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).
Adrian Weller is a prominent researcher and academic at the University of Cambridge, serving as a Director of Research in Machine Learning within the Department of Engineering. He holds multiple significant leadership roles including Programme Director for Trust and Society at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), and previously served as Programme Director for AI at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK national institute for data science and AI. His work bridges theoretical machine learning research with practical applications and societal implications of artificial intelligence. Weller's research interests span a broad spectrum of AI and machine learning topics with a particular focus on ensuring beneficial societal outcomes. His work encompasses explainability, fairness, robustness, scalability, privacy, safety, and ethics in AI systems. He has made significant contributions to trustworthy machine learning, including developing frameworks for AI governance, certification, and human-AI collaboration. His research group actively investigates neuro-symbolic approaches, privacy-preserving techniques, and methods for improving the reliability and interpretability of AI systems. His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward addressing the practical challenges of deploying AI systems in real-world contexts, particularly focusing on certification frameworks, governance mechanisms, and human-centered approaches. His work spans theoretical advances in machine learning architectures while maintaining a strong connection to societal impact, with publications appearing in top venues across AI, machine learning, and interdisciplinary applications. Scientific Awards: MBE for services to digital innovation (2022 Queen's Birthday Honours) Turing AI Fellowship for Trustworthy Machine Learning Weller actively supervises a large group of PhD students and postdocs, with current students including Juyeon Heo, Yanzhi Chen, Katie Collins, Isaac Reid, Yichao Liang, Herbie Bradley, and Shoaib Siddiqui. His former students have gone on to positions at leading institutions including Google DeepMind, ETH Zurich, NYU, and MPI-IS Tübingen. He has served on numerous advisory boards including the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, UNESCO's expert group on AI ethics, and the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on AI. His research has been supported through his Turing AI Fellowship and various collaborative projects focused on safe and ethical AI development. Weller leads a vibrant research group focused on trustworthy machine learning, which actively organizes workshops and conferences including ICML 2024 (where he served as Program Chair), multiple workshops on responsible AI, and events through the ELLIS network. His group collaborates extensively across disciplines, working with researchers in computer science, social sciences, law, and policy to address the multifaceted challenges of developing beneficial AI systems.
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUnited States
Nadia Figueroa is the Shalini and Rajeev Misra Presidential Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds secondary appointments in Computer and Information Science (CIS) and Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), and is a core faculty member at the GRASP Lab. Prior to Penn, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT’s CSAIL and earned her PhD in Robotics from EPFL under Prof. Aude Billard. Her research focuses on physical and perceptual adaptive intelligence for robots, enabling fluid collaboration with humans in dynamic environments. Key applications include robot learning from demonstration , human-robot co-manipulation , safe navigation in human-centric spaces , and rehabilitation robotics . Her work integrates machine learning control theory artificial intelligence biomechanics psychology with guarantees of stability, safety, and robustness . Recent publications highlight advancements in reactive collision avoidance dynamical system learning intent estimation EEG-driven assistive control origami-based reconfigurable robots across platforms like autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. She has authored a 2022 textbook on dynamical systems for robot control and received the Presidential Assistant Professorship at Penn.
Shoudong Huang is a Professor at the School of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering , University of Technology Sydney, and Deputy Director of the UTS Robotics Institute. His research focuses on mobile robot navigation , SLAM , nonlinear state estimation , and surgical robotics . He has published over 200 papers and is recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential Scholars in Robotics (Aminer, 2018). PhD in Automatic Control, Northeastern University (China) Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Hong Kong (1998-2000) Research Fellow, Australian National University (2001-2003) Full-time academic roles at UTS since 2004 His work addresses challenges in robot localization across extreme environments (underwater, underground mining, surgical settings) and develops globally optimal SLAM algorithms with guaranteed performance. He has secured over $4 million AUD in external funding, including ARC Discovery grants and industry partnerships. Recent publications emphasize cross-modal calibration (camera-LiDAR), interval analysis for bounded noise , and template-based deformable surface reconstruction . These span applications in autonomous driving, surgical navigation, and UAV guidance. Chancellor’s Medal for Research Excellence (2020) Supervisor of the Year (2023) Best Paper Award (2016 ICARCV) Huang serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Robotics and International Journal of Robotics Research , and has held leadership roles in top robotics conferences like IROS and RSS. His collaborations span MIT, USC, Zhejiang University, and industry partners including PMSW Research Pty Ltd and Multiplex Constructions Pty Ltd.
