Ranjay Krishna is an Assistant Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he co-directs the RAIVN lab and leads the computer vision team at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2). His research intersects computer vision , natural language processing , robotics , and human-computer interaction . PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University (2021) Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Stanford and Cornell His work has received best paper , outstanding paper , and orals at top conferences like CVPR, ACL, CSCW, NeurIPS, UIST, and ECCV. Media outlets including Science , Forbes , and PBS NOVA have covered his research. He has been supported by grants from Google , Apple , NFS , and others. Ranjay advises a diverse group of 15 PhD and postdoctoral researchers , including Jieyu Zhang, Benlin Liu, and Cheng-Yu Hsieh. His teams have developed benchmarks like MemoryBench and The Colosseum , and his PathFinder framework achieved 74% accuracy in skin melanoma diagnosis—surpassing human experts by 9%. Notable contributions include: Perception Tokens for visual reasoning in MLMs SAM2Act for robotic manipulation with memory Synthetic Visual Genome dataset with 5.6M relationships
Bryan A. Plummer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Boston University, affiliated with the IVC Group and the Artificial Intelligence Research (AIR) initiative at the Rafik B. Hariri Institute. He holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializing in computer vision. His research focuses on multimodal machine learning, efficient neural architectures, explainable AI, and robust ML systems. Plummer's work bridges vision and language, addressing challenges in domain generalization, synthetic data utilization, and model efficiency. Notable contributions include the Flickr30K Entities dataset and advancements in vision-language model robustness against web artifacts. He has advised over 20 students, with several securing roles at top institutions like NVIDIA and Google. His recent awards include the 3M Foundation Fellowship and NSF GRFP honorable mention. Plummer actively serves on conference committees (NeurIPS, CVPR, ICCV) and leads initiatives like the 1st Findings Workshop at ICCV'25.
Wenhu Chen is an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo's Computer Science Department and a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute. He also holds a part-time role as a Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind (20% allocation). His research focuses on natural language processing, deep learning, and multimodal reasoning, with contributions to models like MAmmoTH, OpenCoderInterpreter, and VISTA. He received awards including the Canada CIFAR AI Chair (2022) and the UCSB CS Outstanding Dissertation Award (2021). Education: PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara (under William Wang and Xifeng Yan). Research interests include complex reasoning, controllable GenAI, and multimodal benchmarks like MEGABench and MMMU. Grants include CIFAR AI Chair Funding (2022-2027), NSERC Discovery Fund (2023-2028), and multiple NRC Canada grants. He directs the TIGER Lab, advancing generative models in text, images, videos, and music. Recent talks include presentations on multimodal reasoning at Apple and NeurIPS workshops.
Professor Ping Luo is an Associate Professor and Assistant Director (Outreach and Advancement) at the School of Computing and Data Science, University of Hong Kong. He also serves as Associate Director (Innovation and Outreach) of the Musketers Foundation Institute of Data Science. His research focuses on developing advanced machine learning algorithms, particularly in computer vision and deep learning, emphasizing reinforcement learning, meta-learning, and foundational algorithm understanding. Luo holds a PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2014), supervised by Prof. Xiaoou Tang and Prof. Xiaogang Wang. His notable achievements include over 70 peer-reviewed publications in top venues like TPAMI, IJCV, ICML, and CVPR, alongside competition wins such as the 2014 ImageNet ILSVRC Challenge and the 2017 YouTube-8M Video Classification Challenge. His work spans applications in autonomous driving, video segmentation, and facial recognition. Education: PhD in Information Engineering (2014), Chinese University of Hong Kong Awards: 2011 HK PhD Fellow Award, 2013 Microsoft Research Fellow Award Professional Roles: Former Research Director at SenseTime Research Recruiting Postdocs, PhDs, and RAs His research interests include algorithm development for autonomous systems, deep learning foundations, and practical AI applications in computer vision. He maintains an active presence in academic outreach and industry collaboration.
