous Galerkin methods has advanced computational efficiency in nonlinear elasticity and thermodynamics. Publications: Recent articles emphasize mesh optimization (DVRlib), fracture path instabilities, and magma chamber dynamics. His methodologies address challenges in 3D crack modeling, fluid-structure interaction, and high-order approximations in domains with singularities. Advising & Grants: Lew's research is supported by projects in computational geophysics and material science. Though no advisees are listed, his work involves collaborative teams focused on algorithmic innovation and high-performance computing.
John Baillieul is Distinguished Professor at Boston University with joint appointments in Mechanical Engineering, Systems Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering. He directs experimental laboratories for real-time control of lightweight robotic systems and applies nonlinear control theory to complex multi-body, networked, and bio-inspired systems. Education: Ph.D., Harvard University Research Interests: Baillieul’s work spans robotics, nonlinear control, and networked systems. Early contributions resolved motion-planning for kinematically redundant manipulators; current themes include neuromimetic learning, vision-based navigation, and resilience of infrastructure networks such as power grids. His group couples rigorous geometric control with real-time hardware to create lightweight, high-performance robots and to uncover fundamental information limits in feedback systems. Recent Publication Trends (2021-2025): Over the past five years his output has concentrated on three synergistic directions: (i) neuromimetic and Koopman-based data-driven methods for estimating and controlling nonlinear systems, (ii) vision-based guidance and sparse optical-flow primitives for agile autonomous flight, and (iii) network-theoretic decomposition and information-rate studies for resilient operation of power grids and collective dynamics. Honors & Awards: IEEE Fellow 2025 Roger W. Brockett Control Systems Award Former Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control Affiliations & Service: He is a member of Boston University’s Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE), has served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, and remains active in editorial and organizational roles across the IEEE control systems community.
Prof. Anya Belz is Full Professor of Computer Science at Dublin City University's School of Computing and Science Lead at ADAPT Research Centre. A leading NLP researcher with PhD-level expertise, she specializes in natural language generation, evaluation methodologies, and multimodal systems. Recipient of multiple best paper awards and NAACL Test of Time Award nomination. Research innovations include foundational work on statistical language generation (deployed in weather forecasting systems), comparative evaluation frameworks, vision-language integration, and reproducibility quantification. Current EPSRC-funded ReproHum project coordinates 20 global labs studying evaluation consistency. Achievements : Developed industry-deployed generation systems for accessibility applications Pioneered cross-modal alignment techniques for image description Authored 100+ publications spanning generation, evaluation, and reproducibility
Shih-Fu Chang is the Dean of Columbia Engineering and holds the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professorship at Columbia University. His research focuses on computer vision, machine learning, and multimedia information retrieval. He is recognized as a foundational figure in the field of content-based visual search and has pioneered innovations in image/video search engines, crime prevention systems, and brain-machine interfaces. His leadership roles include Chair of Columbia's Electrical Engineering Department (2007-2010), Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2006-2008), and Senior Executive Vice Dean at Columbia Engineering, where he drives strategic planning and international collaboration. Dr. Chang has received prestigious awards including the ACM Multimedia Technical Achievement Award, IEEE Signal Processing Technical Achievement Award, and IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award. He is a Fellow of AAAS, ACM, and IEEE, and an Academician of Academia Sinica. His recent work emphasizes multimodal reasoning, few-shot learning, and vision-language systems, with applications in healthcare diagnostics and multimedia benchmarking. His research spans cross-modal understanding, event extraction, and adaptive AI systems. Key contributions include systems like Ferret-v2 for multimodal grounding and RESIN for schema-guided event tracking. He has advised multiple startups and actively contributes to curriculum development in AI and engineering education.