University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignUnited States
Huan Zhang serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with affiliate appointments in the Department of Computer Science and the Coordinated Science Laboratory. His research focuses on building trustworthy AI systems with formal verification techniques to provide provable guarantees for safety-critical applications, particularly in machine learning and neural networks. Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA in 2020, advised by Professor Cho-Jui Hsieh. His academic journey includes an M.S. in Computer Engineering from UC Davis (2014) and a Bachelor of Engineering from Zhejiang University (2012). Prior to joining UIUC, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University (2021-2023) with Professor Zico Kolter. Huan Zhang's research program centers on formal verification of machine learning systems, with particular emphasis on neural network verification, AI safety, robustness, and reliability. He pioneered the linear bound propagation-based verification framework that enables formal verification for networks with millions of neurons. His work spans five major research categories: formal verification of machine learning, training trustworthy ML models, machine learning safety and adversarial attacks, reinforcement learning safety, and optimization for scalable machine learning. His CROWN framework (NeurIPS 2018) established a foundational approach for neural network verification through efficient linear bound propagation. His recent publications demonstrate a strategic expansion from foundational verification techniques toward increasingly complex systems including large language models, vision-language models, and robotic control systems. The research trajectory shows a clear progression from theoretical frameworks to practical implementations with real-world applications, particularly in safety-critical domains. His work increasingly bridges formal methods with practical AI deployment requirements. Winner of International Verification of Neural Networks Competition (VNN-COMP) as team leader (2021-2024) Schmidt Futures AI2050 Early Career Fellowship ($300,000 research grant) Adversarial Machine Learning (AdvML) Rising Star Award (2021) IBM PhD Fellowship (2018) Dr. Zhang leads the development of α,β-CROWN, a neural network verifier that has won VNN-COMP 2021-2023, and auto_LiRPA, a PyTorch-based library for perturbation analysis on general computational graphs. He has mentored numerous graduate students from CMU, UCLA, UIUC, and Columbia University. His research is supported by significant funding including the Schmidt Futures fellowship and industry collaborations. He teaches courses including ECE 120, ECE 484, ECE 584, and ECE 598 HZ on topics ranging from computing fundamentals to safe autonomy and machine learning. Dr. Zhang maintains active research collaborations across multiple institutions and is affiliated with UIUC's Coordinated Science Laboratory. His work has significant implications for safety-critical AI applications in autonomous systems, healthcare, and other mission-critical domains where reliability guarantees are essential. He regularly gives guest lectures at institutions including Yale, Stony Brook, and the University of Nebraska Lincoln on formal verification techniques.
Eric Eaton is a Research Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania , and a core member of the GRASP (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception) Laboratory . His expertise centers on lifelong machine learning , transfer learning , and interactive AI , with impactful applications to robotics, precision medicine, and computational sustainability. Education & Affiliations Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) – dissertation on selective knowledge transfer advised by Marie desJardins Former Visiting Assistant Professor, Bryn Mawr College Former part-time faculty, Swarthmore College and UMBC Two years as Senior Research Scientist at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories Research Interests Eaton’s research advances versatile AI systems that can learn multiple tasks over long lifetimes, transfer knowledge across domains, and interact effectively with humans and other agents. Core themes include: Lifelong & continual learning – continual acquisition and refinement of knowledge across tasks Knowledge transfer – selective, cross-domain, and zero-shot transfer techniques Interactive AI – human-in-the-loop learning and interpretable models Applications – autonomous service robotics, precision medicine, sustainability, and search & rescue Selected Scientific Awards IJCAI-16 Distinguished Student Paper Award for zero-shot transfer research IJCAI-15 Best Paper Nomination for autonomous cross-domain transfer ICML 2020 Workshop Best Paper Award for lifelong policy gradient learning Grants & Funding Current and past research is supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Lockheed Martin, enabling large-scale projects in lifelong robotics and medical AI. Students & Postdocs Eaton has advised a diverse cohort of scholars including current PhD students David Isele, Seungwon Lee, Jorge Mendez, and Mohammad Rostami, as well as postdocs Boyu Wang and numerous alumni now in faculty positions or leading industry research teams. Labs & Teams He leads the Autonomous Service Robot Fleet within GRASP, creating low-cost robots that learn lifelong skills in university and office settings. His group also collaborates with clinicians for AI-driven precision medicine, and partners with defense and sustainability initiatives.
