Prof. Niki Kilbertus is an Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in the Department of Informatics, and Group Leader at Helmholtz AI. His research focuses on causal machine learning, ethical AI systems, and applications in healthcare, climate science, and dynamical systems. He earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge (2020) and has held positions at DeepMind, Google, and Amazon during his studies. His research interests include causal discovery, fairness in AI, counterfactual reasoning, and integrating physics-based constraints into neural networks. Key contributions include foundational work on fair machine learning (e.g., avoiding discrimination through causal models) and developing methods for causal inference in complex systems like healthcare and climate modeling. Recent work emphasizes generative models for causal interventions, robust treatment effect estimation, and physically consistent neural differential equations. He leads a large interdisciplinary group with over 20 students and postdocs working on projects funded by Helmholtz Association, ERC, and industry collaborations. Notable awards include the Leopoldina Prize for Young Scientists (2024) and membership in the Junge Akademie. His lab maintains active partnerships with ELLIS, MCML, and the Zuse Institute Berlin.
Celestine Mendler-Dünner is a Principal Investigator at the ELLIS Institute in Tübingen, co-affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the Tübingen AI Center. She leads the Algorithms and Society research group, focusing on machine learning in social contexts and the role of prediction in digital economies. Her work bridges theoretical machine learning with practical societal impact, developing tools for safe, reliable, and equitable AI ecosystems. Her educational background includes a PhD from ETH Zurich in collaboration with IBM Research, followed by an SNSF postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley hosted by Moritz Hardt. She was previously a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems before joining the ELLIS Institute. Mendler-Dünner's research spans several interconnected themes including performative prediction (where predictions change the behavior they aim to predict), algorithmic collective action (how participants can steer AI systems toward common goals), and the role of LLMs in social science research. Her work combines theoretical foundations with practical implementations, addressing challenges in interactive machine learning, optimization in dynamic environments, and context-specific evaluation of AI systems. She particularly examines how algorithmic predictions mediate services and platforms at societal scale, exploring concepts of economic power in digital markets. Her publication record shows a clear evolution from system-aware machine learning algorithms (including foundational work on IBM Snap ML) toward increasingly sociotechnical questions at the intersection of machine learning, economics, and policy. Recent work focuses on measuring performative power in digital economies, evaluating LLMs as risk scores, and developing frameworks for algorithmic collective action in recommender systems and labor markets. Among her notable recognitions are the ETH Medal for her dissertation, the IBM Research Division Award, the Fritz Kutter Award, and the IBM Eminence and Excellence Award. She is an ELLIS Scholar, a fellow of the Elisabeth-Schiemann-Kolleg, and affiliated with several prestigious research programs including the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems and the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems. ETH Medal (dissertation award) IBM Research Division Award Fritz Kutter Award IBM Eminence and Excellence Award SNSF Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship Mendler-Dünner actively mentors the next generation of researchers, advising PhD student Patrik Wolf and supervising research interns including Joachim Baumann, Haiqing Zhu, and Anna Badalyan, as well as Master's student Dorothee Sigg. She serves as core faculty for the International Max Planck Research School and associated faculty for the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems. Her group has secured significant research funding through fellowships and institutional support, enabling work on projects like Powermeter (measuring search engine influence) and Snap ML (resource-efficient machine learning library with over 1 million PyPI downloads). She leads the Algorithms and Society research group, which examines machine learning as part of broader sociotechnical ecosystems. The group explores human-population interactions with algorithmic systems and incorporates these insights into learning system fundamentals. Current projects include investigating economic incentives in digital platforms, developing tools for systematic LLM evaluation in social science contexts, and creating frameworks for collective action in algorithmic systems. Mendler-Dünner also co-organizes the Algorithmic Collective Action workshop at NeurIPS 2025, demonstrating her leadership in emerging research directions at the AI-society interface.
Andreas Bulling is a Professor at the Institute for Visualisation and Interactive Systems , University of Stuttgart, Germany. His research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction , Eye Tracking , and Computer Vision , with applications in Machine Learning , Virtual Reality , and Information Visualization . 2025 Publications: HOIGaze (Extended Reality), ChartQC (Data Visualization), HAIFAI (Human-AI Interaction), SummAct (Behavioral Summarization), Chartist (Chart Reading). 2024 Contributions: HumanEYEze (Multimodal AI), HOIMotion (3D Object Detection), MultiMediate'24 (Engagement Estimation), Unified Model of Saliency (Scanpath Prediction). His recent work explores gaze estimation , interactive behavior modeling , and privacy-preserving eye-tracking systems . Key subfields include Extended Reality , Neural Networks , and Behavioral Biometrics . While no explicit scientific awards are mentioned, his research has been widely cited (8,003 total citations) and downloaded (132,740 times). Andreas leads projects in Interactive Systems and collaborates with institutions such as Aalto University , KU Leuven , and National University of Singapore . His lab focuses on eye movement analysis , human motion forecasting , and task-driven input modeling .
