Prof. Ingmar Posner is a leading figure in applied artificial intelligence at the University of Oxford, where he serves as Principal Investigator for the Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab (A2I) and founding Director of the Oxford Robotics Institute. His work focuses on enabling robots to operate effectively in complex real-world environments through experience-driven learning. Key research areas: robot learning, scene interpretation, data-efficient learning, and transfer learning Applications in manipulation, autonomous driving, logistics, and space exploration His team has produced groundbreaking work in world models, sim-to-real transfer, and constraint-based manipulation systems (e.g., COMBO-Grasp). Notable contributions include the TWIST distillation framework and foundational research in tactile data generation (TactGen). He has received multiple best paper awards at top robotics venues. Publications reveal evolving research themes: 2025 work emphasizes language-conditioned learning (Lumos) and multi-agent decision-making, while 2024 focused on diffusion models for locomotion and differentiable simulators. Earlier work spans from urban scene analysis to physically plausible scene synthesis (RELATE).
Boris Hanin is an Associate Professor at Princeton University's Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE) and Associated Faculty at the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics (PACM). Prior to Princeton, he held academic positions at Texas A&M University (Assistant Professor of Mathematics), MIT (NSF Postdoctoral Fellow), and Northwestern University (PhD in Mathematics under Steve Zelditch). He works part-time at Foundry, an AI/computing startup, leading the Foundry Institute. PhD in Mathematics, Northwestern University NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship, MIT Mathematics Associate Professor, Princeton ORFE Part-Time Leader, Foundry Institute His research spans machine learning, probability theory, and mathematical physics, focusing on neural network theory (approximation power, optimization guarantees), random matrix theory, and spectral asymptotics. He has made foundational contributions to understanding gradient behavior, initialization, and infinite-width limits in deep learning. Boris has supervised numerous PhD students and postdocs, with former members securing prestigious positions at Harvard, MIT, and Huawei. He serves as Associate Editor for journals like Pure and Applied Analysis and Mathematics of Operations Research , and has taught short courses at Oxford, Luxembourg, and Tor Vergata on statistical physics of neural networks and deep learning theory. 2024 Sloan Fellowship in Mathematics NSF CAREER grant DMS-2143754 NSF grant DMS-2133806 His research group collaborates on topics including hyperparameter transfer, architecture-aware scaling, and spectral analysis of random waves and neural networks. He actively contributes to theoretical machine learning through foundational publications in venues like Probability Theory and Related Fields , Journal of Machine Learning Research , and Communications in Mathematical Physics .
Justin Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan's College of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). His work bridges computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning, focusing on visual reasoning, vision-language tasks, image generation, and 3D reasoning using neural networks. PhD, Stanford University (advised by Fei-Fei Li) His research interests span visual reasoning , vision and language , 3D vision , and image generation , with a focus on innovative applications of deep neural networks. Recent publications highlight work on 3D consistency, self-supervised learning, and multimodal integration of vision and text. Notable contributions include PyTorch3D for 3D data processing, and foundational work in visual question answering , neural style transfer , and scene graph-based image generation . Publications span top conferences like ICCV, CVPR, and NeurIPS. He teaches courses including EECS 498/598: Deep Learning for Computer Vision and EECS 442: Computer Vision at University of Michigan, with prior involvement in Stanford's CS 231N in co-teaching roles. Software projects include open-source frameworks like fast-neural-style for real-time artistic style transfer, and PyTorch3D for efficient 3D deep learning. These tools demonstrate his commitment to practical implementations and community-driven research.
