Professor Vincent Y. F. Tan holds dual appointments in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also affiliated with the Institute of Operations Research and Analytics (IORA) and the Institute of Data Science (IDS). His research focuses on Online Decision Making, Multi-Armed Bandits, Reinforcement Learning, Information Theory, and Statistical Signal Processing. Notably, he has been actively publishing in top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, and IEEE journals, with recent works exploring topics such as low-rank adaptation, off-policy evaluation, and queueing control. Professor Tan has advised numerous PhD students, including Fengzhuo Zhang, Yujun Shi, and Junwen Yang. He has received recognition for his teaching, including a 4.7/5.0 rating for EE5137 Stochastic Processes. His work has led to impactful publications, such as the best paper award at the ICML 2025 workshop on World Models and an oral presentation at ICLR 2025. He currently serves as a Senior Area Chair for NeurIPS 2025 and an Area Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. His research group focuses on advancing theoretical and applied aspects of machine learning, with projects funded by grants in areas like distributed optimization and adversarial robustness. He collaborates widely, including with institutions like IIT Delhi and HKUST Guangzhou. Open positions are available for motivated postdocs and students in his research areas.
Wenhao Ding is a Research Scientist at NVIDIA's Autonomous Vehicle Group, focusing on enhancing the safety and robustness of physical autonomous systems, particularly autonomous vehicles. His research integrates multi-modal large language models, reinforcement learning, and causal discovery to improve model reasoning capabilities. He holds a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University's Department of Electronic Engineering, with a thesis on 'Generative AI for Critical Digital Twins.' Key research interests include safety-critical scenario generation, causal representation learning, and offline reinforcement learning. His work emphasizes closed-loop simulation for autonomous systems and has led to contributions like the SafeBench benchmarking platform and the RealGen scenario generation framework. He has received the 2022 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship. Notable collaborations include projects with Prof. Marco Pavone at Stanford and internships at Amazon Lab126 (Astro team) and Bosch Center for AI. He actively reviews for top conferences (ICML, NeurIPS, CVPR) and journals (IEEE T-ITS, RA-L). His recent focus on privacy risks in robotics and causal-aware driving models underscores his commitment to trustworthy AI systems. He organizes conferences like the 2024 IEEE International Automated Vehicle Validation Conference and co-hosted the Secure and Safe Autonomous Driving (SSAD) Workshop at CVPR 2023. His interdisciplinary work bridges theory and practice, addressing critical challenges in autonomous systems' safety and generalization.
Fattane Zarrinkalam is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Guelph. She holds a PhD from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran, and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Ryerson University (2018–2020). Her research focuses on social media mining, semantic technologies, and user modeling, with applications in healthcare, legal tech, and e-commerce. She is a Vector Institute Postgraduate Affiliate and serves on editorial boards for journals like Information Processing & Management and IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering . Her work emphasizes actionable insights from social data, including sarcasm detection, user interest prediction, and fairness in social media analytics. Zarrinkalam has contributed to over 30 peer-reviewed publications and holds multiple patents in data analysis and social media sentiment modeling. Education: PhD, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran Postdoctoral Fellowship, Ryerson University Research Scientist, Thomson Reuters Labs Research Interests: Semantic interpretation of social content User modeling via temporal analysis Social good applications (e.g., mental health, telecommunication) Fairness in social media mining Recent Work Trends: Her articles span network representation learning, dynamic user interest prediction, and interdisciplinary applications. Notable themes include neural networks for sarcasm detection, heterogeneous graph embeddings, and leveraging Twitter data for psychological insights. Awards & Service: Co-chair, International Workshop on Mining Actionable Insights from Social Networks (MAISoN) Editorial board roles for top journals Labs & Teams: Involved in interdisciplinary collaborations at the Vector Institute and partnerships with industry on legal tech and social analytics projects.
