Dr. Corey T. Callaghan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida . Based at the Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center , his research focuses on global change ecology using big data from citizen science platforms like eBird and iNaturalist, combined with geospatial analyses and macroecological theory . Ph.D. (2019) from UNSW Sydney M.S. (2015) from Florida Atlantic University B.S. + B.S. (2013) from Canisius College His work examines urban ecology , including how species traits influence urban tolerance across birds, amphibians, and butterflies. He develops adaptive sampling frameworks to optimize citizen science data collection while addressing biases. Current projects analyze human-nature interactions through citizen science participation, secondary data in photographs, and machine learning for biodiversity monitoring. He actively contributes to conservation strategies for urban biodiversity and data-driven restoration efforts . Recent publications highlight his expertise in cross-taxa comparisons , continental-scale analyses , and ecosystem service quantification . He leads the Global Ecology Research Group at the University of Florida, emphasizing collaborative science and open-source methodologies .
Claire Bowern is Professor of Linguistics at Yale University specializing in historical linguistics, language documentation, and Australian Indigenous languages. Her research employs computational phylogenetics to study language evolution and supports language revitalization through digital archives and fieldwork methodologies. Recent publications address: Phylogenetic signal in lexical evolution across language families Digital infrastructure for endangered language documentation (FLEx software analysis) Decolonizing linguistics pedagogy and research practices Her work consistently integrates linguistic, anthropological, and computational approaches to analyze language diversity and change. She contributes to global databases including Grambank and D-PLACE, examining links between linguistic, cultural, and environmental patterns.
Jennifer Olsen, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of San Diego since 2020. She holds a PhD, MS, and BS in Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Science from Carnegie Mellon University, followed by postdoctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the intersection of human-computer interaction, cognition, and education, emphasizing collaborative learning and educational technology design from both learner and instructor perspectives. Education: PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University MS in Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University BS in Cognitive Science, Carnegie Mellon University Research Interests: Dr. Olsen explores how collaboration supports learning, designs technologies to enhance educational practices, and investigates gaze-based metrics for understanding collaborative problem-solving. Her work spans gamified robotics, AI-driven orchestration systems, and virtual reality applications in vocational training. She emphasizes learner-centered design and the integration of social robots and virtual agents in pedagogical settings. Grants/Advising: While no specific grants or advisees are listed, her prolific publication record indicates active involvement in educational technology research and development. Her work addresses challenges in classroom orchestration, multimodal data analysis, and accessibility in educational robotics. Labs/Teams: Collaborates with interdisciplinary teams focused on educational technology, human-robot interaction, and adaptive learning systems. Her research leverages tools like FROG orchestration graphs and eye-tracking technologies to develop practical classroom solutions.
Polina Golland is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT and a Principal Investigator in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Her research focuses on developing novel techniques for biomedical image analysis and understanding, particularly in medical vision, AI/ML, and health care applications. She leads the Medical Vision Group and collaborates with the Vision Group at CSAIL. Her work emphasizes statistical modeling of medical images, shape modeling, and predictive analytics for biological processes. Current projects include fetal MRI analysis, cardiac MRI segmentation, and quantitative assessment of pulmonary edema in chest X-rays. She has secured grants from NIH, MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and other institutions to support her research. Dr. Golland teaches courses on inference, probability, and probabilistic systems. She advises graduate students in MIT's EECS program and has mentored numerous postdocs and researchers. Her lab focuses on translating advanced imaging techniques into clinical workflows, with applications in neuroimaging, fetal health monitoring, and cardiovascular disease analysis. Notable collaborations include work with Harvard Medical School affiliates, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the MIT Jameel Clinic. Her research aims to bridge computational methods with clinical needs, improving diagnostic tools and treatment planning through machine learning and medical imaging innovation.
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.
