Professor Fay Dowker is a leading theoretical physicist at Imperial College London's Department of Physics, affiliated with the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Her research focuses on quantum gravity, causal set theory, and the nature of spacetime. She explores the granular structure of spacetime at Planck scales, emphasizing causal relationships and the interplay between relativity and quantum mechanics. Dowker's work addresses foundational questions such as the cosmological constant problem, the passage of time, and the relationship between spacetime discreteness and consciousness. Her contributions include seminal lectures like A Meditation on General Relativity and Spacetime Atoms and the Unity of Physics , as well as public debates on parallel universes and the hard problem of consciousness. She has held roles such as organizing events for Einstein's general relativity centenary and contributes to outreach via BBC Radio 4 and the Royal Institution. Her Orcid identifier is 0000-0002-6652-1058, and she is part of interdisciplinary teams like Physics of Universe and Quantum Engineering, Science, and Technology. Dowker’s research bridges physics and philosophy, tackling dichotomies such as continuity vs. atomicity, locality vs. non-locality, and objectivity vs. subjectivity. Her work on causal set theory challenges traditional views of spacetime and offers novel insights into quantum gravity and cosmology.
David S. Eisenberg is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Biological Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also serves as Director of the UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics and as an HHMI Investigator. His research focuses on protein interactions, particularly the structural basis for conversion of normal proteins to the amyloid state and conversion of prions to the infectious state. Dr. Eisenberg earned his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard College and his D.Phil. degree in theoretical chemistry from Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. His postdoctoral research was on ice and water with Walter Kauzmann at Princeton and in protein crystallography with Richard Dickerson. He joined the UCLA faculty after his postdoctoral studies. Dr. Eisenberg and his research group focus on protein interactions in amyloid and prion diseases. These diseases involve protein aggregation where normal functional proteins convert to abnormal aggregated forms. Systemic amyloid diseases like dialysis-related amyloidosis result from fiber accumulation until organ failure, while neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, and prion conditions appear to be caused by smaller oligomers. In 2005, his team determined the atomic-level structure for the amyloid fiber spine, revealing a 'steric zipper' of two parallel beta sheets packed across a dry interface. Since then, they've determined approximately 90 amyloid spines from 15 disease-related proteins. In 2010, they identified the structure of a toxic amyloid-related oligomer consisting of six anti-parallel beta strands forming a cylindrical barrel. His recent publications demonstrate continued innovation in amyloid research, with focus areas including structural prediction of amyloid formation, mechanisms of tau fibril disassembly in Alzheimer's disease, cryo-EM analysis of amyloid polymorphism, and structure-based design of inhibitors for amyloid toxicity. His work integrates computational, structural, and biochemical approaches to understand protein aggregation across multiple disease contexts. Dr. Eisenberg has received numerous prestigious awards and honors: National Academy of Sciences Member American Philosophical Society Member Institute of Medicine Member Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Biophysical Society Emily M. Gray Award Harvard Westheimer Medal UCLA Seaborg Medal Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Harvey Prize in Human Health As Director of the UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics and an HHMI Investigator, Dr. Eisenberg leads significant research initiatives in protein structure and aggregation. His laboratory combines X-ray crystallography, bioinformatics, and biochemical techniques to investigate protein interactions, with particular emphasis on amyloid-forming proteins and their role in disease. The Eisenberg Lab, located in Boyer Hall at UCLA, maintains an active research program investigating the structural basis of protein aggregation. The lab continues to build on its landmark discoveries of amyloid structures while exploring new frontiers in understanding protein misfolding diseases and developing potential therapeutic interventions.
