Gül Varol is a permanent researcher at École des Ponts ParisTech's IMAGINE group, an ELLIS Scholar, and Guest Scientist at Max Planck Institute. She holds a PhD from Inria Paris/ENS with awards from ELLIS and AFRIF. Her academic service includes Program Chair at ECCV'24 and Area Chair roles at major conferences. Current affiliations: IMAGINE group (École des Ponts ParisTech), Max Planck Institute Previous roles: Postdoctoral researcher at University of Oxford Her research focuses on vision-language applications, particularly in 3D human motion synthesis, sign language technology, and audio description generation. Key techniques include text-conditioned diffusion models, temporal context modeling, and synthetic data utilization. Scientific contributions recognized through: Google Research Scholar award (2023) ELLIS PhD Award (2020) AFRIF PhD thesis award (2020) Best application paper at ACCV'20 Recent publications demonstrate expertise in: Text-driven 3D motion editing (MotionFix, 2024) Cross-dataset generalization studies (TMR++, 2024) Temporal action composition frameworks (TEACH, 2022) Sign language dense annotation methods (BOBSL, 2022) Zero-shot audio description generation (AutoAD-Zero, 2024) She actively contributes to dataset development including BOBSL (British Sign Language corpus) and SURREACT synthetic action dataset, while pioneering new evaluation metrics for audio description quality and motion retrieval benchmarks.
Aniket 'Niki' Kittur is a Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. His research focuses on AI-augmented cognition, exploring how human and machine intelligence can collaborate to enhance creativity, decision-making, and innovation. He leads projects like the Semantic Reader and Skeema browser extension, aiming to reduce cognitive overload through intelligent systems. Education: BA in Psychology & Computer Science from Princeton University; PhD in Cognitive Psychology from UCLA. His work bridges HCI, crowdsourcing, and cognitive science, with 100+ publications and 17 best paper awards. He advises industry partners including Google, Microsoft, and Toyota while maintaining a lab focused on real-world impact. Research interests center on accelerating knowledge acquisition via systems that scaffold sensemaking (e.g., Selenite for web exploration) and fostering analogical innovation through crowdsourced/AI hybrid approaches. Notable contributions include CrowdForge (human-machine workflows) and Kinetica (touch-based data visualization). Awards include NSF CAREER Award, Allen Newell Award, and CHI Academy membership. His lab's Skeema tool has achieved 79% 30-day retention in beta, reflecting impactful user-centered design principles. Current projects emphasize LLM integration for composite cognition, aiming to create systems where 'LLMs + Humans > Either Alone.' Funding来自NSF, NIH, ONR, and industry partners like Bosch and Wikimedia. Teaching includes PhD bootcamps and user-centered research courses. Over 100 students have contributed to his projects, many advancing to tech leadership roles.
Abhinav Shrivastava is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Maryland, College Park, with a joint appointment in the Institute of Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). Previously, he served as an Assistant Professor at the same institution from August 2018 to June 2024, and spent one year as a Visiting Research Scientist at Google Research from September 2017 to August 2018. His educational background includes: PhD in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University (2017), advised by Abhinav Gupta, with thesis titled 'Discovering and Leveraging Visual Structure for Large-scale Recognition' MS in Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University (2011), supervised by Alyosha Efros and Martial Hebert BTech in Computer Science and Engineering from Jaypee Institute of Information Technology (2010) Professor Shrivastava's research focuses on computer vision and machine learning, with particular expertise in object detection, image recognition, and neural representations. His work bridges theoretical advances with practical applications, exploring how visual systems can discover and leverage structure in large-scale recognition problems. He has made significant contributions to understanding the role of supervision in vision transformers, developing novel approaches for object-state composition recognition, and creating efficient neural representations for videos and 3D scenes. His research often addresses fundamental challenges in visual recognition, including handling novelty in open-world environments and improving the efficiency of visual systems. An analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong emphasis on neural representations, particularly for dynamic content like videos and 3D scenes. His work demonstrates increasing sophistication in handling open-world vision problems, with research spanning object discovery, localization, and representation learning. The publications show a clear progression toward more efficient and scalable models, with recent work focusing on model compression, sparse representations, and addressing the challenges of working with limited annotations. His scientific contributions have been recognized with several prestigious awards: Best Paper Award (Applications) at IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (2020) Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship (2014-2016) Best Student Paper Award at IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (2014) Outstanding Reviewer Award at IEEE CVPR (2015) Professor Shrivastava has successfully mentored numerous graduate students, many of whom have become prominent researchers in computer vision. His Amazon Research Awards (2020 and 2023) have supported innovative projects including 'The pursuit of knowledge: discovering and localizing new concepts using dual memory' and 'Audio-conditioned Diffusion Models for Generating Lip-synchronized Videos.' He has served as Area Chair for major conferences including ICCV, CVPR, and AAAI, demonstrating his leadership in the computer vision community. His research has attracted significant funding from both academic and industry sources, supporting his exploration of fundamental questions in visual recognition and representation learning.
