Emma Pierson is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, affiliated with the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR) , Computational Precision Health , and the Center for Human-Compatible AI . She focuses on developing data science and machine learning methods to address issues in healthcare equity and social inequality . Her work includes studies on race adjustments in clinical algorithms, migration patterns, and leveraging LLMs for health equity. Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University (2020), Master’s in Statistics from the University of Oxford. Prior roles include Assistant Professor at Cornell Tech, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, and data scientist at 23andMe and Coursera. Research Interests: Her research spans fair clinical prediction , sparse autoencoders , health disparities , and algorithmic fairness . Notable projects include the MIGRATE dataset for granular migration analysis and studies on policing disparities. Awards: NSF CAREER Award, Rhodes Scholarship, Hertz Fellowship, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35, and Samsung AI Researcher of the Year. She writes a statistics blog ( Obsession with Regression ) and contributes to media outlets like The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight . Labs/Teams: Leads the MIGRATE project, a collaboration to analyze fine-grained migration data. Engages in interdisciplinary work across AI, healthcare, and social science.
James A. Evans is a Professor at the University of Chicago, where he serves as Director of the Knowledge Lab and Faculty Director of the Masters Program in Computational Social Science. He is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His research bridges computational methods with social theory to analyze collective cognition, innovation, and knowledge production across science, technology, and broader societal domains. Director, Knowledge Lab Faculty Director, Masters Program in Computational Social Science External Professor, Santa Fe Institute Evans’s research explores how social and technical institutions shape discovery processes, utilizing machine learning, network modeling, and large-scale data analysis. His work spans fields like computational social science, sociology of science, and data science, focusing on team dynamics, peer review, and the global structure of scholarship. His recent publications examine team size effects on innovation, discursive influence in academia, and the interplay between tradition and novelty in research strategies. Articles trend toward interdisciplinary approaches combining social theory, computational methods, and science policy. Evans supports novel observatories for human understanding through crowdsourcing, sensor networks, and semantic modeling. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research, with findings featured in major media outlets like Nature , Science , and The New York Times .
Indrek Jõgi is an Associate Professor of Plasma Technology at the University of Tartu's Institute of Physics within the Faculty of Science and Technology. He serves as Assistant Director of the Institute of Physics and Programme Director of the Doctoral Programme in Chemical and Physical Sciences. His academic career spans over 15 years at the University of Tartu, with progressive roles from Research Fellow to his current Associate Professor position. Dr. Jõgi earned his PhD in Physics (Optics and Spectroscopy) from the University of Tartu in 2007, following a Master's degree in Applied Physics in 2003 and a diploma in Physical Information Technology in 2001. His doctoral research focused on conduction mechanisms in thin atomic layer deposited films containing TiO 2 . His research interests center on plasma physics and technology, particularly the electrical properties of thin metal-oxide films, plasma-chemistry, and thermodynamically non-equilibrium plasma properties. His work bridges fundamental plasma physics with practical applications in materials science, nuclear fusion technology, and biomedical applications. He specializes in plasma diagnostics using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) for fusion reactor materials analysis and has made significant contributions to understanding ionization processes in various gas mixtures. His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on plasma applications for nuclear fusion materials analysis, particularly using LIBS techniques for detecting hydrogen isotopes and impurities in fusion reactor wall materials. His work spans plasma diagnostics, thin film deposition techniques like atomic layer deposition, and biomedical applications of plasma technology including cancer cell treatment research. His scientific awards include: IOP Outstanding Reviewer Award for Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (2022) IOP Outstanding Reviewer Award for Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (2018) III award in the PhD student category at the National Contest of Students on Scientific Research (2007) Dr. Jõgi serves in significant administrative roles including Assistant Director of the Institute of Physics and Programme Director for the Doctoral Programme in Chemical and Physical Sciences. He is the Estonian representative in the Governing Board of Fusion for Energy and the General Assembly of EUROfusion consortium. He also represents Estonia in COST Actions 23139 (from 2025) and previously served as Vice STSM Coordinator for COST Action 19110 (2020-2024). With approximately 90 peer reviews completed according to Web of Science, he is an active contributor to scholarly discourse in his field. He leads the Laboratory of Plasma Physics at the University of Tartu and is a member of the International Scientific Committee for the HAKONE symposium series on High Pressure Low Temperature Plasma Chemistry. His research team collaborates extensively with international fusion research facilities including WEST tokamak in France and Magnum-PSI in the Netherlands.