Kai-Wei Chang is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Computer Science, part of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering. He is also an Amazon Scholar at Alexa AI, focusing on advancing trustworthy AI and multimodal foundation models. His research bridges NLP, machine learning, and ethical AI, with a focus on fairness, robustness, and bias mitigation in language and vision-language systems. Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science (UIUC, 2015), M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University. Research Interests: Trustworthy NLP (fairness, robustness), Multimodal Foundation Models (e.g., VisualBERT, GLIP), Reasoning in LLMs, and mitigating societal biases in AI systems. Notable contributions include pioneering work on aligning NLP models with human values and developing SOTA multimodal models like DesCo and GLIP. Awards: Sloan Research Fellowship (2021), Okawa Grant (2018), EMNLP Best Paper (2017), KDD Best Paper (2010). His work is funded by NSF, IARPA, ONR, and industry partners like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Service: VP-Elect of SIGDAT, Ethics Committee Chair (NAACL 2022), Organizer of Trustworthy NLP Workshops, and Senior Area Chair for top conferences (ACL, NeurIPS, AAAI). Labs/Teams: Leads the UCLA Natural Language Processing Group, fostering interdisciplinary research on ethical AI and multimodal systems.
Carl Vondrick is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University. His research focuses on creating robust and versatile perception systems that leverage video and interaction with the natural world, with applications in 3D reconstruction, visual question answering, and robot manipulation. Former research scientist at Google Visiting researcher at Cruise Education: PhD (2017) from MIT, advised by Antonio Torralba BS (2011) from UC Irvine, advised by Deva Ramanan His research explores multimodal approaches for cross-task and cross-modal transfer, scene dynamics, audiovisual perception, interpretable models, and spatial awareness systems. The lab emphasizes zero-shot generalization and neuro-symbolic methods while addressing safety and robustness in AI systems. Key publication trends include: 2025: Video generation for robotics 2024: Differentiable rendering and cross-modal reasoning 2023: Robust perception and 3D modeling Scientific Awards: 2024 PAMI Young Researcher Award 2021 NSF CAREER Award Teaching Roles: Teaching Computer Vision II (2021-2025), Computer Vision I (2018-2019), and Representation Learning (2020-2022). Advising: Advises 8 current PhD students and has mentored 5 graduated students now at institutions like MBZUAI and UMD. The lab recruits 1-2 PhD students annually through Columbia’s PhD program. Grants and Collaborations: Funded by NSF, DARPA, Toyota Research Institute, Amazon Research, and Google.
Christian Theobalt is a Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University and Scientific Director of the Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics . He leads the Saarbruecken Center for Visual Computing as a strategic partnership between Google and MPI. PhD in Computer Science (2005) from MPI-INF/Saarland University Postdoctoral Researcher at MPI (2005-2007) Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford (2007-2009) His research focuses on the intersection of Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, and Artificial Intelligence , with specializations in: 3D/4D Human Reconstruction Neural Rendering Performance Capture Geometric Deep Learning Volumetric Video Quantum Visual Computing Recent article trends show emphasis on: Quantum computing applications in visual reconstruction Neural rendering with radiance fields Human motion capture from egocentric views Gesture-language interaction modeling Multi-modal scene understanding Real-time free-viewpoint rendering Scientific Awards : Fellow of EUROGRAPHICS (2022) CVPR Best Student Paper Honorable Mention (2020) ERC Consolidator Grant (2017) Karl Heinz Beckurts Award (2017) Busy Beaver Teaching Award (2016) ERC Starting Grant (2013) Advising over 50 students and researchers including: Current researchers: Viktor Rudnev, Linjie Lyu, Mohit Mendiratta Postdocs: Kwang In Kim, Kiran Varanasi Alumni: Franziska Mueller (Google), Dushyant Mehta (Qualcomm), Ayush Tewari (MIT) Grants include ERC grants, Google Glass Research Award, and multiple industry partnerships. His lab maintains cutting-edge facilities with: Multi-camera capture systems Quantum annealing infrastructure HDR radiance field technology GPU clusters for AI research Time-of-flight imaging systems Event camera arrays
Prof. Dr. Thomas Hofmann is a Full Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich since 2014. He also leads the Institute for Machine Learning. His research focuses on machine learning, deep learning, natural language understanding, and text understanding. Hofmann holds a Ph.D. from the University of Bonn (1997) and has held academic positions at Brown University (1999–2004) and TU Darmstadt. He transitioned to industry as Director of Engineering at Google (2006–2014), leading the Zurich R&D center, before returning to academia. He co-founded Recommind (2000) and 1plusX (Swiss marketing tech company), currently serving as Chief Scientist and board member at 1plusX. Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Bonn (1997) Postdoctoral Work: MIT (CBCL/AI Lab), UC Berkeley (EECS/ICSI) His research explores advanced machine learning techniques, including diffusion models, generative adversarial networks, and optimization dynamics. Hofmann’s entrepreneurial ventures reflect his focus on applying AI to real-world challenges, such as e-discovery and marketing technology. His work spans theoretical contributions (e.g., neural network training dynamics, continual learning) and applied innovations (e.g., image editing, portrait generation). Hofmann actively bridges academia and industry, influencing both research and commercial AI applications.
