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.
Deva Kannan Ramanan is a Professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University , focusing on computer vision , machine learning , and human-centered robotics . His work bridges neurorobotics and visual perception , with applications in autonomous driving and 4D reconstruction . Research Topics Computer Vision 3-D Vision and Recognition Visual Servoing Neurorobotics Human-Centered Robotics Graphics & Creative Tools His recent publications in CVPR , ICRA , and ICCV emphasize 4D human reconstruction , neural rendering , and vision-language models for autonomous systems. He serves as General Chair of CVPR 2027 and Program Chair of CVPR 2018 , with IARPA funding for aerial-ground rendering (2023-2027). Current students include PhD candidates Sally Chen, Kangle Deng, and Zhiqiu Lin, while past advisees like Arun Vasudevan and Olga Russakovsky now hold positions at Amazon and Meta respectively.
Minh Q. Phan is an Associate Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering. His expertise spans system identification, iterative learning control, model predictive control, robotic swarm control, and intelligent control systems. He holds a BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and MS/M.Phil/PhD degrees from Columbia University in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Phan has contributed to over 50 peer-reviewed publications and serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. His research focuses on advancing control theory applications in robotics, structural health monitoring, and sustainable construction materials. Key contributions include the development of OKID (Observer/Kalman Filter Identification) methods and bilinear system identification frameworks. Education History: Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley, 1985 Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, 1986 Master of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, 1988 Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, 1989 Research Interests: Advanced control methodologies for dynamic systems Model-based predictive control strategies Applications in robotics and aerospace engineering Structural health monitoring via system identification Machine learning for materials science Teaching Responsibilities include courses like ENGG 149 (Systems Identification), ENGS 145 (Modern Control Theory), and ENGG 148 (Structural Mechanics). His work bridges theoretical control systems with practical industrial applications, including automation in food processing and sustainable construction practices. Dr. Phan has collaborated on projects addressing viral epidemiology in Vietnam and coastal erosion mitigation strategies.
Amir Zamir is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in the School of Computer & Communication Sciences. Previously, he worked at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and UCF with prominent researchers including Silvio Savarese, Jitendra Malik, Mubarak Shah, Rahul Sukthankar, and Leonidas Guibas. He currently leads the Visual Intelligence & Learning Lab at EPFL and serves as chief scientist of Duranta, having previously been the CVML chief scientist of Aurora Solar (a Forbes AI 50 company valued at $4B in 2022) from 2015 to 2022. Dr. Zamir's research spans computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on developing general multi-modal/multi-task vision systems that operate as active agents in the real world. His work emphasizes slow science principles, seeking fundamental understanding over quick publications. Key research areas include embodied vision, multimodal foundation models, computational imaging, and vision-language integration. His notable projects include 4M, Taskonomy, Gibson Environment, Omnidata, and MultiMAE, which have significantly influenced the field of computer vision and embodied AI. Zamir has made substantial contributions to the computer vision community through numerous high-impact publications and leadership roles. His work demonstrates a consistent focus on creating vision systems that go beyond narrow and passive methods toward more general, active, and embodied approaches. The trajectory of his research shows increasing sophistication in handling multiple modalities and tasks within unified frameworks, culminating in recent work on multimodal foundation models that can handle diverse vision tasks. Dr. Zamir has received numerous prestigious awards including the Young Researcher Award 2022 from ECCV, the PAMI Mark Everingham Prize 2022, SIGGRAPH 2022 Best Paper Award for CLIPasso, CVPR 2018 Best Paper Award for Taskonomy, and CVPR 2016 Best Student Paper Award. He is also an ELLIS Faculty Scholar and received the NVIDIA Pioneering Research Award in 2018 for the Gibson Environment. As an advisor, Dr. Zamir has mentored numerous PhD students including Roman Bachmann, Andrei Atanov, Rishubh Singh, Jason Toskov, Kunal Pratap Singh, Zhitong Gao, Mingqiao Ye, and Muhammad Uzair Khattak. His former PhD students include Oguzhan Kar (now at Apple), Alexander Sasha Sax (co-advised with Jitendra Malik, now at Meta FAIR), and Teresa Yeo (now at MIT-Singapore Alliance). Dr. Zamir teaches several advanced courses including CS-503 Visual Intelligence, CS-500 AI Product Management, COM-304 Intelligent Systems, and ENG-615 Topics in Autonomous Robotics. Dr. Zamir leads the Visual Intelligence & Learning Lab at EPFL, which focuses on developing fundamental methods for visual intelligence that can operate effectively in real-world environments. The lab takes an interdisciplinary approach combining computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and cognitive science to create systems that can perceive, understand, and interact with the world. Current research directions include multimodal foundation models, computational imaging, embodied vision, and personalization of generative models.