Sicun Gao is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on practical algorithms for NP-hard search and optimization problems in computational systems, emphasizing combinatorial perspectives in numerical and statistical contexts to achieve reliable autonomy. Research Interests: Automated reasoning, Hamilton-Jacobi reachability, safe reinforcement learning, control barrier functions, and optimization in cyber-physical systems. Teaching: Courses on AI search, optimization, and graduate research seminars. The 15 most recent publications highlight advancements in safe AI control, motion planning, and policy optimization, often integrating neural networks with formal verification. Awards include the IEEE Power & Energy Society Technical Committee Prize Paper Award and the IROS RoboCup Best Paper Award. He advises PhD students working on AI-driven control and robotics, with alumni placed at institutions like Seoul National University, Amazon, and Apple. Grants include NSF Career, Air Force Young Investigator, and DARPA Assured Autonomy funding. His lab develops tools like dReal for automated reasoning in nonlinear theories over the reals.
Roberto Martin-Martin is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he leads the Robot Interactive Intelligence (RobIN) Lab. His research bridges robotics, computer vision, and machine learning to enable robots to operate autonomously in human-centric environments like homes and offices. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab working with Fei-Fei Li and Silvio Savarese, and an AI Researcher at Salesforce AI. Education: Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Robotics from Technische Universität Berlin (TUB), advised by Professor Oliver Brock B.Sc. from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Dr. Martin-Martin's research focuses on developing AI algorithms that combine reinforcement learning and imitation learning with advanced planning and control to address core challenges in robot perception. His work spans mobile and whole-body manipulation, dexterous and contact-rich interactions, and long-horizon tasks in unstructured environments. He takes inspiration from human cognition through psychology and cognitive science to develop solutions for skills ranging from simple pick-and-place operations to complex tasks like cooking and furniture assembly. His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward enabling robots to learn from human demonstrations, particularly through video, and to safely adapt these demonstrations to their own morphology. There's significant emphasis on mobile manipulation, bimanual tasks, and developing hardware that supports robust robot learning through trial and error. His work shows increasing integration of large language models and vision-language models to enhance robot understanding and task execution. Scientific Awards: RSS Pioneer (2020) Winner of Amazon Picking Challenge (2015) RSS Best Systems Paper Award (2016) ICRA Best Paper Award IROS Best Mechanism Award Amazon Faculty Award AAAI Young Faculty IJCAI Early Faculty Nominated for Best Paper at IROS (2014, 2017) Dr. Martin-Martin advises PhD students including Arpit Bahety, who is working on mobile manipulation and learning. He serves as Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Mobile Manipulation and is a co-founder of QueerInRobotics. His research is supported by industry partnerships and academic funding sources that enable his lab to develop both hardware and software innovations in robotics. He directs the Robot Interactive Intelligence (RobIN) Lab at UT Austin, which takes a holistic approach to robot intelligence, developing both the hardware (like the BaRiFlex gripper) and software frameworks necessary for robots to learn from interaction. The lab's research addresses the full pipeline from perception to action, with particular emphasis on learning from human demonstrations, safe exploration, and adapting to novel objects and environments.
Dr. Keith Alexander Sharkey is a Professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. He is also a Full Member of both the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and The Calvin, Phoebe and Joan Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases. Dr. Sharkey has been at the University of Calgary since his appointment as Assistant Professor in 1990, dedicating his career to understanding the neural control of the gastrointestinal tract. From 2005-2021, he held the Crohn's and Colitis Canada Chair in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Research, demonstrating his longstanding commitment to advancing knowledge in gastrointestinal sciences. Dr. Sharkey's educational journey began with a BSc (Hons) in Nutrition from the University of London in 1981, followed by a PhD in Physiology from the University of Liverpool in 1985. After completing postdoctoral training in Hungary, the UK, and Canada, he joined the University of Calgary faculty in 1990, where he has remained throughout his distinguished academic career. Dr. Sharkey's research program centers on understanding the physiology and pathophysiology of the neural control of the gastrointestinal tract and brain-gut interactions in health and disease. His laboratory investigates two main areas: the role of the endocannabinoid system in regulating GI motility and intestinal barrier function, and the physiology of the enteric nervous system in controlling motility and barrier function. His work employs state-of-the-art approaches including live cell imaging and molecular genetics. Recent publications show his expanding interest in connections between gut function and neurodegenerative conditions like ALS, with multiple 2024-2025 papers examining sexual dimorphism in disease processes and gut-brain axis mechanisms. Fellow, Royal Society of Canada (2024) Cumming School of Medicine's van de Sande Distinguished Achievement Award for Mentorship (2021) Distinguished Research Award, American Physiological Society (2021) Finkelstein Award for Excellence, Crohn's and Colitis Canada (2016) Fellow, Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2015) Fellow, Canadian Association of Gastroenterology (2015) Killam Annual Professor Award, University of Calgary (2013) Dr. Sharkey has mentored numerous students throughout his career, as evidenced by his 2021 Mentorship Award. His research is supported by significant funding, including a CIHR Foundation grant exploring how enteric nerves and glia maintain intestinal homeostasis. He has also participated in university strategic initiatives focused on Brain and Mental Health (2015-2021) and Infections, Inflammations and Chronic Diseases (2015-2021), demonstrating his interdisciplinary approach. The Sharkey Lab provides a safe, inclusive, and diverse research environment that encourages open scientific exchange from diverse viewpoints. His laboratory is actively engaged in multiple collaborative projects, including investigations with UBC Okanagan on diet and probiotics targeting the gut-brain metabolic interactome, and with University of Calgary colleagues studying gut microbiota's role in ALS. Dr. Sharkey continues to advance our understanding of neural mechanisms controlling gastrointestinal function with upcoming courses scheduled for Fall 2024 and Winter 2025.