Alfred O. Hero, III is the John H. Holland Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the R. Jamison and Betty Williams Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is currently on leave from the University of Michigan as a Program Director in the CISE Directorate at the National Science Foundation. His primary appointment is in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), with secondary appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Statistics. He is also affiliated with the UM Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics (CCMB), the UM Graduate Program in Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics (AIM), the UM Applied Physics Program, and the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS), which he co-founded from 2015-2018. Hero's research focuses on data science, developing theory and algorithms for multimodality data collection, fusion, analysis and visualization that use statistical machine learning and distributed optimization. His work has applications in wearable technologies for personalized health and predictive medicine, spatio-temporal networks in biology, climate, and social discourse, anomaly detection, and data analysis for international security. His recent research interests include high dimensional spatio-temporal data analysis, multimodal data integration, statistical signal processing, and machine learning, with particular emphasis on predictive mathematical models for biological and physical sciences, social networks, network security and forensics, and personalized health and disease. His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on high-dimensional statistical methods, contrastive learning, neural network optimization, change detection in temporal graphs, and applications in microbiome analysis and epidemic modeling. The research spans theoretical foundations in information theory and statistical learning while addressing practical applications across multiple domains. Scientific Awards: IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award (1998) Best Original Paper Award from Journal of Flow Cytometry (2008) Best Magazine Paper Award from IEEE Signal Processing Society (2010) SPIE Best Student Paper Award (2011) IEEE ICASSP Best Student Paper Award (2011) IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Achievement Award (2014) IEEE Signal Processing Society Society Award (2015) IEEE Fourier Award (2020) University of Michigan Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award (2011) Hero has advised over 60 PhD students and 30 postdocs in areas including modeling, computation, and inference for large scale time varying data in the biosciences. He has received significant research funding from the Department of Energy, Army Research Office, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and National Science Foundation. He has held leadership positions including President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (2006-2007), Director of Division IX (Signals and Applications) on the IEEE Board of Directors (2009-2011), and Chair of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the US National Academies (2018-2020).
Gerold Schneider is an Associate Professor at the University of Zurich , affiliated with the Department of Computational Linguistics under the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics . He leads the Text Crunching Center (TCC) , focusing on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of NLP, Digital Humanities, and Health Data Science. Research Interests His work spans Text Analytics , Digital Humanities , Corpus Linguistics , and Health Data Science , with applications in: Biomedical NLP (e.g., Alzheimer’s detection, clinical trials) Digital Humanities projects (e.g., analyzing Charles Dickens, UN archives) Migration discourse framing across languages Adversarial data collection for hate speech detection Interdisciplinary methodologies for digital unstructured data Recent Publications 2025–2024 research highlights include annotated corpora for preclinical and neurological studies, AI-driven analysis of historical linguistic variation, and innovative tools for language learners. His NLP applications address health diagnostics, ethical AI, and cross-lingual political discourse. Labs & Teams As TCC leader, he spearheads collaborative projects within the Digital Society Initiative (DSI) communities (AI & Law, Health, Ethics, etc.), integrating computational methods with humanities and health research.
Professor Sandra Wachter is a leading academic in legal and ethical implications of AI, Big Data, and robotics at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) , University of Oxford, and as Humboldt Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute. She leads the OII's governance of emerging technologies (GET) research programme , focusing on AI regulation, algorithmic bias, and human rights. Affiliations : Berkman Klein Center (Harvard University), World Economic Forum, UNESCO, IEEE, World Bank, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford Martin School, and more. Research : Legal and ethical frameworks for AI, explainability (notably Counterfactual Explanations ), fairness metrics, and combating algorithmic discrimination through her Conditional Demographic Disparity (CDD) tool. Awards : Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award (2025), O2RB Excellence in Impact Award (2021, 2018), Computer Weekly Women in UK Tech (2021), Privacy Law Scholar (2019), CognitionX Outstanding Achievements (2023, 2017). Impact : Her work is implemented by Google, IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft; influences NHS and MHRA policies; and has been cited in major media outlets including The New York Times, BBC, and Nature.