Raymond J. Mooney is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been a faculty member since 1987. He is the Director of the UT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and affiliated with multiple research groups including the Machine Learning Research Group, UT Computational Linguistics Lab, and the UT Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. He holds a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where his thesis was supervised by Gerald DeJong. His research spans diverse areas in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing: Natural Language Learning Connecting Language and Perception Statistical Relational Learning Information Extraction Transfer and Active Learning Abductive Reasoning Text Mining and Clustering Recommender Systems Knowledge-Base Refinement Recent publications highlight trends in grounded language processing, human-robot interaction, and multimodal reasoning. He has been recognized with prestigious fellowships including ACL (2014), ACM (2010), and AAAI (2005). Scientific awards: Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics (2014) Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (2010) Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (2005) Classic Paper Award (2019) Best Paper Awards (2007, 2004, 1996) He teaches graduate courses like CS 371R: Information Retrieval and Web Search (Fall 2025) and CS 395T: Grounded Natural Language Processing (Spring 2025). His research labs include: UT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Machine Learning Research Group UT Computational Linguistics Lab UT Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Zachary Kincaid is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. His research focuses on program analysis, logic, and programming languages, with an emphasis on making program analysis compositional and robust. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto under the supervision of Azadeh Farzan. His work has been implemented in the Duet program analyzer, and he has an Erdős number of 3. Dr. Kincaid's research interests include: Compositional program analysis techniques Algebraic approaches to program analysis Termination analysis and ranking function synthesis Verification of concurrent and parallel programs Automated reasoning and decision procedures Analysis of numerical programs and loops His recent publications show a strong focus on developing novel techniques for program analysis that bridge theoretical computer science with practical verification tools, particularly in nonlinear analysis, quantified reasoning, and compositional verification. Dr. Kincaid has received research support from ONR grant N00014-19-1-2318 for his work on robust program analysis. He has advised graduate students including: Current: Jake Silverman, Nicolas Koh, Nikhil Pimpalkhare Graduated: Shaowei Zhu (PhD 2024, Researcher at Amazon), Charlie Murphy (PhD 2023, Postdoc at University of Wisconsin–Madison) Dr. Kincaid teaches courses including: COS 320 – Compiling Techniques (Spring 2024, 2022, 2020, 2019) COS 516 / ELE 516 – Automated Reasoning about Software (Fall 2025, 2022, 2018) COS 217 – Introduction to Programming Systems (Fall 2024) COS IW – Practical Solutions to Intractable Problems (Fall 2023, Spring 2023, 2018, 2017) COS IW – Little Languages (Spring 2018) COS 597D – Reasoning about concurrent systems (Fall 2016)
Lorenzo Baraldi is an Associate Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where he leads research in deep learning, vision-language integration, and multimodal AI systems. He serves as an ELLIS Scholar and Coordinator of the Modena ELLIS Unit, and has held the position of deputy director at the Interdepartmental Center on Digital Humanities since 2021. Previously, he worked at Facebook AI Research laboratory in Paris in 2017, developing video-matching algorithms for content moderation. His research spans multiple areas including Vision-and-Language integration, Multimodal Retrieval, Image and Video Captioning, Visual-Semantic alignment, Large-Scale model development, High Performance Computing, and Embodied AI. With over 120 publications in international journals and conferences, his work demonstrates