Yin Tat Lee is an Associate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering , University of Washington, and a Senior Principal Researcher in Microsoft AI. His research spans convex optimization , convex geometry , graph algorithms , online algorithms , and differential privacy , with applications in machine learning and theoretical computer science.
Max Simchowitz is an Assistant Professor in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University, joining in January 2025. His research focuses on sequential learning, reinforcement learning, control systems, and robotics, with a particular interest in how large AI models influence these fields. He holds a PhD from UC Berkeley (2021) and conducted postdoctoral research in MIT's Robot Locomotion Group. His work bridges theoretical foundations and practical applications, emphasizing adaptive sampling, optimization, and fairness in machine learning. Education: Bachelor's in Mathematics, Princeton University (2015) PhD in EECS, UC Berkeley (2021), advised by Ben Recht and Michael Jordan Research Interests: Reinforcement learning and control systems Generative models (diffusion models, video prediction) Robot learning and policy optimization Mathematical foundations of sequential decision-making Articles Trends: Recent work emphasizes diffusion models, imitation learning pitfalls, and robot policy optimization. Earlier contributions include theoretical analyses of system identification, exploration strategies, and fairness in AI systems. Awards: Outstanding Paper Award (ICML 2022) Best Paper Finalist (ICRA 2024) Best Paper Award (ICML 2018) Advising & Grants: Actively recruiting PhD/Master’s students in CMU’s Machine Learning Department and Robotics Institute. Prior teaching includes UC Berkeley’s Convex Optimization and Machine Learning courses. Research supported by grants exploring robot learning, generative models, and control theory.
Peter K. Kitanidis is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University . His research focuses on groundwater flow , hydrologic forecasting , and stochastic inverse modeling , with applications to pollutant remediation and CO₂ storage monitoring . Education : Diploma, National Technical University of Athens (1974) M.S., MIT (1976) Ph.D., MIT (1978) Research Interests : Groundwater modeling and contaminant transport Hydraulic tomography and aquifer characterization Stochastic methods for uncertainty quantification Bioremediation and enhanced in-situ pollutant decay Dilution and mixing processes in heterogeneous media Real-time river flow forecasting Scientific Awards : L.G. Straub Award (1979) W.L. Huber Research Prize (1994) ISI Highly Cited Researcher (2001) AGU Hydrologic Sciences Award (2011) ASCE Pioneers in Groundwater Lecturer (2011) Advising and Grants : Advised 20+ PhD and MS students (1978–2018) Principal investigator on NSF, EPA, and DOE-funded projects Developed software for groundwater data analysis and CO₂ monitoring Contributed to bioremediation protocols and hydraulic tomography algorithms Labs and Teams : Kitanidis Laboratory for groundwater crisis solutions Collaborated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Stanford Hydrogeology Group Mentored postdocs (2000–2017) in reactive transport and inverse modeling
Ali Vakilian is a Research Assistant Professor at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC), with a strong academic background in theoretical computer science and algorithms. He will join the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2025. His research bridges algorithmic theory and machine learning, focusing on scalable, fair, and efficient algorithms for massive data. Education: Ph.D. in EECS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), advisors: Erik Demaine and Piotr Indyk M.S. in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), advisor: Chandra Chekuri B.S. in Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology Research Interests: Ali Vakilian's work centers on the algorithmic foundations of machine learning and data science. He develops streaming, sketching, and sublinear-time algorithms for massive datasets, and pioneers learning-augmented algorithms that use machine learning predictions to improve performance while maintaining worst-case guarantees. His research in trustworthy ML includes algorithmic fairness, fair clustering, and learning with strategic agents. He also contributes to combinatorial optimization and approximation algorithms for network design, set cover, and low-rank approximation. His recent publications (2023–2025) show a consistent focus on fair clustering (individual and group fairness), streaming graph algorithms , learning-augmented methods , and frequency estimation . These works appear in top venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, SODA, and ICALP, often with recognitions like oral or spotlight presentations. Scientific Awards: Outstanding Student Paper Highlight Award, AISTATS 2024 Notable-top-25% paper, ICLR 2023 Oral presentation, AISTATS 2024 Spotlight presentation, NeurIPS 2023 Advising and Grants: Ali Vakilian mentors several students and interns, including summer interns at TTIC and Fatima Fellows. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation (TRIPODS program), as noted in the press coverage of his work on LearnedSketch. He actively contributes to the academic community through advising, organizing workshops (e.g., Algorithms with Predictions, Learning-Augmented Algorithms), and serving on program committees (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, AISTATS). Labs and Teams: He is affiliated with the theory and algorithms group at TTIC and collaborates with researchers at MIT, UIUC, and other institutions. His work on learning-augmented algorithms has led to influential workshops and collaborations with leading figures such as Piotr Indyk and Erik Demaine.