Vibhav Gogate is a Professor and Associate Head of Research at University of Texas at Dallas, specializing in machine learning and artificial intelligence. His research focuses on probabilistic graphical models, statistical relational learning, and integrating deep learning with graphical models. Professor Gogate has received numerous awards including the NSF CAREER Award (2017), Outstanding Researcher Award (2022, 2017), and Best Paper awards at top AI conferences. His research funding includes projects from NSF and DARPA. Education: PhD, University of California, Irvine MS, University of Maine BS, University of Mumbai Recent Publications: His research spans probabilistic inference, tractable models, and neural network approaches for efficient reasoning, with publications in NeurIPS, AAAI, UAI, and AISTATS. Recent work focuses on scalable inference methods and explainable AI systems for complex domains. Research Funding: Secured over $8M in grants from DARPA and NSF for projects in explainable AI and probabilistic reasoning. Teaching: Regularly teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Advanced Statistical Methods.
Matthew Payne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. His affiliations include roles as Director of Graduate Studies and regional director for the Learning Games Initiative, a multi-institute research collective focused on game archiving and education. His research spans video game studies, media literacy, military entertainment, and the cultural history of video games. He explores play theory, media and war, and the intersection of media production with new technologies. The 15 most recent articles highlight his focus on video game studies, transmedia narratives, and the cultural implications of gaming. These works cover topics from Nintendo Amiibo to slow game time mechanics in Red Dead Redemption 2, with recurring themes of military representation and ludic storytelling. Matthew Payne has co-edited notable works including How to Play Video Games and Joystick Soldiers , emphasizing collaborative approaches to game studies and critical analysis of military gaming.
Manuel Kaufmann is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zürich. His work focuses on advanced 3D human motion capture, sensor-based systems, and computer vision applications. He is affiliated with the Institute of Informatics (inf.ethz.ch) and contributes to research in real-time motion tracking, dataset development, and machine learning integration for human-robot interaction. Research interests include holistic human-scene reconstruction from monocular videos, gaze estimation using EEG signals, and expressive avatar creation. His projects emphasize practical applications in robotics, sports analytics, and biomedical engineering, often leveraging electromagnetic and inertial sensors for high-precision data acquisition. His publications reflect a trend toward multi-modal data fusion, real-world dataset creation (e.g., WorldPose, ARCTIC), and addressing challenges in loose garment modeling (Reloo). These efforts aim to improve markerless motion capture, crowd analysis, and human-robot collaboration. No scientific awards or grants are explicitly listed. He has no documented advisees, though his research may involve collaborations with students or teams. His office is located at OAT X 23, Andreasstrasse 5, Zürich, Switzerland, and contact details include a phone number and professional email.
Shih-Fu Chang is the Dean of Columbia Engineering and holds the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professorship at Columbia University. His research focuses on computer vision, machine learning, and multimedia information retrieval. He is recognized as a foundational figure in the field of content-based visual search and has pioneered innovations in image/video search engines, crime prevention systems, and brain-machine interfaces. His leadership roles include Chair of Columbia's Electrical Engineering Department (2007-2010), Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2006-2008), and Senior Executive Vice Dean at Columbia Engineering, where he drives strategic planning and international collaboration. Dr. Chang has received prestigious awards including the ACM Multimedia Technical Achievement Award, IEEE Signal Processing Technical Achievement Award, and IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award. He is a Fellow of AAAS, ACM, and IEEE, and an Academician of Academia Sinica. His recent work emphasizes multimodal reasoning, few-shot learning, and vision-language systems, with applications in healthcare diagnostics and multimedia benchmarking. His research spans cross-modal understanding, event extraction, and adaptive AI systems. Key contributions include systems like Ferret-v2 for multimodal grounding and RESIN for schema-guided event tracking. He has advised multiple startups and actively contributes to curriculum development in AI and engineering education.