Elaine Shi is a Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science (CSD) and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). She is also an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on cryptography, security, mechanism design, algorithms, blockchains, and programming languages. Shi co-founded Oblivious Labs, Inc., and her work on Oblivious RAM and differentially private algorithms has been adopted by major companies like Signal, Meta, and Google. Affiliations: CMU’s Crypto Group CMU’s Cylab Crypto Seminar Series (co-founder) Research Interests: Cryptography and Security: Focused on oblivious computation, private information retrieval, and secure protocols. Blockchain Technology: Including consensus mechanisms, transaction fee design, and decentralized systems. Privacy-Preserving Algorithms: Such as differential privacy and secure multi-party computation. Algorithm Design: With applications to parallel computing and efficient data structures. Awards: Packard Fellow Sloan Fellow ACM Fellow IACR Fellow Advising & Grants: Current advisees include PhD students like Benjamin Chan, Yanyi Liu, Mingxun Zhou, and Nikhil Vanjani. Past students have taken academic roles at institutions like UVA, University of Michigan, and Duke University. Grants supported research in secure computation, blockchain mechanisms, and privacy-preserving technologies. Labs & Teams: Co-founder of Oblivious Labs, Inc. Leading CMU’s Crypto Group and Cylab Crypto Seminar Series.
Manuel R. Amieva is a Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine , holding joint appointments in Pediatrics - Infectious Diseases and Microbiology & Immunology . He is also a member of the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI) . His clinical practice at Stanford Medicine Children's Health focuses on pediatric infectious diseases. Education: Medical Education: Stanford University School of Medicine (1997) Fellowship: Stanford University Pediatric Infectious Disease Fellowship (2004) Internship & Residency: Stanford Health Care at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (1998-1999) Dr. Amieva's research investigates host-pathogen interactions at epithelial barriers, with specific expertise in Helicobacter pylori , Listeria monocytogenes , Salmonella enterica , and Staphylococcus aureus . His lab develops innovative organoid culture systems with controlled polarity to study microbial colonization and oncogenic mechanisms. Key discoveries include: H. pylori's manipulation of epithelial junctions via the CagA protein Listeria's exploitation of cell extrusion sites for invasion Staphylococcus toxin interactions with adherens junctions Gastric stem cell activation by pathogens Recent publication trends show continued leadership in infectious disease mechanisms (2020-2025), with a focus on: Pathogen-specific epithelial breach strategies Organoid modeling of viral/bacterial interactions Redox-dependent host factor regulation Single-cell spatial transcriptomic analyses Multi-institutional educational frameworks His scientific collaborations span disciplines including: Gastric cancer genomics initiatives COVID-19 lung infection models Stem cell-microbe interactions Medical education reform projects Dr. Amieva maintains active clinical research while mentoring students in both the Microbiology & Immunology and Pediatrics programs. His lab at Stanford employs advanced 3D confocal microscopy and organ-on-a-chip technologies to visualize epithelial colonization dynamics.
Jingtong Hu is an Associate Professor at the Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, where he also holds the William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellowship. His research focuses on Cyber-Physical Systems and Infrastructure Security, with significant contributions to embedded systems, non-volatile memory architectures, and hardware/software co-design for energy-constrained environments. Dr. Hu received his PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas (2007-2013) and his Bachelor of Engineering from Shandong University (2003-2007). His research spans multiple interdisciplinary areas including energy harvesting systems, non-volatile processors, FPGA acceleration, and machine learning at the edge. His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on algorithm-hardware co-design, particularly for vision transformers, federated learning, and non-volatile memory systems. His work often addresses the challenges of implementing AI on resource-constrained edge devices, with emphasis on energy efficiency, reliability, and performance optimization. The trend in his publications shows increasing focus on sustainable AI processing, heterogeneous computing architectures, and personalized machine learning for IoT applications. Selected Awards: IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award (2021) ACM SIGDA Meritorious Service Award (2019) Multiple Best Paper Award nominations at top conferences including DAC, ASP-DAC, and CODES+ISSS Dr. Hu's research has been supported by multiple grants focusing on energy-efficient computing, non-volatile memory systems, and hardware acceleration for machine learning. His collaborative work spans numerous institutions and involves interdisciplinary teams working at the intersection of computer architecture, embedded systems, and artificial intelligence. His publications show extensive collaboration with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, particularly with Albert K. Jones and Yiyu Shi. His laboratory work focuses on implementing practical systems for energy harvesting powered devices, non-volatile processors, and hardware accelerators for machine learning applications. Current projects appear to emphasize sustainable AI processing at the edge, heterogeneous FPGA acceleration, and personalized federated learning for health monitoring applications.