Ronald Parr is a Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. He has been at Duke since 2000, progressing from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure, and ultimately to Full Professor. From 2014 to 2017, he served as Department Chair and delivered graduation speeches in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Dr. Parr received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998, with a dissertation titled "Hierarchical Control and Learning in Markov Decision Processes" under advisor Stuart Russell. He earned his A.B. in Philosophy, cum laude, from Princeton University in 1990. His primary research focuses on methods for solving large stochastic planning problems using Markov Decision Processes and approximate dynamic programming techniques. His work spans reinforcement learning, value function approximation, game theory, sensing, and robotics. Dr. Parr's research has been consistently funded by major agencies including NSF, DARPA, and ARO, with recent projects focusing on feature encoding for reinforcement learning, neurosymbolic hierarchical reinforcement learning, and reasoning in large, structured, uncertain domains. His publication record demonstrates consistent contributions to top venues including NeurIPS, ICML, and AAAI, with work that bridges theoretical foundations and practical applications. Dr. Parr has received numerous honors including being elected as an AAAI Fellow in 2023, receiving an AAAI Outstanding Paper Honorable Mention in 2013, winning the IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Award in 2007, receiving an NSF CAREER award in 2006, and being named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2003. He has advised ten graduate students to completion across various research areas within AI and robotics. His research has been supported by over $1.5 million in direct funding to his lab, with additional collaborative funding from multiple NSF, DARPA, and ARO grants. Dr. Parr has served extensively on program committees for major AI conferences including ICML, NeurIPS, AAAI, and UAI, and has held leadership roles such as Program Co-Chair and General Chair for UAI. Dr. Parr maintains an active research group focused on reinforcement learning and sequential decision making, with ongoing projects in neurosymbolic AI, hierarchical reinforcement learning, and interpretable machine learning models, continuing to bridge theoretical foundations with practical applications in robotics and AI systems.
Daniel M. Kane is a Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), holding a joint appointment in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). His research spans mathematics and theoretical computer science, with a focus on number theory, combinatorics, complexity theory, and computational statistics. He earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University (2011) and dual BS degrees in Mathematics with Computer Science and Physics from MIT (2007). Prior to UCSD, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University (2011–2014) on an NSF fellowship. His research interests include robust statistics, machine learning, polynomial threshold functions, and algorithmic methods for high-dimensional data. Notable achievements include co-authoring the book Algorithmic High-Dimensional Robust Statistics (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and receiving the Best Paper Award at the Conference on Computational Complexity (2013), as well as gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad (2002 and 2003). Current teaching includes courses such as Math 96 (Putnam Seminar), Math 154 (Graph Theory), CSE 101 (Algorithms), and CSE 203A (Randomized Algorithms). He has consulted for companies like CASPER Labs and AIble, and his work extends to cryptographic protocols, including quantum money schemes based on quaternion algebras. Key contributions include breakthroughs in robust mean estimation, list-decodable learning, and the development of efficient algorithms for statistical problems. His research often bridges foundational theory with practical applications in machine learning and data analysis.