Professor Kay O'Halloran serves as Chair Professor and Head of Department of Communication and Media within the School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool since August 2019. She concurrently holds the position of Co-Director for the Digital Media and Society Institute (DMSI), demonstrating significant leadership across academic and research domains. Her career spans prestigious institutions including Curtin University (2013-2019) and National University of Singapore (1998-2013), where she directed the Multimodal Analysis Lab and served as Deputy Director of the Interactive & Digital Media Institute. PhD from Murdoch University (1996) Postdoctoral position at Martin Luther University (1997-1998) Visiting Distinguished Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University (2017-2020) Professor O'Halloran's research focuses on multimodal discourse analysis, particularly the interaction of language with visual and mathematical resources. Her pioneering work in systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) has significantly impacted mathematics education and digital communication studies. Current research emphasizes digital tools for multimodal analysis and mixed methods approaches to big data analytics, addressing contemporary challenges in misinformation and public health communication. Her recent publications reveal strong thematic concentration in pandemic-related communication analysis, misinformation resistance mechanisms, and multimodal argumentation across social and cultural contexts. The 15 most recent articles demonstrate consistent application of multimodal frameworks to urgent societal issues including public health crises, political discourse, and digital literacy challenges. Founding editor of Routledge Studies in Multimodality book series (57+ volumes) Over 150 publications in leading international journals 50+ plenary/keynote presentations globally Competitive funding from National Research Foundation, MOE Singapore, US Air Force, ARC, NHMRC, and others Professor O'Halloran has directed interdisciplinary research teams comprising social scientists, computer scientists, and designers. Her leadership extends to developing commercial multimodal analysis software (Multimodal Analysis Image and Video) adopted internationally. Current projects include Eurovision 2023 wellbeing evaluation and COVID-19 misinformation immunity development, demonstrating continued relevance to contemporary societal challenges.
Matthew B. Blaschko is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at KU Leuven, Belgium. He serves as director of the KU Leuven ELLIS unit and is a fellow in the ELLIS Health program. He is a Core PI in the Flanders AI Research Program, working as a workpackage lead for Decision Support Systems and Medical Imaging. Blaschko is also a member of the KU Leuven Institute for Artificial Intelligence and one of the leaders of the working group on Machine Learning and Data Science. Professor Blaschko received his B.S. from Columbia University, M.S. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Dr. rer. nat. from Technische Universität Berlin (awarded for work at Max Planck Institutes Tübingen). He was a Newton International Fellow at the University of Oxford and received his Habilitation (HDR) from École Normale Supérieure de Cachan. Prior to joining KU Leuven, he was a Permanent Research Scientist in the INRIA Saclay Research Center and a Faculty Member at Ecole Centrale Paris. His research focuses on machine learning techniques applied to visual data, with particular emphasis on calibration in deep learning, medical image analysis, and federated learning. Blaschko's work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications, as evidenced by technology developed in his research being incorporated into MONA, software for ophthalmic image analysis. His research group has made significant contributions to the fields of model calibration, uncertainty estimation, and medical imaging analysis, with recent publications showing strong trends toward improving reliability of AI systems in medical contexts and advancing theoretical understanding of calibration metrics. Professor Blaschko has been recognized with several awards including the Université Paris-Saclay STIC Doctoral School Best Scientific Contribution Award, Best Paper Award at CVPR 2008, Main Award at DAGM 2008, and Best Student Paper Award at ECCV 2008. Professor Blaschko has supervised numerous PhD and Master's students, with current and former students including Deniz Soysal, Claire Marchal, Dongli Xu, Sebastian Gruber, Jiameng Li, Marco Mezzina, and many others working on diverse topics from Alzheimer's disease analysis to surgical phase recognition. His research has been supported by various funding sources including the Flanders AI Research Program. He has co-organized several influential workshops including the "Another Brick in the AI Wall: Building Practical Solutions from Theoretical Foundations" at CVPR 2025, Commands 4 Autonomous Vehicles workshop at ECCV 2020, and the Learning from Limited Labeled Data workshop series at NIPS 2017 and ICLR 2019. His laboratory focuses on machine learning for medical image analysis, with applications in ophthalmology, neurology, and surgical robotics. The group maintains active collaborations with medical institutions and participates in international challenges such as the KNee OsteoArthritis Prediction (KNOAP2020) challenge.
