Stefan Bechtold is a Full Professor of Intellectual Property at ETH Zurich since 2013 and Associate Vice President IP Policy (2023–2026). He is affiliated with the ETH AI Center and serves on global advisory boards including the Academic Advisory Board of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. His interdisciplinary research bridges law, economics, and computer science.
Dr. Xiaoxiao Li is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of British Columbia (UBC), with joint appointments in Computer Science (Associate Member) and the School of Medicine at Yale University (Adjunct Assistant Professor). She is also a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Responsible AI. Her research focuses on enhancing trustworthiness, fairness, and efficiency in AI algorithms and foundation models, particularly in healthcare applications. Education: B.S. (Honors) in Zhejiang University (2015), Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University (2020), Postdoc at Princeton University (2020-2021). She leads the Trusted and Efficient AI (TEA) Lab at UBC, which develops algorithms for federated learning, medical imaging analysis, and interpretable AI systems. Research interests include federated learning, generative models, medical image analysis, AI fairness, and graph-based methods for neuroimaging. Recent projects include GMValuator (data valuation for generative models), FairMedFM (fairness benchmarking in medical AI), and FedTextGrad (textual gradient-based FL optimization). Grants: Canada Foundation for Innovation Grant (2023), UBC Green Lab Fund (2023), Vector Institute funding Teaching: Courses on machine learning, federated learning, and AI ethics at UBC Awards & Recognition: Best Paper Award at FL@FM WWW 2024, Editorial Board Member of Medical Image Analysis , multiple top-tier conference acceptances (NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, MICCAI). Lab & Teams: TEA Lab collaborates with industry and hospitals to translate AI research into clinical tools. Current projects address AI fairness in healthcare, federated learning for medical data, and multimodal medical analytics.
Elliott Ash is an Associate Professor of Law, Economics, and Data Science at ETH Zurich's Center for Law & Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and J.D. from Columbia University, a B.A. in Economics, Government, and Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin, and an LL.M. in International Criminal Law from the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on empirical legal studies using econometrics, NLP, and ML, examining topics like judicial behavior, legislative impact, and AI-driven governance. He has been funded by the ERC, Swiss NSF, and others. Research Interests: Elliott explores automation of legal decisions, text-as-data analysis in law, and the intersection of AI with legal systems. He develops tools like BallotBot and LePaRD to enhance legal transparency and public understanding. His work bridges law, economics, and computer science, with publications in top journals like the American Economic Journal and Review of Economics and Statistics . Teaching: Courses include Building a Robot Judge , Natural Language Processing for Law , and Big Data for Public Policy . He co-organizes the Zurich Workshop in AI+Economics and Monash-Warwick-Zurich Text-as-Data Workshops. Awards: European Research Council Starting Grant, Swiss National Science Foundation Grant, and multiple grants from U.S. and Swiss institutions. His work has been featured in NPR , VoxEU , and Georgetown Law Journal . Labs/Teams: Leads the Swiss AI Initiative's Human-AI Alignment team, collaborates with the CEPR on Political Economy research, and serves as an Economic Journal Associate Editor.
Zeynep Akata is the Liesel Beckmann Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Director of the Institute for Explainable Machine Learning at Helmholtz Munich. Previously she was a W3 Professor at the University of Tübingen (2019-2023) and held faculty and post-doctoral positions at the University of Amsterdam, UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. Her research focuses on multimodal learning and explainable artificial intelligence . Education: PhD, University of Grenoble / INRIA Rhône-Alpes, 2014 MSc, RWTH Aachen University, 2010 BSc, Trakya University, Turkey, 2008 Research Interests: Professor Akata’s group develops algorithms that learn from vision, language and other modalities simultaneously, with a strong emphasis on zero-shot, few-shot and continual learning . A central theme is making decisions interpretable, leading to work on explainable AI, concept bottleneck models, multimodal reasoning and human-aligned representation learning . Recent projects investigate large-scale multimodal language models, dataset distillation, model merging and continual knowledge editing. Publication Trends: Her 2024-2025 publications reveal a shift toward foundational large-scale models (diffusion, LLMs, vision-language transformers) while retaining the core themes of interpretability and generalization under limited supervision . Topics span dataset distillation, model merging, continual learning, fairness auditing of generative models and novel evaluation protocols for zero-shot learning systems. Scientific Awards: Lise-Meitner Award for Excellent Women in Computer Science (2014) Young Scientist Honour, Werner-von-Siemens-Ring Foundation (2019) ERC Starting Grant, European Commission (2019) DAGM German Pattern Recognition Award (2021) ECVA Young Researcher Award (2022) Alfried Krupp Award (2023) Advising & Funding: Prof. Akata currently supervises or co-supervises 25+ PhD students across TUM and the University of Tübingen via ELLIS and IMPRS-IS doctoral programs. She holds major grants including an ERC Starting Grant and DARPA Explainable AI funding, and is a frequent program chair and area chair for premier conferences (CVPR 2024, ECCV 2026, NeurIPS, ICML, etc.). Labs & Teams: She leads the Institute for Explainable Machine Learning at Helmholtz Munich and heads the Multimodal Learning and Explainable AI group at TUM. The institute collaborates closely with the ELLIS Institute Tübingen and Cyber Valley ecosystem, and maintains close ties with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Informatics.
Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe is a Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in the economics of technology and labor markets. His research explores AI’s impact on workforce dynamics, HR algorithms, and the gender wage gap in tech industries. Education: Ph.D. in Managerial Science and Applied Economics (Wharton, UPenn); S.B. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MIT). His work leverages internet-scale data from job platforms and patent databases to analyze trends in skill acquisition, remote work diversity, and algorithmic bias in hiring. Recent studies examine AI’s role in HR decision-making, the economics of emerging technologies, and labor market responses to IT innovation. Scientific Awards: Best Undergraduate Professors (Poets & Quants, 2020) Best Paper Awards (Management Science, Information Systems Research) ISS Sandra A. Slaughter Early Career Award (2016) Tambe co-directs Wharton Human-AI Research, focusing on ethical AI integration in organizations. His teaching includes award-winning courses on AI’s societal implications and data-driven business strategies.
Shai Ben-David is a Professor and University Research Chair at the Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo. He is affiliated with the Cheriton School of Computer Science and can be reached at shai@uwaterloo.ca . His office is located in DC 2643. Education: Ph.D., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel (1987) M.Sc., Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel (1979) B.Sc., Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel (1978) Research interests focus on foundational aspects of machine learning theory, including unsupervised learning (clustering), domain adaptation, fairness, interpretability, and alternative approaches to worst-case computational complexity. He also explores logic applications in computer science theory. His research trends emphasize theoretical challenges in machine learning, particularly clustering, fairness in representations, and the interplay between computational feasibility and learnability. He investigates how unlabeled data and sample compression techniques impact learning robustness and efficiency. No scientific awards are listed. His advising record shows no formal advisees listed here. Grants and funding details are not provided in the text. He has contributed to organizing events like the Dagstuhl Seminar on Foundations of Unsupervised Learning (2017) and co-edited MFCS 2016 proceedings. His work addresses both theoretical questions and practical gaps in ML implementation.
Dr. Aditya Joshi is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He specializes in Natural Language Processing (NLP), with a focus on sarcasm detection, dialectal NLP, and ethical AI applications in public health and cybersecurity. He joined UNSW in 2023 following industry roles at SEEK, Notiv, and Fractal Analytics, where he developed NLP systems for recommendation engines and meeting analytics. His research has garnered over 3,000 citations (h-index 26) and secured $3.1M in grants, including Defence Trailblazer and Google exploreCSR awards. Education: Joint PhD (2018) from IIT Bombay (India) and Monash University (Australia); MTech in CSE (2011) from IIT Bombay. Research Interests: Making NLP models robust for non-native English speakers and the LGBTI+ community, algorithmic enhancements to transformers, and applications in public health, cybersecurity, and societal issues. His work spans epidemic intelligence (collaborations with EPIWATCH and IFCYBER), cybersecurity tools like AuditNet, and inclusive AI initiatives such as queer-inclusive workshops funded by Google. He designed UNSW's new NLP course (COMP6713) and co-authored a Wiley textbook on NLP. Notable grants include the A$1.4M 'Comprehensive Defence Data Platform' (Lead CI) and A$92K Google exploreCSR grant for benchmarking dialectal sentiment. His awards include the Best PhD Thesis from IITB-Monash and Best Paper accolades at FAccT 2023 and MoMM 2020. He supervises projects on kernel-based attention reformulation, prompt-based sarcasm detection, and multilingual small-scale LLMs. His service roles include Executive Committee Member at ALTA and arXiv moderator for computational linguistics.
Mark Lee is an Adjunct Professor in the People Analytics department at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, specializing in Technology Management and Innovation. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Psychology from Georgia Institute of Technology (1996). Currently, he serves as Head of Research, Analytics, and Business Development at UL ComplianceWire, focusing on pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing training. His research leverages large datasets to improve healthcare safety through regulatory compliance and best practices. Courses taught include Human Factors Engineering, Workplace Design, and Predictive Analytics. Education: Ph.D. in Engineering Psychology, Georgia Tech (1996) Key Roles: Adjunct Professor, Head of Research at UL ComplianceWire Research Focus: Human Factors, Training Systems Design, Healthcare Compliance His work spans auditory display systems for aviation (e.g., 3D audio cockpit interfaces) and ergonomic design for industrial products. Recent projects emphasize data-driven solutions for regulatory challenges in life sciences. Publications highlight studies on visual search strategies, age-related cognitive performance, and application of signal detection theory in decision-making. He actively collaborates with industry and government entities, exemplified by the FDA-UL Cooperative Research Agreement.