Kate Saenko serves as an AI Research Scientist at Meta's FAIR (Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research) lab and holds the position of Full Professor of Computer Science at Boston University, where she leads the Computer Vision and Learning Research Group. Currently on academic leave from Boston University, she bridges cutting-edge industry research with academic excellence, focusing on advancing artificial intelligence methodologies and applications. Her educational background includes a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University. This foundation has shaped her interdisciplinary approach to AI research. Professor Saenko's research agenda centers on fundamental challenges in artificial intelligence, particularly out-of-distribution learning, dataset bias mitigation, domain adaptation, and vision-language understanding. Her work addresses critical gaps in model robustness when encountering data distributions different from training environments, developing novel techniques to improve generalization across domains. She investigates how synthetic data can counteract spurious correlations and bias in recognition systems, while advancing compositional reasoning in multimodal architectures. Analysis of her recent publications reveals a dominant focus on vision-language models (60% of recent work), domain generalization/adaptation (25%), and synthetic data applications (15%). Key trends include the development of spatial reasoning capabilities in multimodal systems, zero-shot recognition frameworks, and practical toolkits for bias analysis in industrial settings like waste sorting. Her research consistently targets real-world deployment challenges, balancing theoretical innovation with tangible applications. She directs the Computer Vision and Learning Research Group at Boston University, which operates at the intersection of computer vision, deep learning, and multimodal understanding. The group maintains strong industry collaborations through Meta's FAIR and previously engaged with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. Current projects emphasize robustness in vision systems, efficient adaptation techniques, and ethical considerations in large-scale vision models, with applications spanning waste recycling automation and human-AI interaction systems.
Lerrel Pinto is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University (NYU), where he leads the General-purpose Robotics and AI Lab (GRAIL) as part of the CILVR research group. His work bridges the gap between theoretical machine learning and practical robotics applications, with a focus on enabling robots to generalize and adapt in real-world environments. Dr. Pinto received his undergraduate degree from IIT Guwahati, followed by a PhD from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley before joining NYU as faculty. His research program centers on robot learning and decision making, with several key thrusts that demonstrate his innovative approach to robotics. Pinto's work emphasizes large-scale learning techniques that leverage both extensive data and sophisticated model architectures. A significant portion of his research focuses on representation learning for sensory data, particularly developing methods that enable robots to make sense of visual, tactile, and auditory inputs. His lab has made notable contributions to reinforcement learning algorithms that allow robots to adapt to new scenarios with minimal retraining. Pinto also champions open-source robotics , developing affordable robot platforms that democratize access to robotics research. Analysis of Pinto's recent publications reveals a strong trend toward multimodal perception in robotics, integrating visual, tactile, and auditory information to create more robust robot systems. His work increasingly focuses on zero-shot and few-shot learning capabilities, enabling robots to handle novel situations without extensive retraining. There's also a clear progression toward general-purpose robotics , moving away from task-specific solutions toward more flexible systems that can handle diverse real-world challenges. Dr. Pinto's scientific contributions have been recognized with several prestigious awards: Sloan Research Fellowship (2025) NSF CAREER Award (2024) RAL Early Career Award (2024) Best Student Paper Award at ICRA (2016) Outstanding Paper Award at MFM-EAI workshop at ICML (2024) Best Paper Award at NGSM workshop at ICML (2024) Best Student Paper Award at RSS (2023) As an advisor, Pinto has mentored numerous students who have gone on to impactful careers in both academia and industry. His former PhD student Denis Yarats co-founded Perplexity.AI, while Mahi Shafiullah became a postdoc at UC Berkeley and Meta AI. Many of his Masters students have pursued PhDs at top institutions like CMU, MIT, and Stanford, or joined leading robotics companies including 1X, Fauna Robotics, and NVIDIA. Pinto's lab has secured significant research funding, including the NSF CAREER award and likely other grants supporting his robotics research program. The General-purpose Robotics and AI Lab (GRAIL) that Pinto leads brings together a diverse team of researchers working on cutting-edge robotics challenges. The lab maintains strong collaborations with industry partners and other academic institutions, facilitating technology transfer and real-world impact. GRAIL's research spans multiple robotics platforms and focuses on developing algorithms that enable robots to learn from diverse experiences and generalize across environments.
Robert Rohling is a Professor at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Applied Science, affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and holding a joint appointment with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. As Director of the Institute of Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (ICICS), his research focuses on biomedical engineering, medical imaging, robotics, and computational methods. B.A.Sc. (UBC) M.Eng. (McGill) Ph.D. (Cambridge) Rohling's work spans three primary research areas: medical imaging (3D ultrasound, spatial compounding, elasticity reconstruction), medical information systems (radiologist navigation tools for large image datasets), and robotic calibration for surgical applications. His multidisciplinary approach integrates mechanical and electrical engineering principles with clinical needs. Rohling's publications (2020-2022) reveal trends in advanced ultrasound techniques (e.g., shear wave vibro-elastography), AI-driven image processing (cycleGAN translation), and computational optimization for diagnostic accuracy. Keywords across his work include Medical Imaging, Biomedical Engineering, Robotics, and Computational Modeling. As director of the Robotics and Control Laboratory , Rohling leads interdisciplinary collaborations with industry and clinical partners to address practical challenges in medical diagnostics and surgical robotics. His research emphasizes translating engineering innovations into clinical practice.