George H. Chen is an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University , with dual affiliations in the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy and the Machine Learning Department . His research focuses on trustworthy machine learning methods for temporal reasoning , particularly in health applications such as time-to-event prediction (survival analysis) and electronic health records analysis . He has extensive experience in nonparametric methods requiring minimal data assumptions. Educational Background PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT (2015) SM in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT (2012) BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences & Engineering Mathematics and Statistics, UC Berkeley (2010) His work spans survival analysis , deep learning , and time series modeling , with applications in neurological prognostication , medical adherence , and health equity . He has developed self-contained educational resources including a 2024 monograph on deep survival analysis and tutorials at CHIL and SIGMETRICS. His 2025 course 95-865: Unstructured Data Analytics focuses on practical unstructured data analysis techniques. Notable projects include advising the AgriTech startup CoolCrop , which provides cold storage and market forecasts for Indian farmers serving 9,000+ farmers across 7 states. His Google Scholar publications reveal a strong focus on temporal modeling in healthcare, with recent advancements in neural survival analysis and fairness-aware temporal prediction.
Arthur Schafer is a Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Arts and Founding Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics. He serves as a National Research Associate of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and previously held roles as ethics consultant for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Head of the Section of Bio-Medical Ethics in the Faculty of Medicine. His academic credentials include a BLitt in Philosophy from the University of Oxford (1967) and a BA Honours from the University of Manitoba. His distinguished career spans over five decades of ethical scholarship and public engagement. Professor Schafer specializes in professional and applied ethics with intensive focus on bioethics , research ethics , and biomedical conflicts of interest . His work critically examines medical assistance in dying , informed consent , clinical trial ethics , and human rights frameworks , establishing him as a leading voice in Canadian ethical discourse. His philosophical approach bridges theoretical rigor with practical policy applications across multiple professional domains. Analysis of his 13 most recent publications reveals enduring engagement with evolving ethical challenges, particularly the tension between institutional interests and professional integrity. His scholarship demonstrates consistent progression from foundational ethical theory toward contemporary policy applications, with recent work heavily concentrated on medical assistance in dying and pharmaceutical industry influence in healthcare systems. His scientific recognition includes: D. R. Campbell Outreach Award (1984) Olive Beatrice Stanton Award for Excellence in Teaching (1976) Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship (1964) Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1964) Canada Council Fellow As an active supervisor for Master's and PhD students, Schafer extends his mentorship through ethics consulting for professional associations in Medicine, Engineering, Architecture, Nursing, and Pharmacy. His policy impact is evidenced by service on the Provincial-Territorial Expert Panel on Medical Assistance in Dying and two published reports for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His extensive media contributions—including hundreds of CBC appearances and newspaper columns—demonstrate exceptional public scholarship. The Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, which he founded, functions as a vital interdisciplinary hub connecting academic philosophy with real-world ethical challenges across healthcare, law, and public policy sectors, facilitating ongoing dialogue between scholars, practitioners, and community stakeholders.
Lee Miller is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior at the University of California, Davis, College of Biological Sciences. His research integrates neural engineering, physiology, and computational methods to develop communication restoration technologies and investigate sensory processing mechanisms. His primary research interests include neural engineering for speech neuroprosthetics, electrophysiological analysis of speech production, auditory neuroscience, and geometric approaches to neuromuscular signal decoding. He employs surface electromyography (EMG), electroencephalography (EEG), and computational modeling to study brain-machine interfaces for speech restoration and multisensory integration. Recent publications reveal a dominant focus on EMG-based speech neuroprostheses, with geometric and topological analysis of neuromuscular signals emerging as a key methodology. His lab has pioneered non-invasive approaches to speech articulation decoding, created standardized EMG databases, and investigated neural mechanisms of attention in speech-in-noise processing. This work bridges engineering innovation with fundamental neuroscience to address communication disorders. Professor Miller leads the Miller Lab at UC Davis, which specializes in neural engineering for communication restoration. The lab develops real-time speech synthesis systems from neural signals and investigates the physiological basis of speech production and perception using multimodal recording techniques.