Rachit Agarwal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, with research focusing on systems, networking, and theoretical problems arising in practical systems. He leads a research group working on resource disaggregation, host architecture, secure cloud storage, and datacenter design. PhD in Computer Science, Cornell University Undergraduate, IIT Kanpur His research spans three major directions: Resource Disaggregation (with $3M NSF and Google awards), Host Architecture (exploring terabit interconnects), and PANCAKE (secure oblivious cloud storage with $1M NSF award). He also contributed to foundational work in Near-optimal Datacenter Design and Data Plane Monitoring . Awards include the Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER, IRTF Applied Networking Prize, and multiple best paper awards. His recent publications focus on host network architecture, congestion control, oblivious data access mechanisms, and secure cloud storage systems. He has advised multiple Ph.D. and postdoctoral researchers who now hold faculty positions at leading institutions. Sloan Research Fellowship NSF CAREER award Kavli Fellowship IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize SIGCOMM Best Student Paper Award Usenix Security Distinguished Paper Award Tau Beta Pi Professor of the Year 2025 Rachit has advised numerous students including current Cornell advisees like Midhul Vuppalapati, Shreyas Kharbanda, and Omar Eqbal. Former advisees include Saksham Agarwal (UIUC), Qizhe Cai (UVA), and Mina Tahmasbi Arashloo (University of Waterloo). His research is supported by large NSF grants and industry awards, with deployments in real-world systems and open-source contributions.
Mark Riedl is a Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and Associate Director of the Georgia Tech Machine Learning Center (ML@GT). His research focuses on human-centered artificial intelligence, emphasizing the development of AI technologies that naturally interact with humans. Key areas include story understanding/generation, computational creativity, explainable AI, and ensuring AI safety. He holds affiliations with the GVU Center, Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), and Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). His work is supported by NSF, DARPA, ONR, and industry partners like Google and Meta. Notable awards include the DARPA Young Faculty Award and NSF CAREER Award, plus three Pulitzer Prizes (collaborative with Roko M. Bask). Riedl's recent projects include STORY2GAME (AI-driven game design) and ethical AI frameworks addressing transparency and accountability. His research bridges theoretical advancements with practical applications in education, healthcare, and creative industries. Research interests span AI ethics, narrative systems, and AI's societal impact. He explores how AI can be made more transparent through explainable mechanisms while maintaining creativity and safety. Collaborations with Roko Bask on futuristic culinary trends have produced influential works. His labs and teams focus on interdisciplinary approaches, combining computer science with social sciences to shape responsible AI development. Key grants and projects include NSF-funded initiatives on AI in education and DARPA-supported work on AI safety. His contributions to explainable AI challenge traditional XAI paradigms, advocating for human-centered approaches that prioritize user understanding and ethical implications. Current efforts emphasize adapting LLMs for world modeling and enhancing RL agents with causal reasoning capabilities.
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)United States
Richard M. Murray is the Thomas E. and Doris Everhart Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He holds a B.S. from Caltech (1985), M.S. from UC Berkeley (1988), and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley (1990). He has served in academic roles from Assistant Professor (1991–1997) to his current endowed professorship. He chaired the Engineering and Applied Science division (2000–2005) and Biology and Biological Engineering (2020–2024). His research focuses on feedback control in biological and autonomous systems, synthetic cells, and networked control systems. Collaborators include experts in robotics, synthetic biology, and systems biology. Key awards include the IEEE Control Systems Award and election to the National Academy of Engineering. His educational contributions span courses on control systems, robotics, and bioengineering. Current research projects include the Developer Cell initiative (Sloan Foundation), layered testing for autonomous systems (AFOSR), and microbiome-based environmental solutions (CHARMME, ARO). He advises numerous graduate students and postdocs, with notable alumni in academia and industry. Labs include facilities in Keck and Steele laboratories at Caltech. His work bridges control theory, synthetic biology, and autonomous systems to address societal challenges like environmental monitoring and safe autonomy.