Dr. Jean-Christophe Nave is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McGill University, specializing in applied mathematics, numerical analysis, and computational methods. His research focuses on numerical methods for partial differential equations, fluid mechanics, interface problems, and computer graphics. He holds a PhD from UCSB (2004) and has held academic positions at MIT and McGill since 2005. Currently, he serves on committees such as the Steering Committee of the Institut des Sciences Mathematiques and the CRM Applied Mathematics Lab. His educational background includes a PhD under Professors Xu-Dong Liu and Sanjoy Banerjee. Key research areas include level set methods, fluid-structure interaction, and invariant numerical methods. Notable works include the Correction Function Method for interface problems and the Characteristic Mapping Method for advection problems. Nave’s publications span topics like Poisson equations with discontinuous coefficients, fluid dynamics simulations, and high-order numerical schemes. He has advised numerous graduate and undergraduate students, contributing to their research in applied mathematics and computational science. His work bridges theoretical rigor and practical applications in engineering and physics. He teaches advanced courses such as Numerical Analysis I/II and Computational Methods in Applied Mathematics. His research group collaborates on projects involving fluid dynamics, elasticity, and geometric algorithms, with a focus on developing robust numerical tools for complex systems.
Eduardo Azevedo is the John M. Bendheim and Thomas L. Bendheim Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Wharton School , University of Pennsylvania. He holds a courtesy appointment as Professor of Economics and was awarded the 2016 Sloan Foundation Fellowship. His research integrates economic theory with practical applications across science and business domains. His research interests include: Market design Selection markets Social science genetics Experimental economics Game theory Recent publication trends focus on: Economic theory applications to healthcare and digital markets Empirical Bayes methods in A/B testing Adverse selection in insurance markets Strategic behavior in two-sided matching Evolutionary behavioral economics He serves as an instructor for BEPP2500 - Managerial Economics , emphasizing real-world application of microeconomic theory to business problems. His work also involves software development for economic research, including MATLAB-based empirical Bayes tools for analyzing treatment effects in large-scale experiments. Scientific awards : Sloan Foundation Fellow (2016)
David Nadler is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, appointed in 2012. His research centers on geometric representation theory and symplectic geometry, with significant contributions to the Langlands program, microlocal sheaf theory, and symplectic topology. He maintains an active research group and teaches courses ranging from undergraduate linear algebra to graduate algebraic topology and geometry. Nadler's research explores the interface of algebraic geometry, topology, and representation theory. His work in geometric representation theory focuses on Langlands duality, Springer theory, and Betti geometric Langlands. In symplectic geometry, he investigates microlocal sheaves, Fukaya categories, and Weinstein structures. His recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on categorical methods in geometric Langlands correspondence and symplectic arborealization. His publications consistently emphasize categorical and geometric approaches to representation theory. Recent works cluster in three areas: (1) extensions of the geometric Langlands program to Betti cohomology settings, (2) microlocal analysis of sheaves on symplectic manifolds, and (3) combinatorial models in symplectic topology. This reflects sustained development of 'Betti geometric Langlands' as a distinct research program bridging topology and automorphic forms. Nadler has advised over a dozen PhD students since 2012, with dissertations spanning geometric representation theory, symplectic geometry, and algebraic topology. Student projects frequently investigate categorical aspects of geometric Langlands, microlocal sheaves, and combinatorial models in symplectic topology.
Luca Peretti is an Associate Professor in Electric Machines and Drives at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, affiliated with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Electrical Engineering, Division of Electric Power and Energy Systems. He works as a researcher in the EMD (Electric Machines and Drives) group and serves as Partner Director for KTH's strategic partnership with ABB. Education: M.Sc. in Electronic Engineering (2005) from University of Udine, Ph.D. from University of Padova (2008) Professional Experience: Postdoc at University of Padova (2009-2010), Principal Scientist at ABB Corporate Research (2010-2018), Associate Professor at KTH (2018-present) His research focuses on: Automatic parameter estimation in electric machines Multiphase drive systems Sensorless control algorithms Loss segregation in drive systems Condition monitoring of industrial and transportation applications Recent publications demonstrate expertise in variable phase-pole machines, harmonic plane decomposition, predictive control algorithms, and advanced modeling of permanent magnet motors. Key application areas include transportation electrification, wind energy systems, and industrial drive technologies. Scientific roles include: Associate Editor, IET Electric Power Applications Journal (2019-present) Theme Co-Leader, Swedish Electromobility Center (2020-present) Member, IEEE (2021-present) and IET (2006-present) He leads the strategic partnership with ABB and contributes to doctoral program committees at University of Padova.