Florian Tramèr is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, leading research at the intersection of machine learning security, privacy, and AI safety. His work focuses on identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities in machine learning systems, particularly in large language models and other AI systems. Tramèr's primary research interests include adversarial machine learning, membership inference attacks, privacy-preserving AI, and the security implications of large language models. His work has significantly advanced our understanding of how machine learning models memorize training data, how this memorization creates privacy risks, and how to evaluate the robustness of machine learning systems against various attacks. His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on practical security challenges in deployed AI systems, including data extraction from language models, adversarial attacks against generative AI, and developing more rigorous evaluation methodologies for machine learning security. Tramèr's research has been published in top venues including ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, and IEEE Security & Privacy. Tramèr is actively collaborating with leading researchers in the field including Nicholas Carlini, Matthew Jagielski, and Javier Rando, contributing to important initiatives like the International AI Safety Report. His work bridges theoretical security concepts with practical implications for real-world AI deployment.
Matthias Hein is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Tübingen. His research focuses on Machine Learning , Adversarial Robustness , and Out-of-Distribution Detection , with applications in computer vision and medical imaging. He has received notable recognition including the Best Paper Honorable Mention Prize at ICLR 2021 and Outstanding Paper Award at CVPR 2021. His work includes developing benchmarks like RobustBench and Spurious ImageNet , and frameworks such as Sparse-RS and DIG-IN . His recent publications emphasize adversarial robustness across multiple domains (vision, text), counterfactual explanations for classifiers, and improved OOD detection methods . Collaborators include prominent researchers like Francesco Croce, Julian Bitterwolf, and Alexander Meinke. Scientific Awards : Best Paper Honorable Mention (ICLR 2021) CVPR 2021 Outstanding Paper Award Key Research Areas : Adversarial Robustness Vision-Language Models Medical Imaging AI Neural Network Calibration
Nate Foster is a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University and currently serves as the Associate Dean for Research in the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. He is also a Visiting Researcher at Jane Street and served as a Visiting Professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne during the 2023-24 academic year. His research uses ideas from programming languages to solve problems in networking, databases, and security. BA in Computer Science, Williams College (2001) MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge (2008, all work completed in 2003) PhD in Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania (2009) Foster's research focuses on developing languages and tools that make it easy for programmers to build secure and reliable systems. His current work centers on the design and implementation of languages and tools for programmable networks, particularly using the P4 language. His past work includes bidirectional languages (also known as 'lenses'), database query languages, data provenance, type systems, mechanized proof, and formal semantics. His research group at Cornell has made significant contributions to network verification, software-defined networking, and formal foundations for programmable data planes. Analysis of Foster's recent publications reveals a strong focus on network verification and programming language foundations for networking. His work consistently applies formal methods to practical networking problems, with a particular emphasis on the NetKAT and P4 languages. Over the past five years, his research has evolved toward more complex network verification techniques, including infinite state verification, active learning of network models, and dependently-typed approaches to network programming. His work bridges theoretical computer science with practical networking systems, making formal methods accessible to network engineers. ACM Fellow (2025) ACM SIGPLAN Robin Milner Award (2023) ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award (2018) NSF CAREER Award (2013) Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2012) Multiple distinguished paper awards across top conferences including POPL, PLDI, and SIGCOMM Foster has advised numerous PhD and Master's students who have gone on to prominent positions in both industry and academia, with many continuing work in programming languages and networking. He has led multiple significant research grants including an NSF CAREER Award and has been involved in the P4 Language Consortium, serving as Chair of the P4 Language Governing Board. His work has been supported by various organizations including NSF, DARPA, and industry partners like Intel and Jane Street. Foster is also active in the programming languages research community, serving on numerous program committees and as Vice Chair of DARPA's Information Science and Technology (ISAT) study group. Foster leads a vibrant research group at Cornell focused on programming languages for networks, with collaborators from academia and industry. His group has developed several influential tools and frameworks including NetKAT, Petr4, and KATch. They maintain strong connections with the P4 community and work closely with industry partners to ensure their research has practical impact on real-world networking systems.