Paul Lu is a Professor in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Science. His research focuses on high-performance computing, parallel and distributed systems, cloud computing, and bioinformatics. He holds a B.Sc. (1991), M.Sc. (1993) in Computing Science from the University of Alberta, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto (2000). His research explores software systems, including operating systems, virtual machines, and parallel programming. Recent work emphasizes high-performance data transfers and IaaS cloud computing. He teaches courses such as MINT 706: Internet Application and Programming, covering internet protocols and client-server programming. Publications highlight contributions to network optimization, machine learning-driven protocol selection, and distributed systems. His work bridges theoretical advancements with practical applications in cloud infrastructure and wide-area networks.
Soumya Dutta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), where he leads the INSIGHT: Intelligent Scientific and Visual Computing of Big Data Research Group. He joined IIT Kanpur in October 2022 after working as a Scientist II at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) from July 2019 to August 2022, and previously as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at LANL from June 2018 to July 2019. His educational background includes a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University (2011-2018), where he was part of the GRAVITY research group, and a B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology, India (2005-2009). Research Interests: Dr. Dutta's research focuses on the intersection of machine learning, visual computing, big data, and high-performance computing. His primary research areas include Machine Learning for Visual Computing and Image Analysis, Big Data Visualization and Analytics, Data Science and HPC, Machine Learning for Scientific Computing, and Explainability and Interpretability of AI Models. His work addresses various big data characteristics including the 5 Vs: Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity, and Value. He develops techniques that make complex machine learning models more interpretable and explainable, enabling their effective adoption in real-life applications across scientific domains, social media, IoT, healthcare, and industry applications. Dr. Dutta's research group has secured multiple funded projects including: DAVi: An Intelligent Data Analytics and Visualization Framework (funded by ISRO), Intelligent Visual Computing of Extreme-scale Data for Accelerating Scientific Discovery (IIT Kanpur Initiation Grant), Enabling Interactive Big Data Analytics and Visualization at Exascale (SERB), Development of AI-Enabled National Portal for Efficient Search of Missing People (C3iHub), and Proactive and Generalized Deepfake Defense Mechanisms (C3iHub). Best Reviewer, Honorary Mention Award for IEEE Transactions on Visualization & Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2021 Best Paper Award at ISAV 2021, co-located with Supercomputing (SC) LAAP Award at Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2021 Best Paper Award at TopoInVis 2019 Best Paper Award at ISAV 2018, co-located with Supercomputing (SC) Best Poster Award in 12th Annual CSE Student Poster Exhibition, The Ohio State University, 2018 Best Poster Award in 11th Annual CSE Student Poster Exhibition, The Ohio State University, 2017 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at IEEE Visualization Conference (IEEE VIS) 2016 Dr. Dutta actively mentors a large group of students including Ph.D., M.Tech., and B.Tech. students. His current Ph.D. students include Shanu Saklani, Sankhadeep Bhowmick, Ananya Chaturvedi, Arpita Santra, Anubhav Dixit (co-supervised), and Robin Shah. He has supervised numerous M.Tech. students with thesis topics ranging from uncertainty-aware neural networks to deepfake detection. Dr. Dutta currently teaches courses including CS360 - Introduction to Computer Graphics and CS661 - Big Data Visual Analytics. The INSIGHT research group collaborates internationally with researchers from Meta, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and National Taiwan Normal University. The group's work focuses on building machine learning and data science-based solutions to analyze large-scale multifaceted data in a scalable way, enabling interactive and interpretable analytics of complex data from scientific simulations, social media, IoT, healthcare, and other application domains.