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUnited States
Nadia Figueroa is the Shalini and Rajeev Misra Presidential Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds secondary appointments in Computer and Information Science (CIS) and Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), and is a core faculty member at the GRASP Lab. Prior to Penn, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT’s CSAIL and earned her PhD in Robotics from EPFL under Prof. Aude Billard. Her research focuses on physical and perceptual adaptive intelligence for robots, enabling fluid collaboration with humans in dynamic environments. Key applications include robot learning from demonstration , human-robot co-manipulation , safe navigation in human-centric spaces , and rehabilitation robotics . Her work integrates machine learning control theory artificial intelligence biomechanics psychology with guarantees of stability, safety, and robustness . Recent publications highlight advancements in reactive collision avoidance dynamical system learning intent estimation EEG-driven assistive control origami-based reconfigurable robots across platforms like autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. She has authored a 2022 textbook on dynamical systems for robot control and received the Presidential Assistant Professorship at Penn.
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH)India
Vineeth N Balasubramanian is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, with affiliate faculty status in the Department of Artificial Intelligence. His research focuses on the intersection of deep learning, machine learning, and computer vision, emphasizing explainability, robustness, and real-world applications. He leads Lab 1055, which investigates problems such as Explainable and robust AI/ML systems Lifelong learning in evolving environments Multimodal vision-language models Applications in agriculture, autonomous navigation, and human behavior analysis His recent work includes causal reasoning in transformers, vision-language model capabilities, and drone-based object detection. Funded by organizations like Google, Microsoft, Intel, and DST, he has received multiple awards including the World's Top 2% Scientists (2022-23), INSA/INAE Fellowships, and Best Paper recognitions. Lab 1055 collaborates with institutions like CMU, UBC, and Monash University, contributing to cutting-edge advancements in AI.
Professor Anna Korhonen is a leading academic at the University of Cambridge, holding positions as Professor of Natural Language Processing, Co-Director of the Language Technology Laboratory (LTL), Director of the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (CHIA), and Fellow of Churchill College. Her work bridges computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, and interdisciplinary applications. Her research focuses on human-centric NLP with core interests in multilingual/low-resource systems, conversational AI, and responsible technology development. She emphasizes applications for social and global good, including healthcare, climate science, and equitable language technologies. Her methodology integrates cognitive modeling with machine learning to create interpretable, fair NLP systems. Key projects include ERC-funded initiatives like MultiConvAI (multilingual conversational AI) and Towards Globally Equitable Language Technologies , alongside Innovate UK's ESG RoboFactory and EPSRC's Modeling Idiomaticity project. Her work spans biomedical text mining ( PheneBank , LION ), educational technology ( EF Education First Research Lab ), and cross-lingual transfer learning. Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) Fellow of ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems) Royal Society University Research Fellow (2005-2014) Google Faculty Award recipient EACL Chair Elect Korhonen actively supervises PhD/MPhil students in Computation, Cognition and Language programs and leads interdisciplinary collaborations across computer science, linguistics, and domain sciences. Her lab (LTL) develops foundational NLP techniques while addressing real-world challenges through partnerships with healthcare, environmental science, and education sectors. Current strategic initiatives include the Institute for Technology and Humanity and CHIA's human-inspired AI framework.