Bryan H. Choi is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School , where he bridges law and computer science to address software and AI safety. His work on software liability has influenced national cybersecurity strategy discussions. As an Adviser for the ALI Principles Project on Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence , he shapes legal frameworks for emerging technologies. Education : JD and AB in Computer Science from Harvard University; clerkships with U.S. Court of Appeals judges Leonard I. Garth and William C. Bryson. Roles : Former joint appointment at Ohio State University Law School and Computer Science Department; Faculty Fellow at UPenn's CTIC; Director of Law and Media at Yale's ISP. Research Focus : Choi's scholarship examines software liability , AI accountability , and privacy law through interdisciplinary lenses. He critiques institutional approaches to software safety and advocates for empirical legal frameworks over participation-based models. Recent Articles address AI malpractice , NIST software standards , and forensic tool validation , reflecting trends in AI regulation and cyber-physical system liability . His 2021 NSF grant funded technical-legal methods for safety-critical systems. Awards & Grants : National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant (2021) Adviser, ALI Principles Project on Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence Community Engagement : Active in Law and Computer Science communities , serving on committees for the ACM Symposium , Cybersecurity Law and Policy Scholars Conference , and co-organizing the AAAI Bridge Program on AI and Law .
Sanghyun Hong is an Assistant Professor at Oregon State University's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science , focusing on Trustworthy AI and Cybersecurity . He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park (2021) and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Seoul National University (2015). His research bridges machine learning , security , and privacy-preserving systems . Current research themes: Robustness of AI systems to adversarial attacks Privacy-preserving machine learning Security of pre-trained and large language models Hardware fault vulnerabilities in neural networks Cybersecurity workforce development Publication Trends (15 most recent): Focus on adversarial machine learning (jailbreaking LLMs, membership inference) Advances in physics-informed neural networks and time series forecasting Key contributions to AI security and malware detection Interdisciplinary work in visualization design and tsunami warning systems Scientific Accolades : Google Faculty Research Award (2023) Samsung Global Research Award (2022, 2023, 2024) DARPA Riser (2022) NSF SFS Award (co-PI, 2023) USENIX Enigma Speaker (2021) Academic Leadership : Mentors 5 Ph.D. students and has graduated 8 M.S. and B.S. students. Currently developing next-generation auditing frameworks for AI systems while on medical leave until Winter 2026.
Dylan Hadfield-Menell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holding the Bonnie and Marty (1964) Tenenbaum Career Development Professorship. His research focuses on AI alignment and human-AI interaction within MIT's School of Engineering. His research interests center on agent alignment problems in AI systems, particularly examining uncertainty in objective optimization for human-robot teams and societal oversight of machine learning systems. Key areas include the principal-agent alignment problem , assistance games frameworks , and robust preference learning that accounts for hidden contextual factors in reinforcement learning from human feedback. His recent publications reveal strong trends toward multi-agent cooperation , formal contract mechanisms for resolving social dilemmas, and advanced evaluation methodologies for AI safety. The research spans theoretical frameworks like open-universe assistance games while addressing practical challenges in language model alignment and cultural bias assessment. Scientific awards include: AI2050 Early Career Fellowship from Schmidt Futures Berkeley Fellowship NSF Graduate Research Fellowship C.V. Ramamoorthy Distinguished Research Award His work bridges theoretical computer science with real-world AI governance challenges, as demonstrated through MIT's participation in AI policy white papers. Current research directions include developing frameworks for transparent AI systems and addressing fundamental limitations in aligning recommender systems with human values through interdisciplinary synthesis.
Juan Zhai is an Assistant Professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She co-directs the Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research (LASER) and is a member of the UMass NLP group. Her research advances software engineering through automated techniques for building high-quality systems with emphasis on behavioral specifications, AI safety, and trustworthy AI. Her work addresses the fundamental challenge of aligning software behavior with intended specifications through two main directions: automated specification synthesis (translating natural language comments to formal specifications via tools like C2S and LLMCup) and defect detection/repair (developing frameworks for AI system testing, bias mitigation, and training diagnostics). Her vision integrates these into end-to-end assurance systems that continuously validate, repair, and audit evolving software in dynamic environments. Recent publications (2024-2025) reveal dominant trends at the software engineering/AI intersection: formal specification synthesis for IoT and code generation, comment maintenance using LLMs, deep learning framework testing (DevMuT, Citadel), bias detection in LLMs, and automated training repair (AutoTrainer, DREAM). These contributions appear in top venues including ICSE, FSE, ASE, ISSTA, and ACL. Professor Zhai currently advises PhD student Gehao Zhang (focusing on Software Engineering and AI Safety) and actively recruits new PhD/Master's students. Her LASER lab develops practical tools for specification inference, LLM-driven synthesis, and trustworthy AI, while collaborating with the UMass NLP group on language-centric software analysis. The LASER lab, co-directed by Zhai, pioneers techniques for behavioral specification enforcement across traditional and AI-powered systems. Key projects include CPC for bidirectional code-comment analysis, ModelMeta for deep learning framework testing, and frameworks for bias mitigation across the ML lifecycle. The lab emphasizes practical, scalable tools that enhance correctness, robustness, and fairness in critical AI applications.