Jacob Gardner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania. His research bridges machine learning and scientific discovery with emphasis on computational biology and molecular design. His primary research interests include: Machine Learning Bayesian Optimization Computational Biology Molecular Design Artificial Intelligence Gaussian Processes Analysis of his 2024-2025 publications reveals a dominant focus on Bayesian optimization techniques integrated with large language models for biological applications. Key trends include therapeutic design using knowledge distillation from scientific literature, RNA splicing prediction, antibiotic development, and scalable Gaussian process methods. His work consistently addresses dimensionality challenges in molecular modeling while improving computational efficiency for high-dimensional biological data. No scientific awards were mentioned in the provided text. No information regarding student advising or research grants was provided in the source material. His research appears supported by institutional initiatives including Penn AI, Innovation in Data Engineering and Science (IDEAS), and the Data Driven Discovery Initiative (DDDI).
Benjamin Eysenbach leads the Princeton Reinforcement Learning Lab, where he designs algorithms that enable artificial intelligence systems to learn intelligent behaviors through trial-and-error, specializing in self-supervised methods that eliminate the need for human labels. He joined Princeton after completing his PhD in machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University under Ruslan Salakhutdinov and Sergey Levine, supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and Hertz Fellowship. His research bridges fundamental machine learning principles with practical applications in robotics and decision-making systems. Eysenbach's research focuses on developing self-supervised reinforcement learning algorithms that enable autonomous skill acquisition without external rewards. His investigations span contrastive learning methods, temporal abstraction techniques, and scalable architectures for goal-conditioned behaviors. These innovations aim to create more efficient and generalizable learning systems that can discover useful behaviors from unlabeled experience. Eysenbach's publications demonstrate consistent advancement in self-supervised RL methodologies, with recent work focusing increasingly on temporal abstraction and representation learning theory. His research shows progression from foundational contrastive RL frameworks toward more sophisticated analyses of generalization properties and uncertainty quantification. The 2025 works indicate expanding investigation into hierarchical control, probabilistic alignment, and hyper-deep network architectures. Eysenbach has been recognized with prestigious awards including the Hertz Fellowship and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, supporting his doctoral research in self-supervised RL methodologies. His work has been presented at top machine learning conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR. As director of the Princeton Reinforcement Learning Lab, Eysenbach oversees research initiatives in self-supervised RL, including projects on intention-conditioned modeling, horizon generalization, and contrastive learning frameworks. He has secured funding from the Princeton AI Lab to study neural correlates of temporal contrast in decision-making. Eysenbach teaches courses in reinforcement learning and has developed new benchmarks like JaxGCRL to accelerate research in goal-conditioned RL.
Dr. Hwan-Sik Yoon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Alabama, where he focuses on applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to automotive, transportation, and manufacturing systems. His research spans modeling, simulation, and control of dynamic systems, with a strong emphasis on connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), energy-efficient routing, and sensor fusion technologies. Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Ohio State University, 2002 M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Ohio State University, 1998 B.S., Physics Education, Seoul National University, Korea, 1994 Dr. Yoon’s research integrates AI/ML into applications such as traffic signal control , excavator manipulator pose estimation , hybrid electric vehicle powertrain control , and factory floor safety monitoring . He is also involved in additive manufacturing , vision-based control systems , and reinforcement learning -driven automotive innovations. Recent publications highlight trends in deep reinforcement learning for vehicle energy efficiency, sensor fusion for traffic surveillance, and neural networks for dynamic system control. His work addresses challenges in multi-component failure analysis and real-time edge computing platforms . NSF Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award (2019) College of Engineering Faculty Productivity Award, Tennessee Tech University (2012) Dr. Yoon leads the Intelligent Structures and Systems Laboratory and serves as the lead CAVs faculty advisor for the University of Alabama’s EcoCAR student team, which has achieved national recognition in advanced vehicle technology competitions.