Katerina Fragkiadaki is the JPMorgan Chase Associate Professor of Computer Science in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She works at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Language Understanding, and Robotics. PhD from GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania Postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley (with Jitendra Malik) and Google Research Recipient of NSF CAREER, DARPA Young Investigator, Amazon, Google, Sony, UPMC, and AFOSR awards Organizer of CoRL 2023 Workshop on Generalist Robots ICLR 2024 Program Chair, multiple area chair roles Her research group focuses on developing machines that autonomously improve world models through human-environment interactions, with specific emphasis on: Representation learning and video understanding 2D/3D unified vision-language models Generative simulation and reinforcement learning Real2Sim/Sim2Real robot learning Continual learning and spatial common sense 3D scene reconstruction and dynamics Recent publications highlight advancements in: 3D mesh generation with compositional transformers Unified 2D/3D perception frameworks Physics-aware generative models Diffusion-based robotic manipulation policies Embodied agents with memory prompting Awards include: 2024: DARPA Young Investigator Award 2023: Amazon Faculty Award 2022: Sony Faculty Research Award 2021: UPMC Faculty Research Award 2020: NSF CAREER Award 2019: Google Faculty Award Key collaborations span institutions including UC Berkeley, Google Research, Stanford, MIT, and University of Tsukuba. Her work bridges theoretical innovation with practical applications in: Autonomous robot manipulation 4D world modeling Language-grounded perception Visual dynamics prediction Embodied program synthesis Physics-based simulation engines
Alan Ritter is an Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Computing , Georgia Institute of Technology, with additional affiliation to the Machine Learning Center . His research focuses on Natural Language Processing , particularly robust models across domains/languages with fewer labels and efficient resource use, plus data-driven dialogue agents for open-topic conversations. Research Interests : Robust NLP models, cross-lingual transfer, resource-efficient learning, dialogue systems, cultural bias measurement, and privacy-aware language models Students : Mentors Ph.D. students in Georgia Tech's ML and CS programs, including Junmo Kang, Yang Chen, and Duong Minh Le. Alumni include Fan Bai (Ph.D. 2023), Yang Chen (Ph.D. 2024), and Andrew Li (M.S. 2024). Awards : NSF CAREER Award, Amazon Research Award, ACL 2024 Best Social Impact Paper, IUI 2009 Best Student Paper. Recent Work : Studies training budget allocation between supervised and preference-based finetuning, cross-lingual information extraction, cultural bias in LLMs, and privacy risk mitigation in social media disclosures. Service : Served as Program Chair for NAACL 2025, Area Chair for multiple top-tier conferences (COLM, EMNLP, ACL, EACL, AAAI). Email : alan.ritter@cc.gatech.edu
Maja J Matarić is the Chan Soon-Shiong Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering, with courtesy appointments in Neuroscience and Pediatrics. She serves as founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center, co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab, and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. Previously, she held leadership roles as USC's interim Vice President of Research (2020-2021) and Vice Dean for Research (2006-2019). Her educational background includes: PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT (1994) MS in Computer Science from MIT (1990) BS in Computer Science from University of Kansas (1987) Matarić pioneers Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) , a field her lab named, focusing on human-robot interaction that provides assistance through social rather than physical support. Her research targets critical health and wellness challenges including post-stroke rehabilitation, autism spectrum disorder therapy, cognitive exercises for Alzheimer's patients, ADHD academic support, and mental health interventions. She develops systems modeling user engagement, personality, and motivation, with extensive real-world deployments in schools, rehabilitation centers, and homes. Analysis of her recent publications reveals dominant themes in cognitive health robotics (2025 CHI paper on LLM-powered elder care), pediatric assistive technology (2025 IDC speech therapy review), and adaptive preference modeling (2025 HRI contrastive learning work). Her research consistently bridges machine learning with human-centered design for vulnerable populations. Major scientific recognition includes: ACM Athena Lecturer Award (2024) ACM Eugene L. Lawler Humanitarian Award (2024) ACM Fellow (2020) Presidential Mentoring Award (2011) Multiple society fellowships (AAAS, IEEE, AAAI) As a dedicated mentor, Matarić has championed underrepresented groups through CRA-W, placing numerous women in faculty positions. She leads USC Viterbi's K-12 STEM Outreach Program serving low-income Los Angeles schools and authored The Robotics Prime for student education. Her research has secured significant funding enabling real-world technology transfer, with documented impact in rehabilitation centers and homes through deployable SAR systems. Her Robotics Research Lab at USC drives innovation in embodied AI, with current projects spanning LLM-integrated elder care robots, ADHD academic companions, and autism therapy systems. The lab emphasizes co-design with end-users and rigorous real-world validation across diverse populations.