Melody Alsaker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Gonzaga University, where she has held this position since January 2016. Her research focuses on medical imaging and applied inverse problems, particularly in the field of electrical impedance tomography (EIT). She specializes in mathematical modeling, algorithm design, and biomedical image processing, with applications in pulmonary and thoracic imaging. Her work emphasizes improving EIT reconstruction techniques using the D-bar method, incorporating spatial priors, and developing real-time solutions for clinical applications. Notable contributions include the ACE1 EIT system for thoracic imaging and studies on stroke classification, air trapping in lungs, and surrogate measures of pulmonary function in children with cystic fibrosis. Alsaker's research bridges mathematics and engineering, addressing challenges in medical imaging accuracy and computational efficiency. Her collaborations span disciplines, including biomedical engineering, respiratory physiology, and clinical medicine.
Peter Pietzuch is a Professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, where he leads the Large-Scale Data & Systems (LSDS) group. He also serves as the Director of Research and is a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge. Pietzuch holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. from Girton College. His research spans distributed systems, cloud computing, big data processing, and systems security. Key interests include: Scalable architectures for cloud-native applications Efficient stream processing and machine learning systems Trusted execution environments and secure cloud infrastructure Optimization of serverless computing and distributed databases His recent publications focus on adaptive machine learning frameworks, secure cloud resource management, and high-performance stream processing systems. Trends show strong emphasis on hardware-software co-design, confidential computing, and fault-tolerant architectures. Awards include: Best Paper Award at Middleware'03 He actively advises PhD students and secures grants for projects like Faasm (serverless computing) and Teechain (blockchain security). His LSDS group collaborates with industry partners including Microsoft Research. Pietzuch teaches undergraduate and graduate courses including Scalable Systems for the Cloud and Operating Systems . He co-founded the ACM DEBS conference and serves on steering committees for EuroSys and Middleware.
Kevin M. Franks is an Associate Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University, where he investigates how the olfactory system forms neural representations of sensory environments. His work focuses on functional neural circuits in the olfactory bulb and piriform cortex, using techniques like in vivo recordings, optogenetics, and behavioral assays. His research explores Neural circuit dynamics and plasticity Odor coding mechanisms Role of recurrent circuitry Integration of sensory modalities Recent publications highlight his contributions to understanding cortical odor representations, developmental neural connectivity, and cross-modal interactions. Awards include the 2024 Don Tucker Finalist recognition. He teaches advanced neuroscience courses at Duke, including Neurobiology research and concepts in neuronal systems.
Adam Yala is an Assistant Professor of Computational Precision Health, Statistics, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and UCSF. He is also the Founder & CEO of Voio Inc., a company focused on clinical translation of AI tools. PhD in Computer Science from MIT (2022) His research lies at the intersection of Machine Learning and Precision Medicine, with a focus on robust AI tools for clinical deployment, personalized screening policies, and private data sharing. Current work includes multi-modal imaging analysis, decision guarantees in clinical workflows, and prospective trials in oncology and radiology. Recent publications highlight advancements in AI for cancer risk prediction, vision-language models in healthcare, and data privacy techniques. Tools like Mirai are implemented in 66 hospitals across 30 countries. Bakar Fellows Spark Award (2024) Eppy Award: Investigative Reporting (2022) Falling Walls Finalist: Life Science (2022) NSF Fellowship (2016) He advises PhD students in AI-driven healthcare and collaborates with hospital systems globally. His lab emphasizes clinical translation of machine learning methods in radiology and oncology.