Ashley Montanaro is Professor of Quantum Computation in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol, and co-founder of the quantum software startup Phasecraft. He is a member of the Quantum Information Theory research group at Bristol. His research focuses on the theory of quantum computing, with particular interest in quantum algorithms, computational complexity, quantum query and communication complexity, and classical algorithms. His work spans both theoretical foundations and practical applications of quantum computing. Montanaro's research output shows significant trends toward quantum algorithms for optimization problems, quantum computational supremacy, and bridging theoretical advances with practical implementation challenges. His publications span foundational quantum information theory to applied quantum algorithms, demonstrating a versatile research program that connects computer science with quantum physics. Among his professional activities, Montanaro served on the QIP steering committee (2016-2018) and was an editor for the Quantum journal until 2019. He has been active in conference organization, serving on program committees for ITCS 2018, AQIS 2017 and 2015, QIP 2015, and TQC 2014 and 2013, reflecting his standing in the quantum computing research community. He has supervised numerous PhD students including Josh Blake, Jorja Kirk, Sheila Perez Garcia, Sami Boulebnane, Jan Lukas Bosse, Lana Mineh, Joao F. Doriguello, Chris Cade, Sam Pallister, and Stephen Piddock. His teaching includes Quantum Computation (MATHM0023) which he has taught since 2014 and Advanced Quantum Information Theory which he taught in 2015 and 2016. As co-founder of Phasecraft, Montanaro is actively translating theoretical quantum computing advances into practical software solutions, positioning him at the intersection of academic research and quantum technology commercialization.
Bernhard J. Berger is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Engineering at the Institute of Embedded Systems, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). His research focuses on software security, static code analysis, machine learning, optimization, and research data management. He has held significant roles such as Program Committee member for ICPC 2025 and MSR 2025, and has received awards including the Best Reviewer Award (ICPC 2023) and Best Engineering Paper Award (SCAM 2019). His work spans interdisciplinary applications including maritime systems security, GPU-accelerated AI, and evolutionary algorithms. Recent studies emphasize AI-driven security tools (e.g., ML-SAST) and domain-specific language approaches to optimization (EvoAl). He has contributed to over 30 peer-reviewed publications, with notable work in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and Science of Computer Programming. Berger collaborates closely with industry through DAAD review committees and serves on artifact evaluation boards for ISSTA and ARES conferences. Education: Doctoral Thesis (2022), Diploma in Computer Science (2007) Key Projects: ArchSec tool suite, Threat Modeling Frameworks, Bauhaus static analysis methodology Lab Affiliation: Embedded Systems Design Group His advisory roles include Deputy of TUHH's Election Verification Committee and Session Chair at IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2023. Current research trends integrate machine learning with static analysis for automated vulnerability detection, while also exploring explainable AI techniques for neural network optimization.
Nadia Polikarpova is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego . She earned her PhD from ETH Zurich in 2014 under Bertrand Meyer , followed by postdoctoral research at MIT CSAIL with Armando Solar-Lezama . Her academic contributions have been recognized with prestigious awards including the 2020 Sloan Fellowship , 2020 Intel Rising Stars Award , and 2020 NSF CAREER Award . Polikarpova's research focuses on program synthesis , program verification , and type systems . She leads the Programming Systems group at UCSD and contributes to the IFIP Working Group 2.8 on Functional Programming since 2022. Her work spans foundational research and practical tools, including projects like Synquid , SuSLik , and Laurel that combine formal methods with machine learning for code generation. Her recent publications in venues like OOPSLA , NeurIPS , and ICFP reveal trends in AI-assisted programming , live programming environments , and formal verification . She has advised numerous PhD and Master’s students including Shraddha Barke , Zheng Guo , and Tristan Knoth , many of whom have moved to prominent academic and industry positions. Notable artifacts from her lab include tools like ColDeco for spreadsheet inspection and Superfusion for eliminating intermediate data structures. 2020 : Sloan Fellow 2020 : Intel Rising Stars Award 2020 : NSF CAREER Award 2021 : Distinguished Paper at POPL 2023 : Distinguished Artifact at PLDI 2023 : Distinguished Paper at OOPSLA Polikarpova actively contributes to academic service, serving on program committees for PLDI , POPL , and OOPSLA , and co-chairing the OOPSLA Review Committee in 2023. She has delivered keynotes at APLAS'20 and PLDI'24 , emphasizing the integration of large language models with formal methods.