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in LausanneSwitzerland
Francesca Stradolini is a Lecturer at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), affiliated with the Electrical Engineering Doctoral School (EDEE). She holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from EPFL (2018), with prior education in Bio Engineering and Neuroscience from the University of Genoa (2012, 2015). Her current work focuses on R&D engineering for medical devices, emphasizing system lifecycle management, human factors engineering, and compliance with CE/FDA regulations. As an invited guest, she contributes to usability engineering education and interdisciplinary research at EPFL. PhD: IoT Bio-Electronic Multi-Panel Device for On-line Monitoring of Anaesthesia Delivery (EPFL, 2018) MSc: Bio Engineering (University of Genoa, 2015) BSc: Bio Engineering (University of Genoa, 2012) Her research spans bioelectronics, IoT-enabled medical monitoring, and electrochemical sensor development for clinical applications. Key areas include anesthesia delivery systems, wearable diagnostics, implantable devices, and human factors engineering. Her work integrates fluidic systems, noble metal nanostructures, and open-source hardware (e.g., Raspberry Pi) to address challenges in traceability, fouling mitigation, and pharmacokinetic modeling. Scientific recognition includes the Ville de Lausanne Award (2019) , EPFL Outstanding PhD Thesis Distinction (2018) , and a Best Paper Award at MOBIHEALTH (2016) . She has published extensively in journals like IEEE TBIOCAS, Sensors and Actuators B, and IEEE Sensors Journal, with collaborative studies on propofol monitoring, carbon nanoallotrope drug detection, and implantable sensor validation. Her technical expertise includes managing medical device development lifecycles, designing IoT architectures for intensive care, and optimizing electrochemical sensors for stability in undiluted biological fluids. She has contributed to conferences such as IEEE BioCAS, ISCAS, and MOBIHEALTH, focusing on translational studies in personalized medicine and 3D-printed medical systems.
Maya Ramanath is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. She joined IIT Delhi in 2011 after a postdoctoral research stint at the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany. Her research interests focus on database systems, information retrieval, semantic web technologies, and knowledge graph construction and applications. Education: PhD in Computer Science, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore M.Sc.(Engg.) in Computer Science, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore B.E. in Computer Science and Engineering, Bangalore University, Bangalore Her recent work emphasizes efficient query processing over large-scale graphs, knowledge graph applications, and natural language interfaces for semantic data. Notable contributions include algorithms for reachability approximation in web-scale graphs, speculative query planning for knowledge graphs, and exploratory querying techniques. She has collaborated extensively on projects like NAGA, ESTHETE, and KlusTree, advancing the state of the art in graph-based data management and semantic search. Publications span conferences such as ICDE, ECIR, EDBT, and VLDB, reflecting a strong focus on database systems, graph algorithms, and semantic web applications. Her work bridges theoretical foundations with practical implementations, addressing scalability and efficiency challenges in modern data management systems. Research and advising activities include supervision of projects on distributed graph processing, query optimization, and knowledge representation. She has contributed to open-source tools like LegoDB and StatiX, and her lab focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to data-centric AI.