consistent contributions to advancing multimodal AI capabilities. He has served as an Associate Editor for Computer Vision and Image Understanding and Pattern Recognition, and as Area Chair for major conferences including ICCV, WACV 2026, and ACM Multimedia 2025. His recent publication record shows significant impact in the field, with multiple papers accepted to top-tier conferences in 2024-2025 including CVPR, ICCV, BMVC, ICLR, ECCV, and NeurIPS. Notably, his paper "Hyperbolic Safety-Aware Vision-Language Models" was selected as a highlight paper at CVPR 2025. His research often involves collaboration with Rita Cucchiara and other researchers at his institution. ELLIS Scholar and Coordinator of the Modena ELLIS Unit Associate Editor for Computer Vision and Image Understanding Area Chair for ICCV and major multimedia conferences Highlight paper at CVPR 2025 Professor Baraldi teaches courses in Computer Vision and Cognitive Systems, Scalable AI, and Computer Architecture for the Artificial Intelligence Engineering and Computer Engineering programs. His teaching spans both undergraduate and graduate levels, with a focus on providing students with both theoretical foundations and practical implementation skills. He has developed educational materials including Deep Learning tutorials for classroom instruction.
Jiaoyan Chen is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Manchester, set to become a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) from July 2025. Previously, she served as a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford and held postdoctoral roles at Heidelberg University. Her research focuses on neural-symbolic knowledge representation, ontology engineering, and integrating large language models with knowledge graphs. Education: PhD in Knowledge Reasoning and Predictive Analytics (Zhejiang University, 2011-2016) and BEng in Computer Science (Zhejiang University, 2007-2011). She also spent time as a visiting scholar at Zurich University (2014-2015). Research Interests include: Knowledge Graphs, Ontologies, Large Language Models, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and Machine Learning applications in knowledge-aware systems. She leads major grants such as the EPSRC New Investigator Award (EP/Y017706/1) and collaborates internationally through initiatives like the Manchester-Melbourne-Toronto Fund. Teaching: Leads units like 'Data Engineering Technologies' and 'Advanced Topics in Knowledge Representation'. She actively advises PhD students and co-develops tools like OWL2Vec* and DeepOnto. Service roles include Associate Editor of Transactions on Graph Data and Knowledge (TGDK), membership in the EPSRC Peer Review College, and leadership in ontology alignment initiatives like OAEI Bio-ML Track.
Loris D'Antoni is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) . He is also a Visiting Academic at Amazon Web Services (AWS) . His research focuses on helping people write trustworthy software through techniques in program synthesis, formal verification, and machine learning robustness. Bachelor and Master in Computer Science from University of Torino (2008, 2010) PhD in Computer Science from University of Pennsylvania (2015) His research integrates programming languages , automata theory , and formal methods to ensure software reliability. Recent work explores semantics-guided synthesis and specification-aligned LLMs , with applications in network security, machine learning fairness, and automated code repair. Key trends in his publications include program synthesis , formal verification , and trustworthy AI systems . He has contributed to tools like AutomataTutor and SemGuS , a framework for customizable synthesis problems using constrained Horn clauses. Phillip R. Certain-Gary D. Sandefur Distinguished Faculty Award NSF CAREER Award Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship Google and Facebook Faculty Awards Best Paper Award at ICDCN 2023 Distinguished Paper Award at SBES 2021 D'Antoni actively contributes to academic community service as a committee member in PLDI , OOPSLA , POPL , and CAV . He leads the Programming Systems Group at UCSD and collaborates with SemGuS research team on synthesis frameworks.