Ian Hawkins is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham , focusing on Media Psychology , Intergroup Conflict , and Collective Action . He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Media from the University of Michigan, with prior M.S. and B.S. in Psychology from Central Michigan University. His research employs social scientific methods to analyze how media representations of marginalized groups shape societal attitudes and policy preferences. Current work explores cross-device news consumption dynamics using eye-tracking to assess attention patterns in headline processing. He publishes in New Media and Society , Journal of Communication , and Psychology of Popular Media . Teaching responsibilities include Mass Communication History and Effects and Social Media Use courses. Contact: ihawkins@uab.edu
Theodora Varvarigou is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). She holds a B.Eng. from NTUA and M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. Her career includes research at AT&T Bell Labs and roles at the Technical University of Crete. From 2008-2012, she served as director of NTUA's 'Technoeconomic Systems' postgraduate program. Her research focuses on Cloud Computing, Multimedia Content Processing, Social Networking Technologies, and emerging areas like blockchain, edge computing, and cybersecurity. She has published over 200 papers and led numerous European research projects, emphasizing scalable systems, data management, and smart infrastructure applications. Her work spans technical innovations such as intrusion detection systems, edge resource optimization, and blockchain-based solutions for IoT, healthcare, and smart cities. Recent publications highlight advancements in AI-driven resource allocation, privacy-preserving blockchain designs, and predictive analytics for edge computing environments. Professor Varvarigou has contributed to interdisciplinary initiatives, including cohort data harmonization in biomedical research and social media analytics for urban planning. Her teaching includes courses on digital systems, network programming, and fault-tolerant systems.
Prof. Hatice Gunes is a Full Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Cambridge's Department of Computer Science and Technology, leading the Affective Intelligence and Robotics Lab (AFAR Lab). She holds an EPSRC Fellowship and is an EPSRC Fellow. Her research focuses on multimodal affective and social intelligence for AI systems, particularly embodied agents and robots, integrating Machine Learning, Affective Computing, and Human Nonverbal Behaviour Understanding. Key projects include the CHANSE initiative (2025–2028) for child mental health assessment via social robotics, the EPSRC Fellowship on robotic EQ for wellbeing (2019–2025), and the EU Horizon 2020 WorkingAge project. Prof. Gunes has pioneered systems like the EU SEMAINE project's SAL system, recognized with Best Demo and Paper Awards, and co-founded SensingFeeling, a spin-out company from the Innovate UK Sensing Feeling project. Her work emphasizes ethical AI and fairness, earning awards like the Best Paper Award in Responsible Affective Computing (IEEE ACII'23). She has delivered keynote talks at IEEE FG’19 and ICPR’22 and collaborates with the Department of Psychiatry and wellbeing professionals. Education: PhD in Computer Science from University of Technology Sydney (UTS) under Australian Government IPRS Scholarship Postdoctoral Research at Imperial College London (SEMAINe project) Research Interests: Multimodal affective computing, social robotics for mental wellbeing, fairness in AI systems, human-robot interaction (HRI), and ethical deployment of AI technologies. Her lab develops robots for workplace wellbeing coaching and child mental health assessment, with over 700 media coverages and partnerships with industry and healthcare sectors. Notable Achievements: Runner-up Collaboration Award (2023 VC Research Impact) Better Future Award (2023 Hall of Fame) Finalist RSJ/KROS Interdisciplinary Research Award (2021) Shortlisted Sony Women in Technology Award 2025 Labs & Teams: AFAR Lab drives interdisciplinary research in Cambridge, focusing on socially intelligent robots and AI systems that address critical societal challenges in wellbeing and mental health.