Prof. Senthold Asseng is a Professor of Digital Agriculture at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), leading the Hans Eisenmann Forum for Agricultural Sciences since 2021. His research focuses on climate-plant-soil systems modeling, addressing global food security, sustainable agriculture, and digital technologies like vertical farming and autonomous robotics. He holds a PhD from Humboldt University Berlin and habilitation from TUM, with prior roles at CSIRO Australia and the University of Florida (as Full Professor and Director of the Florida Climate Institute). His honors include AAAS Fellow, Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher, and multiple teaching/mentorship awards. Education: BSc/MSc in Agronomy & Horticulture, Humboldt University Berlin (1989-1990) PhD in Agronomy, Humboldt University Berlin (1994) Habilitation in Agronomy, TUM (2004) Research Interests: Climate change impacts on crops, digital agriculture technologies, systems analysis for autonomous farming, and vertical farming sustainability. His work integrates modeling, robotics, and environmental control to enhance agricultural resilience and productivity. Awards: AAAS Fellow (2019) Highly Cited Researcher (2019) UF Research Foundation Professor (2016-2019) Grants & Leadership: Led interdisciplinary projects like AgMIP-Wheat, SECC, and FAO advisory roles. Active in editorial roles for journals like Global Change Biology and Environmental Research Letters . Labs/Teams: Chair of Digital Agriculture at TUM, collaborating on projects like Smartfield and Proteins4Singapore , focusing on automation, controlled environment agriculture, and climate-smart solutions.
Veronika Eyring serves as Head of the Earth System Model Evaluation and Analysis Department at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Professor of Climate Modelling at the University of Bremen. She holds dual appointments at these leading institutions, directing cutting-edge research at the intersection of climate science and artificial intelligence. Education: 2008: Habilitation in Environmental Physics at the University of Bremen 1999: PhD in Physics from the University of Bremen 1994: Diploma in Physics from the University of Erlangen Professor Eyring's research program focuses on improving climate models and projections through innovative integration of machine learning techniques and spaceborne Earth observations. Her work spans process-oriented modeling, development of observationally-based performance metrics, and understanding systematic biases in climate models. She has pioneered approaches to weighting model projections based on their performance using machine learning, significantly advancing the field of climate model evaluation. Her research has critical applications across multiple sectors including aeronautics, space research, transportation, and energy systems. Analysis of her recent publications reveals a clear trajectory toward deeper integration of machine learning with traditional climate modeling approaches. Her work has increasingly focused on developing community tools like the Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) and leading major international initiatives such as the USMILE project (Understanding and Modelling the Earth System with Machine Learning). The publications span climate science, machine learning, Earth system modeling, and remote sensing, with specific emphasis on climate model evaluation, parameterization techniques, and improved climate projections. Scientific Awards: AGU Ambassador Award (2024) TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professor (2024) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2021) ERC Synergy Grant (2019) Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher (2016-2021) Top female researchers award, Helmholtz-Society (2015) Professor Eyring actively supervises a large research group comprising PhD students working on ML-based sea ice parameterizations, causal model evaluation for air-sea interactions, and machine learning-based detection of droughts in climate projections. She leads the prestigious ERC Synergy Grant USMILE and secured significant funding through the DFG Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Her research group at DLR includes multiple postdocs, research scientists, and software engineers working collaboratively on climate informatics projects. Professor Eyring leads the Earth System Model Evaluation and Analysis Department at DLR, which encompasses research groups focused on CMIP model evaluation, ESMValTool development, and machine learning applications in climate science. She founded and supervises the 'Climate Informatics' Group at the DLR Institute for Data Science in Jena. Her department maintains strong international collaborations, particularly with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, where she serves as an Affiliate Scientist.
Madelon Hulsebos is a Researcher at CWI in Amsterdam, where she leads the Table Representation Learning (TRL) Lab and contributes to the Database Architectures group. She is also a faculty member of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) Amsterdam unit. Her career bridges academia and industry, including a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley and prior industry experience in automating data analysis pipelines with ML. Education : PhD in Computer Science (University of Amsterdam, 2023), with research at Sigma Computing and MIT; Postdoctoral Fellow (UC Berkeley, 2024). Her research focuses on establishing tabular data as a key AI modality through Table Representation Learning , generative models for relational data, and robust systems for data analysis. Key interests include: Relational Table Embeddings LLMs for QA/text2SQL and data wrangling Retrieval over Data Lakes and Databases Agentic Systems for Data Science Democratizing insights from structured data Recent work highlights trends in benchmarking table retrieval (TARGET), semantic column detection (AdaTyper, Sherlock), and large-scale tabular data curation (GitTables, SchemaPile). These projects address challenges in metadata utilization, data lake search, and end-to-end systems for structured data. She has secured significant funding, including the NWO AiNed Fellowship Grant ($1M) for her 5-year DataLibra project. Madelon organizes workshops at NeurIPS , SIGMOD , and ACL , and reviews for top venues like VLDB and NeurIPS. Scientific Awards : NWO AiNed Fellowship Grant ($1M) She actively mentors students and collaborates on European AI initiatives, including monthly TRL seminars and workshops. Her lab's tools (GitTables, TARGET) are widely adopted for training foundation models on tabular data.