John van de Wetering is an Assistant Professor at the Theoretical Computer Science group of the Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, working with the QuSoft research center. He co-authored the open-access book Picturing Quantum Software and developed the PyZX quantum compiler. His research spans quantum computation and quantum foundations, focusing on diagrammatic methods like the ZX-calculus and ZH-calculus. Quantum circuit optimization and verification Quantum foundations via algebraic/compositional methods Co-creator of PyZX His recent publications explore multi-qutrit systems, completeness of graphical calculi, and quantum state representations. Supervises students in quantum computing, including Lia Yeh and Sarah Li. Directs the new Master's program in Quantum Computer Science at UvA. Actively contributes to open-source projects and international conferences. Notable collaborations include Aleks Kissinger, Neil J. Ross, and QuSoft researchers. Uses GitHub for DiZX development (qudit extension of PyZX). No explicit scientific awards mentioned.
Tom Mitchell is the Fredkin Professor of AI and Learning and Director of the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery (CALD) at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. His research focuses on machine learning, computational neuroscience, and their applications in neuroimaging and natural language processing. He is renowned for pioneering work in developing algorithms to decode brain activity and for contributions to foundational machine learning theory, including co-training and explanation-based learning. Mitchell authored the seminal textbook *Machine Learning* (McGraw Hill, 1997) and has led projects like Never-Ending Learning (NELL), an AI system that autonomously learns from web content. His work bridges computer science and cognitive science, exploring how machines can learn from data and human interaction. Notable research interests include brain-computer interfaces, automated knowledge extraction, and ethical AI. Mitchell's publications span influential journals like *Science* and *Nature*, and he has been recognized for advancing interdisciplinary research in AI and neuroscience. He has advised numerous students and contributed to initiatives like the AAAI Presidential Address on AI and brain sciences. Mitchell's current projects include studying the neural basis of language and developing AI tools for education and healthcare.
Stefano Gogioso is a Departmental Lecturer at the University of Oxford , specializing in quantum theory and quantum software. He holds a DPhil in Computer Science from Oxford (2013–2017) and advanced degrees from Cambridge (MASt, BA) and the University of Genova (MSc, BSc). As a Fellow at Kellogg College and co-founder of Hashberg Ltd , he develops quantum programming tools and focuses on quantum causal structures, quantum field theory, and natural language processing applications. His research bridges foundational quantum theory with practical applications, including near-term quantum computing and educational outreach through visual methods like Quantum in Pictures . Research Interests: Quantum foundations, quantum software, categorical quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and quantum causality. His work emphasizes pictorial formalisms and compositional methods, with contributions to indefinite causality, quantum cellular automata, and quantum natural language processing (QNLP). Key Contributions: Published over 25 papers, including works on causal polytopes, categorical Feynman diagrams, and QNLP pipelines. Co-developed Hashberg 's quantum programming tools and serves as a mentor for AI initiatives at CDL-Oxford. His thesis introduced dynamics in categorical quantum mechanics, addressing symmetry and quantum clocks. Teaching: Teaches quantum computing courses for MSc/MFoCS students, professionals, and continued education. Courses include Quantum Software , Quantum Computing for Software Engineers , and bespoke corporate training. Labs/Teams: Part of the Oxford Quantum Group and involved in collaborative projects with industry and academia. Advising: Supervised students like Nicola Pinzani (causal orders) and Maria Stasinou (quantum field theory). Grants/Awards: Not explicitly listed, but recognized for contributions to quantum foundations and education.
Jay Pujara is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC), affiliated with the Viterbi School of Engineering and the Information Sciences Institute (ISI). He directs the Center on Knowledge Graphs and leads research in artificial intelligence, specializing in knowledge graph construction, scalable machine learning, and probabilistic models. Education : PhD in Computer Science (University of Maryland, 2016), MS and BS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University (2005 and 2004), with minors in Robotics, Mathematical Sciences, and Logic & Computation. Research Interests : His work focuses on probabilistic models for dynamic data, knowledge graph construction, entity resolution, and applications in NLP and social network analysis. He emphasizes scalable algorithms and real-world impact in domains like finance, climate science, and healthcare. Awards : Includes the SWSA Ten-Year Award (2023), Best Paper Awards at IUI 2019 and ISWC 2013, and grants totaling over $9M from DARPA, NSF, and industry partners. Grants & Mentorship : Principal Investigator on projects like "Artificial Domain-Understanding and Collaborative Agency" (DARPA) and "Explainable and Robust AI Agents" (NSF). Mentored over 50 students in PhD, MS, and undergraduate programs, focusing on knowledge graphs, NLP, and machine learning. Labs & Teams : Leads ISI’s Knowledge Graph and Neurosymbolic AI teams, coordinating the Open Knowledge Network (OKN) and tools like KGTK. Active in academic service, including roles on PhD admissions committees and ISI’s Space Management Committee.