Praveen K. Kopalle is the Signal Companies' Professor of Management, professor of marketing, and area chair at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. He served as associate dean for the MBA program (2015–18) and chairs the marketing area (2012–15, 2022–present). He teaches courses in retail pricing analytics, marketing concepts, and new product development. Education: PhD in Marketing (Columbia University, 1992), MBA (Indian Institute of Management, 1988), BE in Mechanical & Product Engineering (Osmania University, 1986) His research focuses on marketing , machine learning , artificial intelligence , pricing strategy , retail analytics , and new product innovation . Recent work addresses digital customer orientation, loyalty programs in the big data era, and predictive analytics in retailing. He has published in top journals like Journal of Consumer Research , Management Science , and Marketing Science . Praveen serves as departmental editor for Production and Operations Management and associate editor for multiple journals. He has held leadership roles in the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science and contributed to editorial boards of 10+ journals. Scientific Awards: 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award (American Marketing Association’s Retailing and Pricing Special Interest Group) 2015 Core Teaching Excellence Award (Tuck School) 2011 Distinguished Alumni Award (IIM Bangalore) Multiple John Little and Davidson Awards 2022 Distinguished Alumnus Award (Osmania University) His teaching spans MBA core courses ( Marketing , Statistics for Managers ) and electives ( Retail Pricing Strategy , Marketing New Products ). He also leads executive education programs and the Tuck Integrative Experiential Learning (TuckINTEL) initiative.
Arun Rai serves as Regents’ Professor and Howard S. Starks Distinguished Chair at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business, where he co-founded and directs the Center for Digital Innovation. His career spans interdisciplinary research bridging information systems with societal impact through industry-university collaborations across global sectors. His educational foundation includes: Ph.D. from Kent State University MBA from Clarion University of Pennsylvania M.S. from Birla Institute of Technology & Science Rai's research explores digital innovation , AI governance , and societal impacts of technology through investigations of platform ecosystems, supply chain transformation, and digital solutions for poverty and health disparities. His work uniquely connects technical systems design with behavioral and organizational outcomes across contexts from rural India to global corporations. Recent publications (2023-2025) reveal intensifying focus on AI-human collaboration , digital risk assessment , and platform governance tensions , with growing emphasis on healthcare applications and equity implications. The trajectory shows evolution from organizational IT adoption toward complex sociotechnical systems addressing global challenges. His scientific recognition includes: Fellow of the Association for Information Systems Distinguished Fellow of the INFORMS Information Systems Society LEO Award for Lifetime Exceptional Achievement Rai has mentored over 60 doctoral students (30+ as chair) with alumni now holding leadership positions globally. His research attracts major funding from Apollo Hospitals, China Mobile, IBM, Intel, UPS, and federal agencies, enabling real-world implementations like the Global Supply Chain Solutions Program during UPS's digital transformation. Current initiatives focus on generative AI in education and healthcare IT policy impacts. As director of the Center for Digital Innovation, he cultivates cross-sector partnerships advancing digital transformation through collaborative research on AI governance, platform ecosystems, and societal impact measurement.
Alain Durmus is a Professor at École Polytechnique, affiliated with the applied mathematics department (CMAP). His research focuses on computational statistics, machine learning, and stochastic methods, including Monte Carlo algorithms, Bayesian inference, and optimization. He explores topics such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), stochastic approximation, and generative models. His work emphasizes theoretical guarantees for algorithms like Langevin Monte Carlo and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, with applications to high-dimensional Bayesian inference and inverse problems. Key contributions include hypocoercivity analysis of piecewise deterministic MCMC processes, convergence guarantees for stochastic gradient methods, and the development of efficient sampling techniques. He has also contributed to Bayesian imaging and federated learning through works like the QLSD algorithm. Awarded the Best Student Paper Award at ICASSP 2020 for his work on the Sliced-Wasserstein distance. His teaching spans mathematical statistics, stochastic methods, and probability at École Polytechnique and ENS Paris-Saclay. He has also contributed to conferences and workshops on topics ranging from MCMC convergence to optimization in machine learning.