Dr. Baijian "Justin" Yang serves as the Associate Dean for Research at Purdue Polytechnic Institute and is a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Michigan State University, with Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Automation (EECS) from Tsinghua University. Dr. Yang has established himself as a leader in multiple interdisciplinary research domains. Dr. Yang's educational background includes: PhD in Computer Science, Michigan State University (2002) MS in Automation (EECS), Tsinghua University (1998) BS in Automation (EECS), Tsinghua University (1995) His research interests span multiple cutting-edge domains with practical applications: Cybersecurity : Developing novel approaches for threat intelligence, security education, and network defense Big Data : Creating innovative algorithms for dimension reduction, regression with categorical variables, and tensor decomposition Applied Machine Learning : Implementing AI solutions in healthcare, manufacturing, and forestry applications Digital Forestry : Using UAV imagery and remote sensing for forest management and tree species classification Dr. Yang's publication record demonstrates significant impact across multiple disciplines, with recent work focusing on spatial transcriptomics analysis (SiGra), delirium detection using limited-lead EEG, and visual localization technologies. His research bridges theoretical advances with practical applications in healthcare, manufacturing quality control, and environmental monitoring. The interdisciplinary nature of his work is evident in collaborations spanning computer science, healthcare, forestry, and manufacturing domains. His scientific achievements have been recognized with numerous awards: 2023 HRSA Building Bridges to Better Health Competition Winner (Phase 1) and 2nd place ($100,000 prize) in Phase 3 2023 Outstanding Faculty Award in Engagement, Department of Computer and Information Technology, Purdue University 2021 Leadership in Manufacturing Award, Manufacturing Times Digital (MxD) 2021 Good to Great Award, Purdue Polytechnic 2020 Outstanding Faculty Award in Discovery, Department of Computer and Information Technology 2019 University Faculty Scholars, Purdue University As an educator and mentor, Dr. Yang has advised numerous graduate students through their PhD and Master's research. His leadership extends to significant service roles including serving as Faculty Champion for the Holistic Safety and Security research impact area at Purdue Polytechnic from 2018 to 2021, board membership with ATMAE (2014-2016), and participation in the IEEE Cybersecurity Initiative Steering Committee (2015-2017). He holds valuable industry certifications including CISSP, MCSE, and Six Sigma Black Belt, demonstrating his commitment to bridging academic research with industry practice. Dr. Yang leads multiple research projects including "Digital Forestry" for developing tools to quantify forest function, "CHEESE" (Cyber Human Ecosystem of Engaged Security Education), and "CICI" (Supporting Controlled Unclassified Information with a Campus Awareness and Risk Management Framework). His work on "Applied Machine Learning" focuses on solving real-world problems, while his "Dimension Reduction and Memory Amnestic Big Data Regression" project innovates computational algorithms for large-scale data analysis.
Paola Cascante-Bonilla is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University, with expertise in computer vision, natural language processing, and embodied AI. Her research focuses on developing systems for compositional reasoning, common-sense inference, and trustworthy AI using vision-language models, while addressing cultural bias and explainability challenges.
Habib Ullah is an Associate Professor in Data Science at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Norway, where he conducts research at the intersection of computer vision and machine learning. He is affiliated with the Institute of Data Science under the Faculty of Science and Technology. He has previously held academic positions at COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan, and the University of Ha'il, Saudi Arabia, and served as a postdoctoral researcher at The Arctic University of Norway. Educational Background: PhD in Information and Communication Technology (Computer Vision), University of Trento, Italy (2011–2015) MSc in Electronics and Computer Engineering, Hanyang University, South Korea (2007–2009) BSc in Computer Systems Engineering, NWFP University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan (2002–2006) Habib Ullah's research is primarily focused on computer vision and machine learning, with applications in aquaculture, agriculture, and human behavior analysis. He investigates underwater fish feeding sounds using audio classification, develops zero-shot learning models for recognizing unseen classes, and applies deep learning to detect stress in salmon via skin dot patterns. He also explores AI-driven controlled environment agriculture, leveraging sensors and automation for optimal crop growth. His work emphasizes practical AI solutions for real-world challenges in environmental and biological domains. The recent publications highlight a strong trend in leveraging deep learning for zero-shot and semi-supervised learning, particularly in computer vision tasks such as sea ice classification, crowd anomaly detection, and agricultural monitoring. His research spans remote sensing, biomedical signal processing, and human activity recognition, demonstrating interdisciplinary versatility. The keywords reflect a focus on robust feature representation, knowledge transfer, and model generalization. Scientific Awards and Funding: Industrial PhD grant 'Advancing Controlled Environment Agriculture AI' from The Research Council of Norway (Project number 354125, 2 million NOK, 2024) Team member (Coordinator-Participant) in the Battery Cell Assembly Twin (BatCAT) project funded by Horizon Europe (7 mEuro, 2023–2027) Development of an AI-Based Image Analysis System for Monitoring Plant Status (Funding: 1.8 mNOK, starting 2025) Habib Ullah actively supervises PhD projects and contributes to academic service through editorial and organizational roles. He has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Access, Guest Editor for MDPI Remote Sensing, and Editor of the Springer book Machine Learning Techniques and Sensor Applications for Human Emotion, Activity Recognition, and Support (ML-SHEARS) . He has also been a Track Chair and Program Committee Member for several international conferences, reflecting his leadership in the academic community. His research is supported by significant grants and collaborative projects, indicating strong institutional and international engagement. He is involved in multiple research teams and projects, including the BatCAT project on battery manufacturing and AI applications in controlled environment agriculture with RIFT LABS AS. His lab work integrates deep learning, sensor fusion, and data analytics for environmental and biological monitoring systems.