Lam James is a Chair Professor of Control Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), affiliated with the Faculty of Engineering. He holds a BSc (1st Hons.) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Manchester, and MPhil/PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge. His academic journey includes roles as a Croucher Fellow, Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, and faculty member at City University of Hong Kong before joining HKU in 1993. Professor Lam serves as Editor-in-Chief for four international journals including IET Control Theory and Applications and Journal of The Franklin Institute . His research focuses on networked control systems, vibration control, control theory, and multi-agent systems. With 600+ peer-reviewed publications, he maintains an H-index of 102 (Web of Science) and 108 (Scopus), recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher in multiple fields. Education: BSc Manchester (Mechanical Engineering), MPhil/PhD Cambridge Editorial Roles: 20+ journals, including leadership roles since 2012 His awards include Foreign Membership of Academia Europaea (2024), National Academy of Artificial Intelligence membership (2025), and two State Natural Science Awards (2015, 2019). He is a Fellow of multiple institutions including IEEE, IMechE, and HKIE.
Jianghai Hu is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, affiliated with the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering within the College of Engineering. He holds a BE from Xi'an Jiaotong University (1994), MS and MA from the University of California, Berkeley (1999-2000), and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley (2003). His research focuses on control systems, optimization theory, multi-agent systems, hybrid systems, and energy-efficient building management. Key areas include automatic controls, sensor networks, and signal processing. Research Interests: Hybrid systems and multi-agent coordination Optimal control and optimization Applications in energy-efficient buildings and autonomous systems Stochastic control and game theory Recent publications highlight contributions to zeroth-order learning in games, robust control for autonomous vehicles, and distributed optimization algorithms. His work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications in robotics, energy systems, and networked control. Jianghai Hu advises numerous graduate students and collaborates on projects involving building control systems and distributed algorithms. His research has been supported through interdisciplinary initiatives at Purdue and industry partnerships.
James Bremer is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and holds a cross-appointment in the Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus. His research focuses on developing efficient numerical algorithms for solving elliptic boundary value problems, integral equations, and special function transforms.
Rahul Sarkar is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, affiliated with the Department of Mathematics . He was previously a Ph.D. student in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME) at Stanford University, graduating in 2022 under the advisement of Biondo Biondi and András Vasy. Research Interests : Quantum information theory, inverse problems, machine learning, microlocal analysis, and numerical methods for PDEs. Scientific Contributions : Developed novel quantum computing algorithms and numerical schemes for geophysical imaging, with applications in seismic tomography and quantum signal processing. Teaching : Taught courses at Stanford including Introduction to Quantum Computing and 3D Seismic Imaging , with roles as instructor and course assistant. Awards : Schlumberger Innovation Fellowship (2019-2020). His work bridges mathematical analysis and quantum computation , with a focus on solving real-world problems through interdisciplinary approaches. He has collaborated with institutions like IBM and Schlumberger to apply quantum algorithms to geoscience and financial optimization.
Sharan Vaswani is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University (SFU). His research focuses on designing algorithms for sequential decision-making under uncertainty, stochastic optimization, and their interplay with machine learning generalization. He holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia (2019) and postdoctoral experiences at the University of Alberta and Mila. His academic journey includes MSc (UBC, 2015) and BTech (BITS Pilani, 2012) degrees. Education: PhD (UBC, 2019), MSc (UBC, 2015), BTech (BITS Pilani, 2012) Postdoctoral Work: University of Alberta (2020-2021), Mila (2019-2020) Teaching includes courses on Probability and Computing (CMPT 210), Optimization for Machine Learning (CMPT 409/981), and Theoretical Foundations of Reinforcement Learning (CMPT 419/983). His research group focuses on developing scalable optimization algorithms with theoretical guarantees. He advises multiple PhD and MSc students, contributing to areas like constrained MDPs, adaptive learning rates, and reinforcement learning theory. Research Highlights: Contributions to bandit algorithms, stochastic gradient methods, and reinforcement learning theory. Notable work includes global convergence analysis of policy gradients and variance-reduced optimization frameworks.