Robert West is an Associate Professor at EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences , leading the Data Science Lab (dlab) . His research focuses on Natural Language Processing , Machine Learning , and Computational Social Science , analyzing human-generated data from the web, social media, and online platforms. Education : PhD in Computer Science (2016) - Stanford University MSc in Computer Science (2010) - McGill University BSc in Computer Science (2007) - Technische Universität München Research Interests : West develops algorithms for analyzing large-scale web data, with emphasis on multilingual NLP , social network analysis , and AI ethics . His work bridges machine learning with social science to understand digital human behavior. Scientific Awards : ICWSM’22 Adamic–Glance Distinguished Young Researcher Award Google Faculty Research Award Facebook Research Award Multiple Outstanding Paper Awards at ICWSM and WWW Advising & Grants : He advises 12 PhD students and has secured funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation , Swiss Data Science Center , and industry partners. His lab maintains collaborations with Microsoft Research and CROSS . Labs & Collaborations : West leads the Data Science Lab at EPFL, which focuses on web-scale data analysis , privacy-preserving machine learning , and AI for social good . The lab develops tools like Wikispeedia and Quotebank for public data exploration.
Prof. Konrad Schindler holds the position of Full Professor at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zürich. He is also the Head of the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry (IGP), leading research and educational activities in geomatics and computer vision. His career spans roles as a Photogrammetric Engineer, scientific assistant, postdoc researcher, and academic faculty across institutions including Graz University of Technology, Monash University, and TU Darmstadt before joining ETH Zürich in 2010. Education: Undergraduate studies in Geodesy (1992–1995), Graz University of Technology, Austria MEng in Photogrammetry and Geoinformation (1995–1999), Vienna University of Technology, Austria PhD in Computer Science (2001–2003), Graz University of Technology, Austria Research focuses on Photogrammetry , Remote Sensing , Computer Vision , and Image Understanding with interdisciplinary applications in environmental monitoring, geospatial analysis, and disaster response. He develops computational methods for 3D reconstruction, fusion of multi-modal data, and AI-driven solutions for satellite imagery interpretation. His work bridges geomatic engineering and machine learning to address challenges in urban mapping, climate modeling, and biological systems analysis. Publications reflect expertise in geospatial AI, diffusion models, and benchmarking datasets for disaster resilience. Notable works include Marigold (image analysis adaptation) and BRIGHT (building damage assessment). His research emphasizes practicality and scalability, such as affordable depth estimation and global biomass datasets. He has received the 2013 Marr Prize Honourable Mention (IEEE) and the 2012 U.V. Helava Award (ISPRS), alongside several Best Presentation Awards. His contributions span technical leadership, editorial roles (ISPRS Journal), and service to Swiss remote sensing commissions. Advising and grants: While no specific advisee names or grant details are listed, his career trajectory includes mentoring postdocs and junior faculty. He teaches advanced courses in Photogrammetry , Image Interpretation , and Machine Vision , integrating cutting-edge AI techniques into curricula. His research group collaborates on global-scale projects like canopy height mapping and satellite-based climate variable assessments. Labs/Teams: As Institute Head, he oversees the IGP lab at ETH Zürich, with prior affiliations including the Digital Perception Lab (Monash University) and the Computer Vision Lab (ETH Zurich). His work often involves multi-institutional collaborations focused on geospatial AI and environmental science.