Dr. Matloob Khushi serves as a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Brunel University London's College of Engineering, Design and Physical Sciences. With over 25 years of combined academic and industry experience, his work bridges theoretical AI advancements with practical applications in finance, healthcare, and public health domains. His research has established significant collaborations with international banks, healthcare institutions, and technology startups. Dr. Khushi earned his PhD in AI and Data Science from the University of Sydney, developing novel algorithms for genomic data analysis. His postdoctoral research at the Children's Medical Research Institute (2014-2017) pioneered AI-based diagnostic tools for medical condition detection. More recently, he developed bioinformatics tools for environmental assessment under a UKRI NEC grant. Research Focus FinTech Innovation : Creator of the SS Ratio (incorporating volatility and drawdown sensitivities), advanced portfolio optimization models, and synthetic data generation techniques for fraud detection and credit risk assessment Bioinformatics Leadership : Developer of AI tools for genomic analysis and early cancer detection, featured in SBS News and The Daily Telegraph Public Health NLP : Architect of systems for vaccine misinformation detection, mental health monitoring, and health surveillance on social media His publication portfolio shows consistent growth from foundational bioinformatics work to current multimodal AI applications, with increasing interdisciplinary collaboration across finance and healthcare sectors. Awards and Recognition Ranked among Stanford/Elsevier's top 2% of global AI scientists Recipient of Best Paper Awards from IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems and PeerJ Media recognition for cancer detection research by major news outlets Mentorship and Teaching Dr. Khushi has supervised six PhD candidates to completion and over 100 postgraduate dissertations. He teaches CS3002 Artificial Intelligence and mentors students in Final Year Projects. His supervision focuses on Deep Learning/NLP for FinTech prediction and Public Health Surveillance applications, emphasizing practical implementation of theoretical concepts.
Professor Heiko Spallek is Head of School and Dean at the University of Sydney’s Sydney Dental School, leading the school’s integration with the Faculty of Medicine and Health. He also serves as Academic Lead for Digital Health and Health Service Informatics at the faculty level. His research focuses on advancing dental informatics, teledentistry, and evidence-based practice, while advocating for improved oral health policy and public health initiatives. He holds roles including director at Community Connections Australia and membership in the Charles Perkins Centre. Education: DMD, Dr. med. dent., MSBA(CIS), FACD, FAIDH Leadership: Oversees Sydney Dental School’s academic and clinical programs, emphasizing interprofessional education and digital health innovation. Research interests include leveraging big data and machine learning in dentistry, improving access to oral healthcare through teledentistry, and addressing systemic issues in dental education and policy. He has led projects on laser dentistry applications, dental caries prevention, and healthcare workforce regulation. Notable contributions include the OpenWide conference series, the BigMouth dental data repository, and advocacy for equitable dental funding in Australia. Grants include initiatives on oral hygiene in aged care and analysis of healthcare advertising perceptions. Media engagements highlight his role in public discourse on dental access and policy, including commentary on Australia’s dental crisis and aged care reforms. He actively promotes interdisciplinary collaboration through platforms like the Dental Informatics Online Community. Labs/Teams: Directs the Sydney Dental School’s research programs in informatics and public health, collaborating with national and international networks such as the National Dental PBRN.