Marco Platzner is a Professor for Computer Engineering at Paderborn University , Germany. He serves as the Dean of Research for the Faculty of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematics and heads the Department of Computer Science. Previously, he held research positions at ETH Zurich, Stanford University, GMD (now Fraunhofer IAIS), and Graz University of Technology. Education: Diploma and PhD in Telematics (Graz University of Technology, 1991 and 1996), Habilitation in Hardware-Software Co-Design (ETH Zurich, 2002) Research Interests focus on reconfigurable computing, approximate computing, self-* computing, and embedded systems. His work addresses hardware security, FPGA design, and sustainable AI in data centers. Current projects include energy-efficient AI through deep neural network approximation for FPGAs (EKI-App) and lifecycle sustainability of socio-technical systems (SAIL). Publication Trends show expertise in FPGA security, approximate circuit synthesis, robotics, and hardware acceleration. Collaborations span robotics (ROS 2 integration), AI (transformer optimization), and cybersecurity (Trojan detection). Scientific Awards: ACM SIGDA Hall of Fame (2020) Significant Paper Award (FPL 2015) Best Paper Awards at IEEE ISVLSI (2024), ARC (2018), IEEE ReConFig (2015), and others Weierstraß Prize for Teaching (2008) Leadership Roles include membership in the board of Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing (PC2) and the Jenny Aloni Centre for Early Career Researchers. He has contributed to EU FP7 FET project EPiCS and German priority programs on embedded systems and organic computing.
Toby Jia-Jun Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, where he leads the SaNDwich Lab. He also serves as the Director of the Human-Centered Responsible AI Lab in the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society and is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI). Previously, he was affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and GroupLens Research. Dr. Li's research spans the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), End-User Software Engineering, Machine Learning (ML), and Natural Language Processing (NLP), with recent work focusing on addressing societal challenges in the future of work through human-AI collaborative approaches. His work has resulted in over 40 publications at premier venues including CHI, UIST, CSCW, ACL, and ICSE, with 8 papers winning Best Paper or Honorable Mention awards. His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on human-AI collaboration across various domains, including code understanding, privacy, accessibility, and creative tools. The work shows a trajectory toward increasingly sophisticated integration of human-centered design with AI capabilities, particularly using large language models to enhance human productivity and address societal challenges. Google Research Scholar Award recipient Recipient of Yahoo! Fellowship ($100,000/year) Best Paper Award at UIST 2020 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at CHI 2021 Best Paper Award at CSCW 2024 Best Paper Award at CHI 2025 Dr. Li actively mentors Ph.D. students and has established collaborations with Google, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Adobe, Verizon, and J.P. Morgan. His research has been supported by NSF, Google Research Scholar Program, AnalytiXIN Initiative, Yahoo! InMind project, and J.P. Morgan. He is currently recruiting Ph.D. students and undergraduate researchers for his SaNDwich Lab, which focuses on developing interactive systems to empower individuals to create, configure, and extend AI-powered computing systems.
Christof Paar is a Professor of Embedded Security at Ruhr University Bochum's Faculty of Computer Science. His work focuses on hardware security, cryptography, and embedded systems security. He leads the Embedded Security Group within the CASE Cluster of Excellence (Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Attacks), addressing cutting-edge challenges in hardware Trojans, side-channel attacks, and cryptographic engineering. His research spans FPGA and IoT security, with contributions to physical-layer security, wireless jamming defenses, and tamper-resistant systems. Research Interests: Paar's expertise lies in hardware-software co-design for security, with a focus on embedded systems. His work includes analyzing vulnerabilities in FPGAs, developing countermeasures against side-channel attacks, and exploring physical-layer security mechanisms. He also investigates the human factors in hardware reverse engineering and the implications of adversarial machine learning on security systems. Notable Work: Recent publications highlight breakthroughs in detecting hardware Trojans across CMOS generations, breaking industry-standard IP protection mechanisms (IEEE 1735), and proposing novel defenses like IRShield against adversarial wireless sensing. His group actively contributes to standards for secure embedded systems and IoT devices, emphasizing practical implementations.