Yee Whye Teh is a Professor at the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, and a research scientist at DeepMind. His work focuses on statistical machine learning, including probabilistic learning, Bayesian nonparametrics, deep learning, and Monte Carlo methods. He co-directs the ELLIS programme on Robust Machine Learning and has held roles such as Programme Co-chair for ICML 2017. Teh has delivered keynotes at UAI 2019, an IMS Medallion Lecture at JSM 2019, and the Breiman Lecture in 2017. His research emphasizes scalable inference algorithms, hierarchical models, and applications in genetics and natural language processing. Teh's educational background includes a PhD from the University of Toronto (2003) and a Master's from the same institution (2000). He has contributed to widely used software tools like the Sequence Memoizer and has been recognized for his work through prestigious lectureships. Research interests span Bayesian nonparametric models, MCMC methods, and their applications in genetics and data compression. His lab collaborates on projects like fragmentation-coagulation processes for genetic variation modeling and Mondrian forests for online learning. Teh advises students through Oxford's graduate programs, though he notes high demand for mentorship. His work often bridges theory and practice, addressing challenges in big data learning and small data problems.
Jason D. Lee is an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) and Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, he held academic positions at Princeton University as an associate professor, and was a research scientist at Google DeepMind. He completed his Ph.D. in Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University under the advisement of Trevor Hastie and Jonathan Taylor. For students and collaborators, his primary contact email is jasonlee@princeton.edu, though prospective students and postdocs are asked to include "filter_student" in the subject line. Ph.D., Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Stanford University (2015) B.Sc., Mathematics, Duke University (2010) Lee's research lies at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and optimization, focusing on the theoretical foundations of artificial intelligence. His work addresses fundamental questions in deep learning, including optimization landscapes, representation learning, and reinforcement learning theory. He has made significant contributions to understanding how gradient descent operates in neural network training and has developed provably efficient algorithms for various learning scenarios. His ten most recent publications represent a diverse yet coherent body of work across machine learning theory, focusing on topics such as Gaussian multi-index models, transformer learning capabilities, shallow neural networks, and optimization techniques. These publications appear in top venues including COLT, ICML, NeurIPS, and JMLR. Among his notable accolades are: Samsung AI Researcher of the Year Award (2023) NSF Career Award (2022) ONR Young Investigator Award (2021) Sloan Research Fellow in Computer Science (2019) NIPS Best Student Paper Award (2016) Princeton Commendation for Outstanding Teaching (ECE538B) Lee has advised numerous students including Alex Damian, Wenhao Zhan, Eshaan Nichani, Tianle Cai, Zixuan Wang, and Yunwei Ren. Former advisees have gone on to positions at institutions like NYU Courant, Facebook AI Research, UW, MIT, Duke, and Microsoft Research. His research group and collaborators span multiple institutions, working on theoretical and applied aspects of machine learning and artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on the optimization and learning dynamics of neural networks and transformer models.
Shrikanth (Shri) Narayanan is a University Professor and holder of the Niki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), serving as the inaugural Vice President for Presidential Initiatives. He leads the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab (SAIL) and holds joint appointments in Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Neuroscience, Pediatrics, and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. His research focuses on speech and audio processing, behavioral signal processing, and real-time MRI of speech production, with applications in healthcare, education, and technology. Education: B.E. in Electrical Engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy (Chennai, India, 1988); M.S., Engineer, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA (1990, 1992, 1995). Research interests span computational linguistics, machine learning, and multimodal human behavior analysis. He pioneered technologies for speech biomarkers in mental health, real-time MRI of speech production, and wearable sensor systems for longitudinal health studies. His work in speech emotion recognition, forensic interviews, and clinical applications has been recognized through over 40 awards, including the IEEE Flanagan Award and ISCA Medal. He has published extensively in journals like Proceedings of the IEEE , Journal of the Acoustical Society of America , and PLOS One . Key Grants: NSF CAREER, Okawa Research, IBM Faculty, Google/Amazon awards. Labs/Teams: Signal Analysis & Interpretation Lab (SAIL), USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI), Google Visiting Faculty Researcher.