Roberto Martin-Martin is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he leads the Robot Interactive Intelligence (RobIN) Lab. His research bridges robotics, computer vision, and machine learning to enable robots to operate autonomously in human-centric environments like homes and offices. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab working with Fei-Fei Li and Silvio Savarese, and an AI Researcher at Salesforce AI. Education: Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Robotics from Technische Universität Berlin (TUB), advised by Professor Oliver Brock B.Sc. from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Dr. Martin-Martin's research focuses on developing AI algorithms that combine reinforcement learning and imitation learning with advanced planning and control to address core challenges in robot perception. His work spans mobile and whole-body manipulation, dexterous and contact-rich interactions, and long-horizon tasks in unstructured environments. He takes inspiration from human cognition through psychology and cognitive science to develop solutions for skills ranging from simple pick-and-place operations to complex tasks like cooking and furniture assembly. His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward enabling robots to learn from human demonstrations, particularly through video, and to safely adapt these demonstrations to their own morphology. There's significant emphasis on mobile manipulation, bimanual tasks, and developing hardware that supports robust robot learning through trial and error. His work shows increasing integration of large language models and vision-language models to enhance robot understanding and task execution. Scientific Awards: RSS Pioneer (2020) Winner of Amazon Picking Challenge (2015) RSS Best Systems Paper Award (2016) ICRA Best Paper Award IROS Best Mechanism Award Amazon Faculty Award AAAI Young Faculty IJCAI Early Faculty Nominated for Best Paper at IROS (2014, 2017) Dr. Martin-Martin advises PhD students including Arpit Bahety, who is working on mobile manipulation and learning. He serves as Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Mobile Manipulation and is a co-founder of QueerInRobotics. His research is supported by industry partnerships and academic funding sources that enable his lab to develop both hardware and software innovations in robotics. He directs the Robot Interactive Intelligence (RobIN) Lab at UT Austin, which takes a holistic approach to robot intelligence, developing both the hardware (like the BaRiFlex gripper) and software frameworks necessary for robots to learn from interaction. The lab's research addresses the full pipeline from perception to action, with particular emphasis on learning from human demonstrations, safe exploration, and adapting to novel objects and environments.
Alexander Schwing is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory. His research focuses on machine learning and computer vision with applications in 3D scene understanding, generative modeling, and multi-agent systems. Education: Diploma in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technical University of Munich (TUM) PhD in Computer Science, ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto Research Interests: Structured prediction in deep learning Generative adversarial networks and stability Multi-modal vision-language models 3D scene reconstruction from single images Embodied agent collaboration Semantic segmentation with temporal coherence Recent Publications: Highlight trends in neural rendering, video object segmentation, and reinforcement learning with applications to 3D modeling and multi-agent systems. Notable innovations include SAIL-VOS dataset for amodal segmentation and NeRFDeformer for single-view scene transformation. Scientific Awards: NSF CAREER Award, 3M and Amazon research awards, multiple student recognition awards, ETH Zurich PhD medal, and best paper at Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2014. Teaching: Offers graduate courses in Pattern Recognition (ECE 544) and Machine Learning (CS 446/ECE 449). Previously taught at University of Toronto and ETH Zurich. Labs & Collaborations: Leads research at Coordinated Science Laboratory (UIUC) with collaborations across University of Toronto, ETH Zurich, and industry partners like Samsung SAIT and Amazon.
Shreyas Sen is the Elmore Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, jointly affiliated with the School of Biomedical Engineering. He directs the Center for Internet of Bodies (C-IoB) and leads the SPARC Lab, focusing on circuits/systems for secure, energy-efficient body-centric communication and biomedical applications. Education: B.E. (Jadavpur University, 2006), M.S. & Ph.D. (Georgia Tech, 2009-2011). His research spans Human Body Communication (HBC), hardware security, IoT/IoB systems, and low-power sensing. Notable innovations include Electro-Quasistatic HBC (EQS-HBC) technology, which enables covert body-wire communication with 100x lower energy than conventional methods. Research Themes: Secure communication for medical wearables Physical layer security in IoT Ultra-low-power biosensors Side-channel attack mitigation in cryptographic ICs Publications: Over 200 papers in top venues (ISSCC, DAC, CICC, HOST) with focus on HBC systems, electromagnetic security, and biomedical circuits. Recent work explores EQS-HBC privacy properties (Nature Scientific Reports, 2019) and 350x current-domain signature attenuation for AES security (ISSCC 2020). Awards: NSF CAREER Award (2020) AFOSR Young Investigator (2016) MIT TR35 India (2018) 9 Best Paper Awards Intel Outstanding Researcher (2020) He advises over 20 students and leads industry collaborations through Ixana Inc. (founded 2020), commercializing EQS-HBC technology. Current efforts include EQS-based authentication systems and radiation dosimetry wearables.