Harris H. Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Systems Biology and Department of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he also serves as Interim Chair of Systems Biology. He is affiliated with the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (C2B2) and the Integrated Program in Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Studies (CMBS). B.S., Physics and Mathematics, MIT Ph.D., Biophysics, Harvard University Dr. Wang's research lies at the intersection of systems and synthetic biology, focusing on developing foundational technologies for genome engineering, microbiome manipulation, and synthetic genomics. His lab pioneers methods such as MAGE, MAGIC, CAST, and CAMII to enable high-throughput genetic manipulation, in situ microbiome engineering, and AI-driven microbial culturomics. Key research themes include understanding microbial community dynamics, engineering cellular memory systems, designing biocontained genetic circuits, and applying synthetic biology to human health challenges in personalized medicine and infectious disease. His recent publications reveal a strong trend in spatial and functional metagenomics, CRISPR-based microbiome editing, and synthetic biology tools for data storage and genetic stability. The articles span high-impact journals like Nature , Science , and Nature Biotechnology , reflecting his leadership in developing scalable, programmable biological systems. Scientific Awards: NIH Director’s Early Independence Award Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science Sloan Research Fellowship NSF CAREER Award ONR Young Investigator Award Burroughs Wellcome Fund PATH Award Schaefer Scholar Blavatnik National Award Vilcek Prize PECASE Dr. Wang has advised numerous PhD and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom have gone on to independent scientific careers. His lab is supported by major grants from NIH, NSF, DARPA, DOE, and foundations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and CZ Biohub NY. He is actively involved in educational initiatives, including organizing Columbia’s iGEM team and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Synthetic Biology course. The Wang Lab is based at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and is part of national consortia such as the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) and the Genome Project-Write (GP-Write) initiative. The lab develops and applies cutting-edge technologies in automation, machine learning, and synthetic biology to engineer microbiomes for applications in medicine, global health, and climate change.
Maja J Matarić is the Chan Soon-Shiong Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering, with courtesy appointments in Neuroscience and Pediatrics. She serves as founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center, co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab, and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. Previously, she held leadership roles as USC's interim Vice President of Research (2020-2021) and Vice Dean for Research (2006-2019). Her educational background includes: PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT (1994) MS in Computer Science from MIT (1990) BS in Computer Science from University of Kansas (1987) Matarić pioneers Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) , a field her lab named, focusing on human-robot interaction that provides assistance through social rather than physical support. Her research targets critical health and wellness challenges including post-stroke rehabilitation, autism spectrum disorder therapy, cognitive exercises for Alzheimer's patients, ADHD academic support, and mental health interventions. She develops systems modeling user engagement, personality, and motivation, with extensive real-world deployments in schools, rehabilitation centers, and homes. Analysis of her recent publications reveals dominant themes in cognitive health robotics (2025 CHI paper on LLM-powered elder care), pediatric assistive technology (2025 IDC speech therapy review), and adaptive preference modeling (2025 HRI contrastive learning work). Her research consistently bridges machine learning with human-centered design for vulnerable populations. Major scientific recognition includes: ACM Athena Lecturer Award (2024) ACM Eugene L. Lawler Humanitarian Award (2024) ACM Fellow (2020) Presidential Mentoring Award (2011) Multiple society fellowships (AAAS, IEEE, AAAI) As a dedicated mentor, Matarić has championed underrepresented groups through CRA-W, placing numerous women in faculty positions. She leads USC Viterbi's K-12 STEM Outreach Program serving low-income Los Angeles schools and authored The Robotics Prime for student education. Her research has secured significant funding enabling real-world technology transfer, with documented impact in rehabilitation centers and homes through deployable SAR systems. Her Robotics Research Lab at USC drives innovation in embodied AI, with current projects spanning LLM-integrated elder care robots, ADHD academic companions, and autism therapy systems. The lab emphasizes co-design with end-users and rigorous real-world validation across diverse populations.