Dr. Samantha Halliday is an Associate Professor in Biolaw at Durham Law School and Co-Director of the Durham CELLS (Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences) and the Institute for Medical Humanities. She has held academic positions across Europe, including roles at the Universities of Huddersfield, Leeds, Liverpool, Warwick, Swansea, and Aberystwyth. Her doctoral work at Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany, examined compelled obstetric intervention and received the Promotionspreis award for best legal thesis. Education includes a Law with German Law and Language degree from the University of East Anglia and a doctorate from Justus-Liebig Universität Giessen. Her research focuses on comparative medical law and ethics at life's beginning/end, with particular attention to advance decision-making and maternal-fetal conflicts. She authored Autonomy and Pregnancy: A Comparative Analysis of Compelled Obstetric Intervention (Routledge, 2016), a seminal work in biomedical law. Key grants include an ESRC Research Seminar Series on advance decision-making and DFG-funded projects on transnational criminal law harmonization. She serves on peer review boards for AHRC/ESRC and advises the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's end-of-life care committee. Fluent in English, German, French, and Dutch, she actively contributes to interdisciplinary dialogues on healthcare law and ethics. Current projects include fostering a European research network on advance directives and analyzing cross-border challenges in criminal law limitation periods. Her work bridges legal, medical, and social science perspectives to address complex ethical dilemmas in healthcare.
Michalis Vazirgiannis is a Professor at LIX, École Polytechnique (France) leading the Data Science and Mining (DaSciM) group. With academic backgrounds in Physics (Athens University), AI (Heriot-Watt University), and Informatics (Athens University), he has conducted research at Fraunhofer, Max Planck MPI, and INRIA/FUTURS while teaching at institutions across Greece, France, China, and Spain. His research spans Machine/Deep Learning for Graphs (GNNs, graph kernels, embeddings) Text Mining & NLP (Graph-of-Words, biomedical text analysis) Combinatorial Optimization for pandemic forecasting and energy systems Event/Anomaly Detection in time series and sensory data Industrial collaborations with Airbus, Google, Tencent, and BNP . He has supervised 29 completed PhD theses, published over 250 papers, and received prestigious awards including Marie Curie and Tencent Rhino-Bird Fellowships. His team leads the ANR-HELAS Chair (2020-2025) focusing on heterogeneous data deep learning.
Gunnar Blohm is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at Queen's University, affiliated with the School of Medicine and Faculty of Health Sciences. His research focuses on sensorimotor neuroscience, particularly 3D sensorimotor control, eye-hand coordination, and computational modeling of neural processes. He holds a Ph.D. from Université Catholique de Louvain and has held postdoctoral positions at York University and his alma mater. Cross-appointed to the School of Computing, Department of Psychology, and Department of Mathematics and Statistics, he is also Vice-Director of the Connected Minds initiative. His research integrates behavioral experiments, brain imaging (MEG/EEG), and patient studies to understand how sensory information is transformed into goal-directed actions. Key areas include visuomotor transformations, multisensory integration, and Bayesian processes in neural computations. Blohm leads the Computational Sensorimotor Neuroscience Lab, emphasizing collaborative projects like Neuromatch Academy and contributions to open science initiatives. Affiliated with Queen's Centre for Neuroscience Studies and Ingenuity Labs, his work bridges computational approaches with clinical applications, aiming to develop frameworks for understanding brain dysfunction and clinical tools. His recent articles explore topics like saccade dynamics, pupil responses, and generative adversarial collaborations in scientific discourse.
Jessica Mayhew is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Central Washington University. She specializes in primate behavior, biological anthropology, and cognitive ethology, with a focus on social play, dominance hierarchies, and communication patterns in primates such as chimpanzees, macaques, lemurs, and gorillas. Her research integrates field studies, captive observations, and interdisciplinary approaches to understand primate social dynamics and conservation challenges. Her work extends to historical analysis, such as interpreting Bronze Age wall paintings depicting primates, and modern contexts like examining the impact of human caregivers on captive primates and the portrayal of nonhuman primates in digital media. She has conducted studies in diverse locations including China, Madagascar, and sanctuaries in the United States. Mayhew’s publications span topics like lateralization in lemurs, dominance behavior in Tibetan macaques, and paternal care in orangutans. She teaches courses on biological anthropology, primate origins, nonverbal communication, and primatology, reflecting her expertise in both academic instruction and applied research. Her advising and grants focus on primate behavior studies, with notable projects including camera trap deployments in China and collaborative work at sanctuaries. No specific labs or teams are listed, though her collaborative nature is evident through joint publications with institutions like Duke Lemur Center and international field collaborations.