Anupam Joshi is the Acting Dean of the College of Information Technology and Engineering and Oros Family Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He also directs UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity and leads the National Cybersecurity FFRDC for the University System of Maryland. His research focuses on networked computing, AI-driven cybersecurity, privacy-preserving technologies, and policy-driven security frameworks. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University (1993), an M.S. (1991), and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (1989). Dr. Joshi’s work spans over 400 publications with 32,650+ citations (h-index 92) and nine patents. His grants include funding from NSF, DARPA, NASA, NIST, and industry partners like IBM and Northrop Grumman. Key contributions include developing CAPD frameworks for IoT security, FABULA for automated threat intelligence, and KiNETGAN for intrusion detection through synthetic data. He is an IEEE Fellow and pioneer in applying AI to secure critical infrastructure, smart grids, and healthcare systems. His research trends emphasize AI-empowered cybersecurity, privacy compliance in data sharing (e.g., agriculture, healthcare), and mitigating attacks on smart systems. Notable projects include combating fake cybersecurity reports using provenance analysis, securing EV charging infrastructure, and enhancing smart farming resilience through policy-driven access control. Awards: IEEE Fellow Grants: Over $30M from NSF, DoD, NASA, and industry collaborations Labs/Teams: Director of UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, Cybersecurity Knowledge Graph initiatives Future work includes advancing neurosymbolic AI for cybersecurity, semantic data extraction from scientific literature, and AI ethics in healthcare applications.
Dong Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (CSEE) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). His research focuses on wireless sensing, mobile computing, wearable sensing, multi-modal sensing, and smart health, aiming to develop affordable and accessible technologies to address healthcare equity and environmental sustainability challenges. He holds a PhD from the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an M.Eng. in Software Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. His work has been published in prestigious venues such as MobiCom, SenSys, IPSN, UbiComp, and HotNets. Key research themes include anomaly detection via knowledge graphs, privacy prediction models for social networks, and interactive recommendation systems. His interdisciplinary approach integrates machine learning, data mining, and cybersecurity to tackle real-world problems in health and environmental sustainability. Dr. Li’s contributions span theoretical advancements and practical system development, with a focus on bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and societal impact. His recent publications highlight innovations in data stream processing, weak supervision frameworks, and privacy behavior analysis in online platforms.
Pan Xu is a tenure-track assistant professor with joint appointments in the Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Department of Computer Science, and Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. Prior to joining Duke, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate at the California Institute of Technology, and he earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA. His research bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Dr. Xu's research focuses on developing computationally- and data-efficient machine learning algorithms with strong theoretical guarantees, particularly in reinforcement learning, optimization, and high-dimensional statistics. His work addresses two fundamental challenges in sequential decision-making: efficient exploration with minimal interactions and robustness against distributional shifts. His research spans theoretical algorithm design, practical implementation, and real-world applications in bioinformatics and healthcare. His publication record demonstrates consistent high-impact contributions to top-tier conferences including ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, AAAI, and AISTATS. The research trends show a progression from foundational work in non-convex optimization and multi-armed bandits toward increasingly sophisticated frameworks for robust reinforcement learning, with particular emphasis on distributional robustness, efficient exploration strategies, and practical applications. His work often bridges theoretical guarantees with empirical validation. NSF award on approximate sampling based exploration for sequential decision making Whitehead Scholar award from Duke University School of Medicine PIMCO Postdoctoral Fellowship in Data Science UCLA Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award Rising Stars in Data Science by University of Chicago Best Paper Award for Queer In AI: A Case Study in Community-Led Participatory AI at FAccT 2023 Featured Certification for Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Policy Evaluation and Learning for Contextual Bandits at TMLR Oral Presentation award at AAAI 2024 Dr. Xu actively mentors students and researchers, seeking highly motivated individuals with strong mathematical backgrounds for Ph.D. programs in Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Computer Science, and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Duke. He has received multiple research grants including an NSF award on approximate sampling based exploration for sequential decision making. His service to the academic community includes roles as area chair for NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and AISTATS, as well as action editor for Transactions on Machine Learning Research. His research group develops algorithms that address fundamental challenges in sequential decision-making, with applications spanning healthcare, bioinformatics, and multi-agent systems. Current research directions include distributionally robust reinforcement learning, efficient exploration strategies, and applications of graph neural networks to biological problems.