Danqi Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Their research focuses on advancing large language models (LLMs), with emphasis on model alignment, safety, and long-context reasoning capabilities. Key research areas: LLMs, AI safety, retrieval systems, and model optimization Recent work explores theorem proving, context encoding, and ethical content generation Their 2025 publications highlight innovations in formal verification scaffolding, attention mechanism efficiency, and copyright-aware generation. 2024 studies investigate continual memorization, rule-based chatbot representations, and scientific literature retrieval benchmarks. Current projects demonstrate commitment to improving model robustness, interpretability, and security compliance in multimodal systems.
Daniel Balasubramanian is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science and Research Scientist at Vanderbilt University's School of Engineering. His research focuses on cybersecurity, software verification, and cyber-physical systems, with expertise in symbolic execution, code analysis, and formal methods. He contributes to advancing secure systems through frameworks like RAMPART for adversarial defense and Syntheto for formal verification. His work intersects edge computing, hardware security, and autonomous systems resilience. Research Interests: Cybersecurity (including ethical hacking, network defense), formal methods (verification, theorem proving), edge computing (tinyML, cloud integration), and cyber-physical systems (emulation, testbeds). His recent work emphasizes assurance provenance in software documentation and adversarially robust autonomous systems. Publications since 2019 highlight contributions to cybersecurity testbeds, reinforcement learning for penetration resistance, and hardware security against rowhammer attacks. He has explored domain-specific languages (Syntheto), incremental modeling techniques (differential-formula), and cloud-edge service resilience against adversarial perturbations. Labs/Teams: Affiliated with the Institute for Software-Integrated Systems (ISIS), focusing on integrating software with physical systems through model-driven approaches and cybersecurity innovations.
Remko Van Hoek serves as Professor of Practice in the Department of Supply Chain Management at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas. He teaches Sourcing and Procurement courses across undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs. Prior to joining the University of Arkansas, Dr. Van Hoek held academic positions in Europe and served as a visiting professor at Cranfield School of Management, complemented by extensive industry experience as a supply chain and procurement executive at global corporations including Nike, PwC, and The Walt Disney Company. He currently serves on the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) Board of Directors and acts as executive director of the CSCMP Supply Chain Hall of Fame hosted by the Walton College. Dr. Van Hoek's research centers on digital transformation in procurement and supply chain management, with particular focus on blockchain implementation, artificial intelligence applications, and sustainable sourcing practices. His work investigates how emerging technologies reshape procurement processes, supplier relationship management, and risk mitigation strategies. He explores innovative approaches to supplier diversity programs, ethical sourcing frameworks, and the strategic evolution of procurement from cost reduction to value creation. His research consistently bridges academic theory with industry practice through case studies from major corporations, developing actionable frameworks for practitioners facing digital disruption and sustainability challenges. Analysis of his 15 most recent publications (2023-2025) reveals dominant themes in AI-driven supply chain risk prevention, blockchain implementation for transparency, and sustainable supplier engagement. His work demonstrates consistent industry collaboration, drawing from case studies at Walmart, Moet Hennessy, and Bayer to address post-pandemic resilience challenges. A significant portion examines procurement's strategic evolution beyond transactional functions, with recurring emphasis on ethical considerations in digital transformation and the practical implementation barriers for emerging technologies in global supply networks. As a Professor of Practice, Dr. Van Hoek integrates executive-level industry experience into curriculum development and student mentorship. His industry-engaged teaching model includes guest lecturer programs connecting students with supply chain practitioners, as evidenced by his co-authored work on integrating industry insights into supply chain education. While specific grant funding details are not publicly documented, his leadership in the CSCMP Supply Chain Hall of Fame demonstrates commitment to professional development and industry-academia knowledge transfer. Dr. Van Hoek directs the CSCMP Supply Chain Hall of Fame initiative, which documents transformative contributions to supply chain management through interviews with industry pioneers and historical case studies. This platform serves as both an educational resource for Walton College students and a professional development tool for supply chain practitioners globally. The Hall of Fame preserves critical industry knowledge while highlighting contemporary innovations in supply chain strategy and technology implementation.