Anca Dragan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, where she runs the InterACT Lab focused on algorithms for human-AI and human-robot interaction. Currently on leave from Berkeley, she leads AI Safety and Alignment at Google DeepMind, overseeing safety for Gemini models and preparing for future advancements. Dragan has been a co-PI of the Center for Human-Compatible AI and served on the steering committee for the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab. B.Sc. in Computer Science from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University Dr. Dragan's research focuses on enabling AI agents to work effectively with, around, and in support of people. Her work bridges robotics, machine learning, and game theory to create systems that better understand human preferences and coordinate with users. Key areas include AI alignment (ensuring AI does what people actually want), learning reward functions from diverse human feedback forms, and developing algorithms for human-AI collaboration across domains like autonomous vehicles, brain-machine interfaces, and recommender systems. Her research emphasizes maintaining uncertainty about human preferences and accounting for the plurality of human values. Dr. Dragan's recent publications reveal a strong focus on addressing fundamental challenges in AI safety and alignment. Her work spans theoretical foundations of reward learning, practical implementations for human-AI coordination, and critical examinations of limitations in current approaches. There's a clear trajectory toward more robust, safe, and value-aligned AI systems that can handle complex human preferences while avoiding both present-day harms and potential catastrophic risks. IEEE RAS Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation (2021) McEntyre Award for Excellence in Teaching (2020) PECASE (Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering) (2019) Sloan Fellowship (2018) NSF CAREER Award (2017) Okawa Foundation Award (2017) MIT Tech Review 35 Innovators Under 35 (2017) Multiple best paper awards at top robotics and AI conferences Dr. Dragan has mentored numerous successful students who have gone on to faculty positions at MIT, Stanford, CMU, and Princeton, as well as industry roles at DeepMind, Waymo, and Meta. Her advising philosophy emphasizes both technical rigor and consideration of broader societal impacts. She has secured significant research funding including NSF CAREER, ONR Young Investigator, and Okawa Foundation awards, supporting work on human-AI interaction and alignment. Dragan has also consulted for Waymo for six years, helping develop roadmaps for deploying increasingly learning-based safety-critical systems. Dr. Dragan leads the InterACT Lab at UC Berkeley, which has produced influential work on Cooperative Inverse Reinforcement Learning, Inverse Reward Design, and other foundational concepts in human-AI interaction. The lab's research has significantly shaped the field of AI alignment, with applications spanning autonomous vehicles that coordinate with human drivers, brain-machine interfaces that adapt to user needs, and language models that better understand human preferences. Current work focuses on scaling safety approaches as AI capabilities advance, ensuring alignment keeps pace with technological progress.
Insup Lee is the Cecilia Fitler Moore Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Director of the PRECISE Center at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science. He holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering and the Perelman School of Medicine’s Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics. IEEE TCCPS Distinguished Leadership Award (2023) Fellow of the AAAS (2022) Test of Time Award, Runtime Verification (2019) Fellow of the ACM (2017) Best Paper Awards at IEEE ICPS, ACM/IEEE ICCPS, and MEMOCODE His research focuses on cyber-physical systems , real-time and embedded systems , safe autonomy , and internet of medical things , with applications in healthcare and connected systems. He advises PhD students including Eric Lu, Kaustubh Sridhar, Sooyong Jang, and Jean Park (co-advised with Kevin Johnson). Recent publications address safety monitoring for learning-enabled systems, model-free control synthesis using reinforcement learning, and multilingual toxicity guardrails for large language models. His team collaborates with institutions like Hillrom and Penn Nursing to optimize medical device usage in clinical settings.
Prof. Dr. Ana Bastos is a Research Professor and Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC) in Germany, affiliated with Leipzig University's Institute for Earth System Science and Remote Sensing. She holds a PhD in Geophysical and Geoinformation Science (2015, U. Lisbon) and a BSc+MSc in Environment and Energy Engineering (2011, U. Lisbon). Her research bridges atmospheric science, ecology, and biogeochemistry to study carbon-cycle dynamics, climate extremes, and ecosystem disturbances. She leads major projects such as the ERC Starting Grant-funded ForExD initiative and contributes to global carbon cycle assessments like RECCAP-2. Key roles include membership in the World Climate Research Programme's Safe Landing Climates initiative and leadership in the ICOS-RI Drought Task Force. She has over 40 international conference presentations and organizes sessions at AGU and EGU meetings. Her awards include the EGU Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award (2022) and the Beutenberg Campus Award (2021). She actively mentors early-career researchers through PhD and postdoc programs focused on forest disturbance modeling and remote sensing applications.