Alexandros G. Dimakis is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), College of Engineering. He is also Co-Director of the National AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning and Co-Founder of BespokeLabs.ai. PhD (2008) and Diploma (2003) in Electrical Engineering His research focuses on Generative AI , Information Theory , and Machine Learning . Recent work includes advancements in diffusion models, compressed sensing, and causal inference. His publications (150+) emphasize inverse problems, neural network verification, and generative model optimization. Recent publications highlight trends in Diffusion Models for inverse problems, Language Model Scaling , and 3D-Aware Generative Systems . Collaborative projects span biomedical applications, large-scale dataset curation (Datacomp-LM), and parameter-efficient model fine-tuning. Scientific Awards : IEEE Fellow (2022) James Massey Award (2018) NSF CAREER Award (2011) Google Research Faculty Award Best Paper awards at UAI workshops Eli Jury Dissertation Award (UC Berkeley) He advises PhD students in generative modeling, compressed sensing, and information theory. His research group collaborates with institutions like MIT, NYU, and IBM Research. Former students hold positions at Google, Amazon, and academic institutions like Purdue University.
Dima Damen is a Professor of Computer Vision at the School of Computer Science, University of Bristol, where she leads the Machine Learning and Computer Vision Group. She also serves as a Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. As an EPSRC Early Career Fellow (2020-2025) and a Fellow of ELLIS for Europe, her research focuses on advancing computer vision, particularly in egocentric (first-person) vision, video understanding, and action recognition. Her educational background and professional journey have positioned her as a leader in the field of computer vision, with a particular emphasis on understanding human activities from wearable cameras. She has received numerous awards including Best Paper at ACCV 2024 and Outstanding Paper at ICASSP 2021. Professor Damen's research interests span multiple areas of computer vision and machine learning. She specializes in egocentric vision, where she has made significant contributions to understanding human activities from first-person perspectives. Her work explores video understanding, action recognition, hand-object interactions, and the development of vision-language models that can interpret and generate instructions from visual data. She has pioneered approaches to unique video captioning, long video understanding through active memory representations, and spatial reasoning from egocentric videos. Her research often bridges the gap between theoretical computer vision and practical applications in human-centered AI. Her recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on egocentric vision, with papers like "AMEGO: Active Memory from long EGOcentric videos" (ECCV 2024) and "HOI-Ref: Hand-Object Interaction Referral in Egocentric Vision" (2024) advancing the state of the art in understanding long-form first-person videos. She has also contributed to vision-language models with works like "ShowHowTo: Generating Scene-Conditioned Step-by-Step Visual Instructions" (CVPR 2025) and "It's Just Another Day: Unique Video Captioning by Discriminitave Prompting" (ACCV 2024, Best Paper). Her research shows a consistent trajectory toward building systems that can understand human activities in natural environments with human-like capabilities. Professor Damen has received significant recognition for her work, including: EPSRC Early Career Fellow (2020-2025) ELLIS Fellow for Europe (Nov 2024) Best Paper at ACCV 2024 Outstanding Paper at ICASSP 2021 (awarded to only 3 out of 1700 papers) Outstanding Reviewer for CVPR 2020 and 2021 Program Chair for ICCV 2021 She has successfully advised numerous PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom have gone on to prestigious positions in academia and industry. Her group has secured significant research funding including the EPSRC Programme Grant Visual AI and the EPSRC UMPIRE grant. She actively collaborates with industry partners including Google DeepMind, Adobe, and Meta, ensuring her research has practical impact. Professor Damen leads the Machine Learning and Computer Vision Group at the University of Bristol, which focuses on egocentric vision, video understanding, and the development of vision-language models. The group has created influential datasets like EPIC-KITCHENS, which has become a standard benchmark in egocentric vision research. Her team regularly participates in and organizes workshops at major computer vision conferences including CVPR, ICCV, and ECCV.