Dr. Diyi Yang is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. She leads the Social and Language Technologies (SALT) Lab, affiliated with the Stanford NLP Group, Stanford HCI Group, Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), and Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Her research focuses on socially aware natural language processing, large language models (LLMs), and human-AI interaction, aiming to improve human-human and human-computer communication through socially grounded AI systems. Education: Ph.D. in Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University (2013–2019) B.S. in ACM Honored Class, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2009–2013) Research Interests: Dr. Yang’s work bridges computational social science and NLP. She explores how AI can understand social contexts in language use and develop systems that respect cultural norms, ethical standards, and human values. Her lab’s projects include AI companions for skill training (e.g., Rehearsal Dialects), norm-aware LLMs (NormBank), and frameworks for human-AI collaboration (Co-Gym). Recent efforts address bias in AI, societal impacts of LLMs, and ethical evaluation of human-AI systems. Awards & Honors: 2024: Sloan Research Fellowship, ONR Young Investigator Award 2023: Adamic-Glance Young Distinguished Award (ICWSM), Kavli Fellow (NAS) 2022: NSF CAREER Award, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow 2020: IEEE AI’s 10 to Watch Advising & Grants: Dr. Yang advises over 10 PhD students and postdocs, co-leading projects on LLM evaluation (SWE-bench/SWE-smith), human-AI ethics, and culturally aware NLP. Her research is supported by NSF, Amazon, DARPA, Google, and Stanford’s HAI initiative. Labs & Teams: The SALT Lab collaborates across disciplines, with projects spanning computer science, linguistics, and social sciences. Current initiatives include developing AI tools for mental health support (AI Partner & Mentor) and auditing societal impacts of LLMs.
Fanny Yang is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich . She previously held postdoctoral positions at Stanford University and a Junior Fellowship at the Institute for Theoretical Studies at ETH Zurich, advised by Nicolai Meinshausen . Her PhD was completed at the EECS Department of UC Berkeley , supervised by Martin Wainwright . Research Interests : Theoretical foundations of machine learning and statistics , particularly focusing on overparameterized models and high-dimensional data . Developing trustworthy ML models with emphasis on distributional robustness , domain generalization , and interpretability . Applications in medical diagnostics and treatment effect analysis , aiming to address reliability issues in real-world domains. Recent Work Trends : 2025 Articles : Theoretical analysis of semi-supervised multi-objective learning , test-time scaling with verifiers, and foundation models for efficient randomized experiments . 2024 Articles : Studies on robust mixture learning , privacy-preserving data synthesis via optimal transport , confounding quantification in causal inference , and semi-private learning frameworks. 2023 Articles : Investigations into active vs. passive learning in high dimensions, inductive bias in noisy interpolation , and semi-supervised novelty detection using model ensembles .
Benjamin Van Roy is a Professor at Stanford University since 1998, affiliated with the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Management Science and Engineering, and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. He leads the Efficient Agent Team at Google DeepMind and previously held leadership roles at Morgan Stanley, Unica, and Enuvis. He holds SB, SM, and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT, advised by John Tsitsiklis. His research focuses on reinforcement learning, alignment, and information theory, with contributions to machine learning foundations, optimization, and finance. He has authored over 150 publications, including influential works on Thompson Sampling, approximate dynamic programming, and exploration strategies. His honors include INFORMS and IEEE Fellowships and the INFORMS Lanchester Prize. Van Roy advises doctoral students across academia and industry, with graduates at top institutions and companies like Meta, Tesla, and Citadel. He teaches courses on reinforcement learning, stochastic control, and optimization. His open-source projects include Epistemic Neural Networks and the Neural Testbed for evaluating machine learning models. Key contributions include foundational work in reinforcement learning theory, scalable methods for recommendation systems, and applications in finance and resource allocation. His research bridges theoretical insights with practical applications, emphasizing alignment and safety of AI systems.