Xihui Liu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) and Institute of Data Science (IDS), The University of Hong Kong, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science. She holds a PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a bachelor’s from Tsinghua University. Her research focuses on generative models, multimodal AI, computer vision, and their applications in embodied AI and AI for Science. Education: PhD in Multimedia Lab (MMLab), Chinese University of Hong Kong (2017–2021) Bachelor’s in Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University (2013–2017) Research Interests: Generative models for 3D content and multimodal systems Embodied AI and vision-language integration Applications in scientific domains Awards: Adobe Research Fellowship (2020) Rising Stars in EECS (2021) WAIC Rising Stars Award (2022) Her work emphasizes interactive generative systems and benchmarks like T2I-CompBench. She co-organized workshops on multimodal foundation models and embodied AI, and currently serves as Area Chair for CVPR, NeurIPS, and ICLR.
Qi Long is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, holding joint appointments in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics (Perelman School of Medicine), Department of Computer and Information Science (School of Engineering and Applied Science), and Department of Statistics and Data Science (The Wharton School). He serves as Founding Director of the Center for Cancer Data Science, Associate Director of the Penn Institute for Biomedical Informatics, and Associate Director for Quantitative Data Science at the Abramson Cancer Center. His research bridges statistical and machine learning (ML/AI) method development with biomedical applications, focusing on precision medicine and population health. Education : Ph.D. (2005) and M.S. (2003) in Biostatistics from University of Michigan; B.S. (1998) in Computer Science from University of Science and Technology of China. Research interests include: Robust statistical and ML/AI methods for big health data (-omics, EHRs, imaging, mHealth) Multimodal data integration and subgroup heterogeneity analysis Missing data, causal inference, Bayesian methods, and clinical trials Data privacy, algorithmic fairness, and responsible AI in healthcare Foundation models and agentic AI for biomedicine His publications focus on privacy-preserving AI, fairness-aware ML, and integrative models for multi-omics and EHRs. Recent work explores LLMs and watermark detection in hybrid human-AI settings. Scientific Awards : Elected fellow: AAAS, ASA, IMS, ISI, AMIA He leads large NIH- and ARPA-H-funded initiatives, directing statistical coordinating centers for national clinical trials. His lab trains numerous PhD/Master’s students and postdocs, many of whom hold prestigious academic or industry positions.
Sean Ren is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair. He directs the INK Research Lab and serves as Research Team Leader at USC's Information Sciences Institute. Affiliated with the USC NLP Group and Machine Learning Center, his research focuses on developing robust NLP systems through knowledge-aware architectures and data-efficient learning. His research interests include: Evaluation methods exposing NLP limitations in reasoning tasks Augmenting models with commonsense/knowledge via novel algorithms Graph neural networks for relational inference Model robustness verification and enhancement Neural-symbolic integration for interpretable AI Recent publications demonstrate strong emphases on language model reasoning, knowledge distillation, and compositional generalization. His group's ACL/NeurIPS papers frequently address robustness gaps in state-of-the-art models. Honors include: ACL Outstanding Paper (2023) MIT TR Innovator 35 Asia Pacific (2023) NSF CAREER Award (2021) Forbes 30 Under 30 (2019) ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Award (2018) Research is supported by NSF, DARPA, IARPA, and industry partners (Google, Amazon, Meta). He leads the INK Lab with focuses on label-efficient learning and knowledge-guided NLP, while actively recruiting PhD students for projects bridging symbolic and neural paradigms.