Zhijian Liu is a Research Scientist at NVIDIA with a PhD from MIT, advised by Song Han. His work focuses on efficient machine learning and systems through sparse computation and hardware-aware neural network design. Rising Star in Data Science (UChicago/UCSD) Rising Star in ML and Systems (MLCommons) Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship awardee Research highlights include: SPVCNN++ for LiDAR segmentation HAQ framework in Intel OpenVINO TorchSparse framework for 3D CNN efficiency His recent publications explore: Efficient visual language models (NVILA) Contextual sparsity in LLM fine-tuning (SparseLoRA) Training-free acceleration of diffusion LLMs Query-aware visual sparsity mechanisms Contact: zhijian@mit.edu
Oscar P. Bruno is a Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He holds a Licenciado from the University of Buenos Aires (1982) and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from New York University's Courant Institute (1989). Since 1998, he has been a Professor at Caltech, previously serving as Associate Professor (1995–98) and Executive Officer for Applied Mathematics (1998–2000). His research focuses on developing high-performance numerical methods for solving partial differential equations (PDEs), addressing challenges in complex geometries, singularities, and high-frequency phenomena. Key contributions include the Fourier Continuation (FC) method and integral-equation techniques, enabling solutions to previously intractable PDE problems in science and engineering. Prof. Bruno's expertise spans computational electromagnetics, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), solid mechanics, and mathematical physics. His work integrates numerical analysis, multiphysics modeling, and computational science to solve real-world problems in geophysics, optics, and fluid dynamics. He has received numerous awards, including membership in the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina (2020), the Vannevar Bush National Security Science and Engineering Fellowship (2016), and SIAM Fellow (2013). Bruno serves on editorial boards for journals like SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing and SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, and participates in national science advisory roles. His teaching includes advanced courses on applied mathematics methods (ACM/IDS 101 ab), emphasizing theoretical foundations and numerical techniques for PDEs. His research group develops cutting-edge solvers with applications in shock dynamics, optical tomography, and geophysical fluid dynamics.
Prof. Waldemar Kolanus leads the Molecular Immunology and Cell Biology department at the University of Bonn's Life & Medical Sciences Institute (LIMES) . His research bridges immunoregulation , stem cell dynamics , and metabolic stress responses in immune cells. Unit 2 member at LIMES Principal investigator in SFB 704 and ImmunoSensation Cluster Leads a multidisciplinary lab with postdocs, PhD students, and technical staff His work focuses on intracellular signaling pathways connecting immune activation to tissue homeostasis, particularly through: Cytohesin proteins in integrin-mediated adhesion and migration TRIM71 in stem cell regulation and congenital hydrocephalus High-salt environments affecting macrophage function Publication trends show expertise in immune cell migration , genetic models , and chemical inhibition , with frequent use of mice and zebrafish for in vivo studies. Key articles explore: TRIM71's dual role in auditory development and germ cell maintenance Cytohesin family's Golgi regulation and insulin signaling Ruxolitinib's off-target migration inhibition of dendritic cells Contact details: Address: LIMES Institute, Carl-Troll-Straße 31, Bonn Email: kolanus.sekretariat@uni-bonn.de Phone: +49 228 73-62788
Prof. Bryan Ford leads the Decentralized/Distributed Systems (DEDIS) lab at EPFL. He focuses on secure decentralized systems, including blockchain technology, privacy, and systems security. He earned his Ph.D. from MIT and held faculty positions at Yale University and EPFL. His work spans distributed consensus protocols, peer-to-peer networking, and privacy-preserving systems. Key projects include QuePaxa (timeout-free consensus), UIA (global connectivity for mobile devices), and MedCo (secure healthcare data sharing). He advises numerous PhD students and contributes to open-source projects like Bitcoin collective signing and privacy networks like Riffle. Education: Ph.D., MIT; Postdoctoral work at Yale Research interests include blockchain scalability, consensus algorithms, and cryptographic privacy. His lab develops systems like TRIP for coercion-resistant voting and F3B to mitigate blockchain front-running. His work on NAT traversal and peer-to-peer protocols (e.g., STUN/ICE) remains foundational in network architecture. He emphasizes practical, auditable security solutions such as CertiKOS and atomic cross-chain transactions (Atom). Notable contributions: CoSi (collective signing), OmniLedger (sharded blockchain), and privacy-preserving protocols like PURBs (Protected Unsealable Recursive Boxes). His lab collaborates with Swiss Post to audit e-voting systems and designs democratic cryptocurrencies like PoPCoin.