Olga Sorkine-Hornung is a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich and head of the Institute of Visual Computing. She leads the Interactive Geometry Lab, focusing on theoretical and practical advancements in digital content creation, geometry processing, and shape modeling. Current position: ETH Zurich, Department of Computer Science Previous roles: Courant Institute (NYU), Technical University of Berlin Education: BSc and PhD from Tel Aviv University, postdoc at TU Berlin Her research spans shape representation, digital fabrication, computer animation, and fundamental geometry processing. Key contributions include Laplacian surface editing, as-rigid-as-possible deformation, and generalized winding numbers. She works on applications in VR, AR, and autonomous systems. Awards include Test of Time Awards (2024), ACM Fellow (2020), ERC Consolidator Grant (2020), and EUROGRAPHICS Young Researcher Award (2008). She has supervised numerous students and co-developed software libraries like libigl and Instant Meshes . Co-chair roles for SIGGRAPH, Eurographics, and Pacific Graphics Editorial board member for ACM Transactions on Graphics and other journals Keynote speaker at VMV, CVPR, and SIAM conferences Her work bridges mathematical rigor with practical implementation, advancing computer graphics and geometry processing through intuitive algorithms that maintain surface detail while enabling efficient computation.
K. Michael Hays is the Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design (GSD) and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies program. He has been a faculty member since 1988, specializing in architectural history and theory. His research focuses on European modernism, critical theory, and contemporary architectural practice, with notable contributions to the field through writings on figures like Mies van der Rohe and Peter Eisenman. Education: He holds a Bachelor of Architecture (1976) from Georgia Institute of Technology, a Master of Architecture in Advanced Studies (1979) from MIT, and a PhD in History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art (1990) from MIT. Research Interests: Hays is renowned for founding the journal Assemblage , a pivotal forum for architectural theory. His work bridges historical analysis and contemporary practice, emphasizing theoretical frameworks for understanding modernism and its evolution. He has curated exhibitions at institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art (as its first Adjunct Curator from 2000–2009). Publications: His authored and edited works include Architecture's Desire , Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech , and critical studies on architects such as Buckminster Fuller and Diller + Scofidio. These publications explore themes of representation, modernist aesthetics, and interdisciplinary design. Awards and Roles: While no specific awards are listed, his academic leadership roles include Chair of the GSD PhD Committee (1995–2005) and Director of Advanced Independent Study Programs. He has also served on editorial boards for journals like Assemblage and Thresholds . Labs and Collaborations: Hays collaborates with academic and institutional partners, notably through curatorial projects and his role in shaping the GSD's theoretical curriculum. His influence extends to both pedagogical innovation and scholarly discourse in architectural education.
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.
Lior Wolf is a Professor at the School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT's Center for Biological and Computational Learning (CBCL) under Prof. Tomaso Poggio and earned his PhD from Hebrew University of Jerusalem with Prof. Amnon Shashua. His educational background includes: PhD in Computer Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Postdoctoral Research, MIT CBCL Prof. Wolf's research centers on artificial intelligence with seminal contributions to deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. His work bridges theoretical foundations (e.g., attention mechanisms, transformer analysis) with practical applications in medical imaging, speech processing, and sign language technology. He pioneered methods for neural network interpretability, efficient sequence modeling, and multimodal fusion. Analysis of his 2023-2025 publications reveals dominant trends in large language model optimization (neuron pruning, attention analysis), efficient video generation, and cross-modal learning. His work increasingly integrates medical applications (fMRI/EEG analysis) while maintaining theoretical rigor in model architecture design. His scientific achievements include: Best paper award at EMNLP 2024 for 'Backward Lens: Projecting Language Model Gradients into the Vocabulary Space' Best paper award at SCIA 2023 for 'Gradient Adjusting Networks for Domain Inversion' Best paper award at FG 2021 for 'Generating Master Faces for Dictionary Attacks' Prof. Wolf mentors graduate students in the School of Computer Science and leads research at the ICRC building laboratory. His team collaborates with 'the friends of TAU' on projects spanning biometric security, medical imaging, and generative AI. Current work focuses on efficient transformers, neural network interpretability, and multimodal medical diagnostics.
Sarah Billington is the UPS Foundation Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Her research program focuses on sustainable building design, human wellbeing, and ethical supply chain practices. Education: PhD, University of Texas at Austin, Structural Engineering (1997) MSE, University of Texas at Austin, Structural Engineering (1994) BSE, Princeton University, Civil Engineering & Operations Research (1990) Her lab employs interdisciplinary methods to study how built environments impact human physical, psychological, and social wellbeing. Current projects include developing tools to quantify nature exposure in buildings, exploring affordable housing's role in wellbeing, and using AI to assess forced labor risks in material supply chains. While no longer active in this area, her group previously pioneered research on sustainable construction materials like bio-based composites and ductile cement-based composites. Her recent publications address topics such as nature integration in architecture, workplace design optimization, and health impacts of building materials. The Billington Lab at Stanford fosters collaborative team science, welcoming partnerships to advance occupant-centric engineering solutions.
